Shearing day! Colored Angora Goats Look at these beautiful Angora Goats, all strutting their stuff! Their coats look so luscious a person want to pet them if only just to feel that gorgeous hair! It is just meant to be turned into lovely things for fiber lovers to enjoy. Twice a year it is sheared off the goats so it can be turned into beautiful mohair yarn. But wait! Before becoming yarn, or other gorgeous things, it has to be washed and all the foreign particles picked out of it. That may sound easy, but can you imagine all the foreign particles found in a fleece worn for six months! No bath! Goats go out to the pasture to find fresh greens everyday. When they tire of eating, they take a nap, no matter where they are! It is amazing what we find in their fleece! When sheared off, the fleece has to be washed. This means being put in a big tub on the stove and brought to a temperature of 140 degrees. If the dirt and grease has not come out, it has to be done again and again until it does! Sometimes it takes six to eight washings to get it clean. For every washing, it takes even more rinsing baths. Then it is put on screens to dry. Once it is finally clean, rinsed, picked so nothing but good fiber is left, it is spun or sent off to be processed into batting, roving or yarn at a carding mill. Our Angora goats' mohair production surpassed my ability to spin it so I began looking for ways to use it. Blending it with other fibers makes it work better so we have created several conbinations and blends. In some have been alpaca, wool, and mohair. Others have been made up of wool and mohair. There are many possible combinations. We have used several combinations to make yarn which you will enjoy using. In addition to yarn, we now offer deep gray mohair-alpaca-wool blend rovings at $3.50 per ounce. Yarn comes in lovely natural earthtones of charcoal, brown, silver gray, and creamy white. It is $4.00 per ounce. Skeins weigh from 2 to 4 ounces. We do not wind off specific amounts of yarn, as it is already wound into skeins. It is best to figure from your pattern how much you will need and order accordingly. We will pick out skeins which are close to your needs and send them to you. This yarn is approximately sport weight. How much is used depends on how tightly you knit or weave. There are about 30 yards per ounce. It makes about 10 wraps to the inch. Yarn comes in the colors of the mohair and other fibers which were used in the blend to create each yarn. We have Light Brown, Charcoal, Light Gray and Cream. No dyes or artificial color is added! Prices are as follows: Handspun yarn, lumpy, with character: $5.00 per ounce Machine Spun yarn: $4.00 per ounce Roving, ready to spin or for projects: $3.50 per ounce Batting: $2.00 per ounce Fleece unwashed: $20. per fleece Fleece washed: $30. per fleece To order, call Shirley at 785-379-0421 Henrietta, on the stand ready for Chuck to shear her fleece. Shearing is almost finished. Chuck is doing a final trim on Henrietta's legs. Yarn, ready to use. It was sent to a carding mill to be washed, carded and spun. Which was Henrietta's? I knitted this scarf with the light gray yarn you see in the yarn basket. It knitted quickly, has a nice soft feel, yet is quite warm around the neck.