down with mohair
13 Jan 2020 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneFun fact! My skin is so sensitive to mohair that my past experiences with wearing it over 20 years ago still make me recoil and reflexively get angry when I see the written word.
Every time I see a pattern go by on Ravelry that uses mohair - which is a lot because it's a popular luxury fiber - I experience a brief intense wave of resentment and have to remind myself that other people like mohair and it's not bad for them to write patterns for it just because I would have to substitute a different yarn in order to get gauge.
(I suppose lace-weight cashmere would be a good substitute, since angora is so hard to source ethically1 if you don't spin it yourself. Lace-weight mohair seems to be much more widespread, though. Probably because it provides that fuzzy haze around the fabric as well as presumably feeling soft to other people. I wouldn't know; to me it feels like millions of tiny sentient and malicious alien needles trying to burrow through my skin. If you want to duplicate the haze, you probably need an angora blend.)
1. In my case, angora is not hard to source ethically since I can get piles of it just by brushing Rowan, but lace-weight yarn is a bit harder to source ethically as I can't spin it myself. (My sister spins, but she mostly uses hanks that are pre-carded; she hasn't gotten around to getting a carding setup.)
Unethical angora wool: Some breeds of angora are sheared to collect the wool, much like very small sheep, and others shed their fur so it's better to comb it out - which is also how cashmere is collected from the goats and the reason that cashmere and angora are so expensive: combing has to be done by a person, so the process can't be made any cheaper by automation. Angora bunnies have rather delicate skin, though, and combing the wool out is both time-consuming and fiddly because it requires a degree of gentleness; even doing it by hand, even doing it just with my fingertips and no comb, I've accidentally left small bald spots on Rowan that were red and irritated afterwards (though not uncomfortable enough at the moment of extraction for him to complain!). A lot of yarn brands have responded to exposes of human rights abuse in mass-produced angora yarns by dropping angora blends from their lines after videos of angoras having their fur yanked out by the roots surfaced years ago. This is painful but not fatal, but I'd strongly advise against looking for images. I haven't seen a non-local&homespun angora yarn in a local yarn store for years now.
Every time I see a pattern go by on Ravelry that uses mohair - which is a lot because it's a popular luxury fiber - I experience a brief intense wave of resentment and have to remind myself that other people like mohair and it's not bad for them to write patterns for it just because I would have to substitute a different yarn in order to get gauge.
(I suppose lace-weight cashmere would be a good substitute, since angora is so hard to source ethically1 if you don't spin it yourself. Lace-weight mohair seems to be much more widespread, though. Probably because it provides that fuzzy haze around the fabric as well as presumably feeling soft to other people. I wouldn't know; to me it feels like millions of tiny sentient and malicious alien needles trying to burrow through my skin. If you want to duplicate the haze, you probably need an angora blend.)
1. In my case, angora is not hard to source ethically since I can get piles of it just by brushing Rowan, but lace-weight yarn is a bit harder to source ethically as I can't spin it myself. (My sister spins, but she mostly uses hanks that are pre-carded; she hasn't gotten around to getting a carding setup.)
Unethical angora wool: Some breeds of angora are sheared to collect the wool, much like very small sheep, and others shed their fur so it's better to comb it out - which is also how cashmere is collected from the goats and the reason that cashmere and angora are so expensive: combing has to be done by a person, so the process can't be made any cheaper by automation. Angora bunnies have rather delicate skin, though, and combing the wool out is both time-consuming and fiddly because it requires a degree of gentleness; even doing it by hand, even doing it just with my fingertips and no comb, I've accidentally left small bald spots on Rowan that were red and irritated afterwards (though not uncomfortable enough at the moment of extraction for him to complain!). A lot of yarn brands have responded to exposes of human rights abuse in mass-produced angora yarns by dropping angora blends from their lines after videos of angoras having their fur yanked out by the roots surfaced years ago. This is painful but not fatal, but I'd strongly advise against looking for images. I haven't seen a non-local&homespun angora yarn in a local yarn store for years now.
