Processing Angora Rabbit Fiber

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to my channel I'm so glad you're here today today is Tuesday May 14th um we are in or I am in Countdown week for the Mitten homesteaders conference which why will be at this weekend and I will be there both Friday and Saturday I did send out an email yesterday just reminding people if you are a subscriber on my website you should have got that yesterday in your email if you're not you can go to my website the link is down below and there's a little popup that comes up and you can subscribe to my channel and get um newsletters and emails and things like that for me so that is what I am doing this week I am preparing all of my um products and everything getting around getting the last bit of my um my talk or my speech written out to hopefully keep me on task I realized at first when I found out I had an hour um I'm like oh can I talk for an hour and as I'm putting this together I'm like hour is not going to be enough time to get all this in so um that's what I'm working on this week so don't miss that if you are local to Michigan uh it is in Lake Odes which is southwest of Ionia um kind of in the middle of everything granden Rapids L scene things like that so hop onto their website if you're interested there are still tickets available um but today I am hopping on to talk about some very basic stuff I started this channel a long time ago and I had a slow start to it and then I've really picked up the PTI the last year year and a half or so thereabouts um and I get all kinds of questions when I tell people that I raise angor rabbits and the reality is is I don't think I've ever done just a very basic Angora fiber processing video so that's what we're going to talk about today um I went to a local mill on Saturday and these ladies do knitting and crocheting and all the things and there were some other people there too that were learning how to do stuff and I realized that everyone always asks even people who raise like sheep or alpacas everyone always ask well how do you process the fiber how do you what do you have to do to it how do you get it to look you know the way you get it so I thought I would hop on and do some very basic um just talking about how I process my ING goras how do I get the fiber from them and then what do I do with it um first things first the beauty of the angora is that there really is very little processing involved you don't have to send it off to a mill um you don't have to wash it prior to working with it all of that can be done in in the end process um as long as you are keeping your rabbits you know the cages fairly cleaned and um keeping your rabbits cleaned up and things like that you should have no problem doing it this way I have lots of videos doing um showing you different grooming techniques techniques with Angar rabbits um I clip my angoras with um a pair of scissors I Shear my angoras with a pair of electric shears which that video is on there and um I also comb my angoras so those are the three ways that I go about getting the fiber off from my angor rabbit and then once I get it uh let's see I'll show you um depending on how I get it I will have so my preference for um clipped fiber or sheared Fiber is to cart it um a lot of people don't care I I don't know it's just just I will spin it without doing anything to it but I tend to not like when you shear um you get these it's going to be hard to see but this is a blunt end right here in a in a handful of inora um you get let me try this piece right here you get these very blunt ends those are from the cuts um I try real hard not to get second Cuts although sometimes that does happen and to get second cuts out essentially second cuts are when you run your um Clippers over the same area twice so you shear it and then you shear the little stubble that's left again and you get tiny little pieces in there you can save those um you can do lots of things with those uh such as felting or um just different things but you definitely don't want to spin that and you don't want to sell that if you are selling in gor fiber so the blunt ends right here or what I don't prefer so typically that's Willow um typically I will card all of these and um so that's the the majority of what I do is just carding so some people will take this straight to their wheel and they'll spin it just like that and and you can do that I just prefer to have everything kind of Blended and all in line um the other way I get my fiber is by combing and when you comb your fiber you're going to end up with something that looks like this this is all combed fiber straight off the rabbit and I really most times won't do anything with this at all I will just take it in my hand just like this and go to the spinning wheel and I have lots of spinning videos that you can on my channel and just spin it from this it's kind of a cloud but not really um spin it from this that has just been combed directly from my rabbits I don't need to do anything beyond that I don't typically wash my fiber now I have in the past um this is some that I washed I can't remember why I washed it I don't know if I was it may have been I was going to dye some of it um and it got you know I soaked it and never dyed it is what I'm thinking I did with this and so you can also wash it or Dye it and get it wet first and then you're just going to have pieces that need to be carted at that point um this is some washed fiber that has dried and it just needs to be carted and fluffed out it's not felted it's um all separate but you would just have have to take hand Carters and run it through a couple times to get this um nice and evenly lined up just putting it on a Carter and this is what I would do with clipped fiber also is just put it on here and I've talked about before you don't have to have hand Carters you can use the dog brushes that you can get at Walmart those work great too you don't need to have anything special to do this um so this would be washed fiber that you really don't have to wash if you don't want to and it just it Puffs right out once you um once you card it and so it becomes a very usable fiber so the main idea behind the angora is you can spin it or spin it directly off the rabbit you can spin it from the rabbit which I have a video showing that also um I think it's a short that I did it might be a long video but you can spin them while they're in your lap you can spin right off from them I think that's more of a novelty thing but people do it um so once you have spun your yarn uh from directly from the rabbit that is when you're going to have I have some skin here that I'm getting ready to wash today and and let's see where is my end um so these are three different skin I don't know if I think you can pick up the colors this is more of a chestnut over here and then I have some white and I have a darker gray color and so these are all going to get washed today and ready to go with me on Friday for sale um so it doesn't really there's no order to it at all these haven't been washed at all directly from the rabbit like I said if you're keeping your cage is cleaned and your rabbit's cleaned the fiber is mainly going to be clean fiber and so what I the the main thing to clean this is I have um this is actually new to me uh fiber wash you can get there are several different kinds soak is a brand that I use quite often I thought I'd try this um this is unicorn fiber fiber wash and this is for knit and delicates I think they have another one that is a no rinse um and that's what the soak wash is it's a no rinse you just soak it and you don't really have to rinse it out um that's how I clean all of my Yarns so even the fiber that I am carting to sell um I have a bunch of that to go with me this weekend um in 1 oz bags all of that none of it has been washed it's all just straight from the rabbit that's the beauty of doing angoras is that you don't really have to process it um you know you you groom them you comb them you spin it you wash your yarn and essentially that's it there is no processing that that needs to be done beyond that now can you absolutely I could take um like I might want some of my M hair uh or Al Paca that I've had in the past and I might want to blend that with some anggora I could take that to like the small Mill that I went and visited Saturday I could take that and have that processed into you know a blend or mix they will do I think she also will do just ingor fiber um if I wanted to go get it processed at a Mill and I believe she will also spin it at the Mill so there are lots of different options but Angora does not have to be difficult um if the idea of like shearing sheet and going through and skirting all the fiber and then GA um Gathering it all together and taking it to a mill or trying to wash it yourself if all of that scares you angoras might be your animal that you want to try because it there is none of that middle stuff it's just simply get the fiber from the rabbit spin it and then wash your yarn when you're done so that's what I wanted to talk about today the Simplicity of angor rabbit Pro uh angor rabbit fiber proc processing and how simple it is um I'm going to like I said I'm going to take all three of these skin and I have um I have a couple different sinks that I use I either use our bathroom you can also get those dish pan tubs that you can get at the dollar store those make great um tubs to wash your fiber in um I may use one of those today because I have quite a bit here as you can see and our bathroom sink is pretty small um I also have like a big tub sink in my laundry room I probably won't use that because I just I don't have that much right now so those are a couple of different ideas of what you could um rinse out or wash out your angor yarn in but again typically a sink will work the kitchen sink will work just make sure that you have with yarn you shouldn't have any um any fibers going down the drain but if you were washing Fiers on its own I would recommend doing that in a dish pan and then taking a colander and pouring it into that so you don't have fibers clogging your drain um but from the yarn you shouldn't have that at all because it's already spun up so I hope this video was helpful I hope you enjoyed it um please stay tuned I have uh I'm going to have another video on Saturday setup um I think that's going to be some spinning videos uh talking about spinning off bobbins so that will be Saturday and then I'm hoping to get a bunch of videos put together from the conference this weekend just to kind of show you uh what was who was there what it was like and stuff maybe talk to some of the people at the conference so that might be coming up here we'll see how much time I end up having to do that um but I hope you guys are having a fantastic week I hope you have a great day and I hope you're creating something today bye [Music]

Channel: Tail Spin Farm

Views: 173

Keywords: Angora rabbit, rabbits, rabbit fiber, angora rabbit fiber, Spinning fiber, yarn

Id: ht5xZlhWxpU

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024