Saturday, March 22, 2008

Angora - the third in an ongoing series

A very quick one this time.

Just in time for spring, here's my gathered knowledge on angora fibre (and sadly, there isn't much of it).

Angora: Soft as Canary Bellies

This lightweight fibre is my new favourite. I still haven't discovered its exact elastic memory, but it appears to not have alpaca's nasty tendency to s-t-r-e-t-c-h to slightly amazing degrees. Its even warmer to wear than wool, and felts easily.

Pros

-creates a lovely halo around the wearer
-softness makes it imminently suitable to wear against the skin

Cons

-sheds (so don't wear your white coat and black angora sweater together!)
-can be pricey
-beware for allergies (as with any animal based yarn)


When buying angora online, make sure you're getting bunny, and not goat. Way back when in my uninitiated knitter days I saw a lot of "angora yarn" for sale on eBay. I was rather disappointed when I opened the box to find some of the scratchiest yarn I'd ever touched. Not fair! Says I. The softest and scratchiest yarns should not share a moniker. In fact, they should be on the opposite ends of some sort of naming scale.
Angora and... Arogna? Is that the opposite?

1 comment:

Carol said...

I think they should call a spade a spade. Or in this case, goat hair should be called goat hair. Dammit!