I stopped at a thrift store while visiting the finger lakes region of New York state a few months ago, and I found a box with 3 and a half pounds of wool and a set of large hand carders.
That is what I have discover, mohair is very dirty and have vax not lanolin., I use very hot water and alot of dishwater soap, washed 3 times. Mohair fibers have a coating called “yolk” that protects them from the harsh environment. This yolk keeps the fiber soft and lustrous but can be difficult to wash out. Some yolk is so thick it feels like the mohair has been dipped in wax. Kid mohair and “dry” mohair (from Cashgora or Navajo type goats) have little or no yolk, making the mohair easier to wash. While the mohair with the thicker yolk may take more time to wash, under the yolk lays a shiny, wonderful fiber full of luster, which has been protected from wind, rain, and other detrimental elements. This beautiful mohair makes the chore of washing well worth the extra effort.
You would have to pry my mohair from my cold, dead hands…which might have been what happened 😮. I just blended 30% mohair with targhee and spun some sock yarn with it! This was so much fun thank you!
I just finished my very first ball of handspun yarn! It looks.... wild, but in the most lovely way! 😍 Do you still have your very first ball of yarn (or the project you did with it)? I would love to see it! 😃
I have! I never made a project out of it, but it's just chilling out in my living room. If ever I find a great opportunity to show in a video, I will :)
I still have my first mini-skein of yarn. It was deep purple and gray. I thought I would catch on quicker than I did, and it was a mess, so I named that yarn 'Bruised Ego."
I have also found baggies of raw fleece at a thrift store! :) Some Finn sheep locks, Suffolk and a BFL/Coopworth/East Friesian cross [luckily for me the previous owner had written the contents on each bag]
My sister’s a former angora goat farmer and fibre supplier and always told me the best prep for mohair is carding. Then spin longdraw as you did, but make sure not to smooth down the fibres by touching it while spinning or plying. Easier said than done, but it does create the fluffiest and loftiest yarn, which you want from mohair.
Not 2 weeks after you told us about finding this baggie at the thrift store, I found 2 little baggies of fleece at mine! I think they're just normal prepped merino, but still I laughed so hard because I'd literally just been so impressed by your find. Of course I bought them 😊
If it is mohair, it is probably from an older animal. I have processed both kids and goats. Kid mohair is very silky(I won't say soft really because it has such more tensile strength than wool) and goat mohair is coarser. If you mix it with your Belgian sheep fleece wool, you could make some amazing sock yarn. The mohair takes the place of nylon and serves the same purpose.
Moth tip: leave the wool in your car on hot summers days - the higher temperatures will kill both moths and eggs + its much easier to fit big bags of wool in a car than in the freezer ☺️
but no hot summer days were had in Belgium when I was recording this :( we've had 11 months in a row a new record for most rain fell in that particular month
I have not found fiber in thrift stores but I ask for the fleece at farm festivals that sheer sheep. It has been very dirty and as they told me "not a spinning fleece" but I carded it with sari silk roving and some other bits random bits of color and got a very nice yarn. I agree with the chaos theory....try it and see
i go to the dig thru bins at goodwill. i found some wool. it was here and there down in the bins. i looked and dug thru to the bottom and there it was. blues purples and greens. i dont know what kind of wool it was. it was so soft and smooth. i think they thought it was felted. it spun so smooth and soft. i love how your yarn turned out friend. i love your videos Jente.
Looks like it has a wonderful luster! I’ve been spinning slubby crepe yarn with mohair and targhee wool. The matte finish of the targhee really contrasts either the shiny mohair plies- so cool to look at. I’m spinning mohair combed top, and it is so slick and slippery- wants to come apart if not enough twist!
I found a pound of silk hankies and another half pound of unidentified wool at a local creative reuse store (Scrap in case anyone out there is in Michigan) and have kept foing back at least once a week looking for other amazing finds. There have been a good many wool yarns and some beautiful crochet thread, but no more fiber yet.
I've never found something this cool in a thrift store haha but I once found, at the antique market, an old conference room chair that I could actually sit in stably and without pain, and it served me faithfully for almost ten years T.T
That is such an awesome find Jente. I have never found fibre in our charity shops here, infact I rarely even find balls of yarn. Youve got you a lovely little skein there, make a gorgeous edging around the cuffs of some gloves or mittens 😍
Fabulous find! I am lucky to find anything fibre-related in thrift stores where I am (being in the tropics 😊🌴🌴🌴) lol! In fact there are no sheep or goats within "cooee" (Aussie term) of here as they just don’t thrive in the heat and humidity. That being said, having spent decades on cattle stations, most farmer’s wives who like to spin, would have a small flock of "spinners" (special sheep kept for just for the wife’s spinning enjoyment 😜). Now living in suburbia, I have an only small sheep statue in my garden to remind me of those bygone times …. sigh …. I did, however, have a lady pass on 5 huge bags of specialist yarn to me as she could no longer knit due to arthritis. There was a good deal of handspun, laceweight yarn in the bags as she used to make Shetland wedding ring shawls and the like. She just wanted someone to "love" her stash and put it to good use, which I am endeavouring to do. I make heaps of things that are useless for a tropical climate, but then I pass them on to those in need and the elderly in colder climes. Makes me so happy …. 🥰 I think your finished yarn is lovely btw … ❤
I spun a 80% mohair and 20% wool blend for my sweater knit just recently. I did a short forward draw and loose ply. It was heaven. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn to finish so I contacted the company with no response. I decided to try to replicated as I had some raw heavy vm mohair. I combed and then blended some wool with it til I got close. It actually turned out great. I think maybe your twist might be to much for desire effect you wanted. Mohair is usually long staple so it can be a lower twist ratio.
@@MijnWoldentotally! How many skeins of yarn have I overspun. Don't ask lol. Every breed and fiber behaves differently and a lot of it is trial by error.
So sorry the yarn didn’t turn out as special as you wanted it to. But you did get a pretty yarn in the end! I’m now wondering: will you be putting that combing waste through the drum carder? Perhaps with some other wool?
I was surprised you spun it as a separate entity, I've only seen yarns that say something along the lines of "20% mohair" so I thought you'd mix it in with something else to give it that typical halo effect. But I kinda like slubby yarn when I knit, so why not? Cool to see how it looks naturally 💙
A few odd things I’ve found at the thrift store near me: bag of little plastic baby figures (probably for those cakes?), decorative figures of sexy anthropomorphic frogs, at least five identical pie/tart dishes spread among the different booths
I'm VERY late to this, but I've spent a lot of time prepping and spinning both Wensleydale and Leceister Longwool. This looks like it behaves and has the same luster as both of those. Maybe not as common in Belgium? I'm in the US and have only found 1 or 2 farmers with those breeds.
I found a massive entire alpaca fleece at my favourite thrift. I go there once a fortnight and walked away from this fleece on three different visits because I already have 3 alpaca fleeces in my stash. The 4th time i just felt really sorry for the poor thing and brought it home. I didn't put it in the freezer though, it would take up the entirety of our deep chest freezer and my partner would probably have a fit.
i'm currently tuning 100% mohair yarn back into fiber so that i can mix with wool bc knitting with it was a nightmare and hella wonky. now i know why mohair is very often mixed with other fibers LOL
Knit up your resulting mohair yarn with your wool yarn for the heal and toe for a pair of socks. You should have just enough to do those 2 parts of a pair of socks.
omg that coral shirt looks so good on you!!!!!!!! and with the red earrings it's perfection! also why do I feel like I've seen the art behind you before, like not on your wall, but somewhere else. Who made it? Is that yarn in your hair???? will you make something out of the special baggy yarn???? (I had to watch the video over 2 days) What was the craziest thing I thrifted? Silk blouse for 1€, I think. At a garage sale.
Yarn in hair: yes. Which art exactly do you mean? (Because if it is the one with the hand in the field of grain, then you might have seen it in a church, for this was a poster used by my diocese in all churches)
I don't know if it's the weirdest find ever, but 2 notable charity shop finds: 1. A small, bronze, oval shaped lockable pot with little holes in, the consensus on my Facebook was that it was an incense holder but it turned out to be exactly the right size to hold a small stack of Pringles while looking INCREDIBLY steampunk. To think, I almost didn't spend the £3.50 on it! 2. A book called "wild knitting" from 1979 which i assumed would be about knitting nature (flower designs on scarves, etc) or knitting "in the wild" (projects designed to be knit in public and travelled with) but was in fact, unhinged knitting patterns. And this is what the late 1970s thought was wild. Clown dungarees, knitted evening wear (with knitted cigarette and knitted lighter), armadillo wrap, duck socks, a 90cm long banana pillow. I opened it on the page "beautiful basics" and it had a mohair lace dress with an oversized collar (of course, that'll go with *everything*) and that's when I knew it was coming home with me. Worth every penny of the £2
Het lijkt niet de puntkrullen te hebben die ik zou verwachten van vies mohair in zakken... weet je wel, toch? Het lijkt mij meer kasjmier. Maybe even a rarer find from a thrift store. I suggest save all the combing waste and card it with a wool. It will give you a lovely, fuzzy finish on a mostly sheep wool yarn.
Ik denk dat ik eens moet uitbreiden qua kringwinkels te bezoeken :p Nicest that I found so far is a pretty small wooden chest (not textile related, but I store pieces of yarn in it)
It surely isn't alpaca, but I have not enough experience with pygora to rule that out. But isn't pygora a hybrid from the angora goat that gives mohair?
Someone had sent their breed study bags to the op / thrift store but the price they put on them was crazy and at the time I couldn’t afford it much to my disgust.
Only recently has my thriftstore made a "crafting corner", a couple of months ago I couldn't even find decent knitting needles there if I wanted to. So hopes are yours might do that in the future too
While what you are saying is correct, I feel like those extra exclamation marks make your statement a bit more rude than it should be. I think that my video gives enough evidence to suggest that 1) I actually know this (cfr. "it feels more like hair", "I can see someone make doll hair from this" but that 2) I am not a native English speaker, so that words are slightly harder for me. And in my native language "wol" (wool) is used for every part of the process, no matter what the fiber is. We call acrylic wol even.
hehe since you're asking: when you talk, you sometimes make such long pauses in between parts of your sentences that I feel like I'm hanging over a horrifying clif, and all I can hope is that you can save me with the rest of the sentence. Did it make me run away from your channel? Apparently not. So you may proceed with your "weird" talking, I think we'll be fine =D
I stopped at a thrift store while visiting the finger lakes region of New York state a few months ago, and I found a box with 3 and a half pounds of wool and a set of large hand carders.
Wow what a fun find!
Great find!
That is what I have discover, mohair is very dirty and have vax not lanolin., I use very hot water and alot of dishwater soap, washed 3 times. Mohair fibers have a coating called “yolk” that protects them from the harsh environment. This yolk keeps the fiber soft and lustrous but can be difficult to wash out. Some yolk is so thick it feels like the mohair has been dipped in wax. Kid mohair and “dry” mohair (from Cashgora or Navajo type goats) have little or no yolk, making the mohair easier to wash. While the mohair with the thicker yolk may take more time to wash, under the yolk lays a shiny, wonderful fiber full of luster, which has been protected from wind, rain, and other detrimental elements. This beautiful mohair makes the chore of washing well worth the extra effort.
ooooh yes it did feel very waxy (and some was clearly not wax, but shhh)
You would have to pry my mohair from my cold, dead hands…which might have been what happened 😮. I just blended 30% mohair with targhee and spun some sock yarn with it! This was so much fun thank you!
Ohno! How dare they pry it from your cold dead hands
I found 200 g of corrindale brown raw fleece in the thrift store. My first scouring and prep and turned into 360 m of 2 ply lovely ness
I am jealous now
Lucky find! I don’t think that I have ever seen fiber at a thrift store
It was a first for me too
I just finished my very first ball of handspun yarn! It looks.... wild, but in the most lovely way! 😍
Do you still have your very first ball of yarn (or the project you did with it)? I would love to see it! 😃
Me too! That would be cool
I have! I never made a project out of it, but it's just chilling out in my living room. If ever I find a great opportunity to show in a video, I will :)
I still have my first mini-skein of yarn. It was deep purple and gray. I thought I would catch on quicker than I did, and it was a mess, so I named that yarn 'Bruised Ego."
I have also found baggies of raw fleece at a thrift store! :) Some Finn sheep locks, Suffolk and a BFL/Coopworth/East Friesian cross [luckily for me the previous owner had written the contents on each bag]
oooh sounds lovely!
What a fun find! I have found fiber at thrift stores, but I believe it’s wool…
Op shop bag of christmas bells for adding to decorations had a silver skull ring in it that my daughter still wears and loves. Thanks Jente
that sounds amazing
My sister’s a former angora goat farmer and fibre supplier and always told me the best prep for mohair is carding. Then spin longdraw as you did, but make sure not to smooth down the fibres by touching it while spinning or plying. Easier said than done, but it does create the fluffiest and loftiest yarn, which you want from mohair.
If you want lustre and shine, comb then spin worsted. That’s a nice prep for embroidery yarn.
that's really cool that your sister is an angora goat farmer!
Not 2 weeks after you told us about finding this baggie at the thrift store, I found 2 little baggies of fleece at mine! I think they're just normal prepped merino, but still I laughed so hard because I'd literally just been so impressed by your find. Of course I bought them 😊
Of course you bought them :D
If it is mohair, it is probably from an older animal. I have processed both kids and goats. Kid mohair is very silky(I won't say soft really because it has such more tensile strength than wool) and goat mohair is coarser. If you mix it with your Belgian sheep fleece wool, you could make some amazing sock yarn. The mohair takes the place of nylon and serves the same purpose.
I have kept the combing waste, so I might just do that
I found 2 skeins of silk mohair for 50 cents in a thriftstore in the jungle of Guatemala. I didn't complain.
Have a great weekend
I wouldn't complain either :D
Moth tip: leave the wool in your car on hot summers days - the higher temperatures will kill both moths and eggs + its much easier to fit big bags of wool in a car than in the freezer ☺️
but no hot summer days were had in Belgium when I was recording this :( we've had 11 months in a row a new record for most rain fell in that particular month
I have not found fiber in thrift stores but I ask for the fleece at farm festivals that sheer sheep. It has been very dirty and as they told me "not a spinning fleece" but I carded it with sari silk roving and some other bits random bits of color and got a very nice yarn. I agree with the chaos theory....try it and see
"not a spinning fleece" is subjective anyway ;)
i go to the dig thru bins at goodwill. i found some wool. it was here and there down in the bins. i looked and dug thru to the bottom and there it was. blues purples and greens. i dont know what kind of wool it was. it was so soft and smooth. i think they thought it was felted. it spun so smooth and soft. i love how your yarn turned out friend. i love your videos Jente.
that was worth a dive in the bins!
@@MijnWolden yes it was. it made a lovely yarn. thank u.good subject friend! now i know to put it in my freezer! thanks to u.
Looks like it has a wonderful luster! I’ve been spinning slubby crepe yarn with mohair and targhee wool. The matte finish of the targhee really contrasts either the shiny mohair plies- so cool to look at. I’m spinning mohair combed top, and it is so slick and slippery- wants to come apart if not enough twist!
I found a pound of silk hankies and another half pound of unidentified wool at a local creative reuse store (Scrap in case anyone out there is in Michigan) and have kept foing back at least once a week looking for other amazing finds. There have been a good many wool yarns and some beautiful crochet thread, but no more fiber yet.
Keep looking though, that sounds exciting!
Great find and great spin
they are the best thrift days indeed!
I did find a Louet S10 spinning wheel in a thrift store some years ago but no fibre. I enjoyed watching you play with your find.
Okay, but a wheel is an amazing find too
I've never found something this cool in a thrift store haha but I once found, at the antique market, an old conference room chair that I could actually sit in stably and without pain, and it served me faithfully for almost ten years T.T
I love when second hand items get to live another long life
That is such an awesome find Jente. I have never found fibre in our charity shops here, infact I rarely even find balls of yarn. Youve got you a lovely little skein there, make a gorgeous edging around the cuffs of some gloves or mittens 😍
oh, that is a great idea!
Fabulous find! I am lucky to find anything fibre-related in thrift stores where I am (being in the tropics 😊🌴🌴🌴) lol! In fact there are no sheep or goats within "cooee" (Aussie term) of here as they just don’t thrive in the heat and humidity. That being said, having spent decades on cattle stations, most farmer’s wives who like to spin, would have a small flock of "spinners" (special sheep kept for just for the wife’s spinning enjoyment 😜). Now living in suburbia, I have an only small sheep statue in my garden to remind me of those bygone times …. sigh …. I did, however, have a lady pass on 5 huge bags of specialist yarn to me as she could no longer knit due to arthritis. There was a good deal of handspun, laceweight yarn in the bags as she used to make Shetland wedding ring shawls and the like. She just wanted someone to "love" her stash and put it to good use, which I am endeavouring to do. I make heaps of things that are useless for a tropical climate, but then I pass them on to those in need and the elderly in colder climes. Makes me so happy …. 🥰 I think your finished yarn is lovely btw … ❤
that sounds lovely!
So entertaining as usual ❤
I spun a 80% mohair and 20% wool blend for my sweater knit just recently. I did a short forward draw and loose ply. It was heaven. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn to finish so I contacted the company with no response. I decided to try to replicated as I had some raw heavy vm mohair. I combed and then blended some wool with it til I got close. It actually turned out great. I think maybe your twist might be to much for desire effect you wanted. Mohair is usually long staple so it can be a lower twist ratio.
yeah probably lower twist would have been nicer, but that's the thing of learning by experience, right?
@@MijnWoldentotally! How many skeins of yarn have I overspun. Don't ask lol. Every breed and fiber behaves differently and a lot of it is trial by error.
So sorry the yarn didn’t turn out as special as you wanted it to. But you did get a pretty yarn in the end!
I’m now wondering: will you be putting that combing waste through the drum carder? Perhaps with some other wool?
I have put the waste bag into the bag... so I might? :)
I was surprised you spun it as a separate entity, I've only seen yarns that say something along the lines of "20% mohair" so I thought you'd mix it in with something else to give it that typical halo effect. But I kinda like slubby yarn when I knit, so why not? Cool to see how it looks naturally 💙
I wanted to experience it fully, without any other fiber taking away from the feeling :)
A few odd things I’ve found at the thrift store near me: bag of little plastic baby figures (probably for those cakes?), decorative figures of sexy anthropomorphic frogs, at least five identical pie/tart dishes spread among the different booths
sexy anthropomorfic frogs is not a combination of words I had expected to read here, but I love it
I've found fibre in the thrift store a couple of times, lamb's wool and mohair batts
oh, lovely!
Ya gurl found camel fibre at the op shop once. Still haven't spun it yet.
I'm VERY late to this, but I've spent a lot of time prepping and spinning both Wensleydale and Leceister Longwool. This looks like it behaves and has the same luster as both of those. Maybe not as common in Belgium? I'm in the US and have only found 1 or 2 farmers with those breeds.
No, not at all common here. Most sheep are bred for their meat or as lawnmowers, so mostly not so much fancy breeds for their wool.
20% mohair with 80% wool makes excellent sock yarn without having to resort to using synthetics - Edit - and a very entertaining video - bedankt
Might just use the leftovers for such a blend :)
Keep the singles to ply with spun softer yarn for heels and toes of hand knit, handspun, socks!
I found a massive entire alpaca fleece at my favourite thrift. I go there once a fortnight and walked away from this fleece on three different visits because I already have 3 alpaca fleeces in my stash. The 4th time i just felt really sorry for the poor thing and brought it home. I didn't put it in the freezer though, it would take up the entirety of our deep chest freezer and my partner would probably have a fit.
My husband was also not too happy with me hogging the bottom drawer with my thrift finds hehe
i'm currently tuning 100% mohair yarn back into fiber so that i can mix with wool bc knitting with it was a nightmare and hella wonky. now i know why mohair is very often mixed with other fibers LOL
Knit up your resulting mohair yarn with your wool yarn for the heal and toe for a pair of socks. You should have just enough to do those 2 parts of a pair of socks.
I found a full-on LARPing sword in my local thrift store. Does that count?
YES. This counts. 100%.
omg that coral shirt looks so good on you!!!!!!!! and with the red earrings it's perfection!
also why do I feel like I've seen the art behind you before, like not on your wall, but somewhere else. Who made it?
Is that yarn in your hair????
will you make something out of the special baggy yarn???? (I had to watch the video over 2 days)
What was the craziest thing I thrifted? Silk blouse for 1€, I think. At a garage sale.
Yarn in hair: yes.
Which art exactly do you mean? (Because if it is the one with the hand in the field of grain, then you might have seen it in a church, for this was a poster used by my diocese in all churches)
@@MijnWolden nope, the portraits, which also have hands in them, but mainly faces =D
@@LualaDy Oooh, ok. Those I made myself with acrylic markers, but from pictures found on pinterest :)
@@MijnWolden have you posted them online?
I don't know if it's the weirdest find ever, but 2 notable charity shop finds:
1. A small, bronze, oval shaped lockable pot with little holes in, the consensus on my Facebook was that it was an incense holder but it turned out to be exactly the right size to hold a small stack of Pringles while looking INCREDIBLY steampunk. To think, I almost didn't spend the £3.50 on it!
2. A book called "wild knitting" from 1979 which i assumed would be about knitting nature (flower designs on scarves, etc) or knitting "in the wild" (projects designed to be knit in public and travelled with) but was in fact, unhinged knitting patterns. And this is what the late 1970s thought was wild. Clown dungarees, knitted evening wear (with knitted cigarette and knitted lighter), armadillo wrap, duck socks, a 90cm long banana pillow. I opened it on the page "beautiful basics" and it had a mohair lace dress with an oversized collar (of course, that'll go with *everything*) and that's when I knew it was coming home with me. Worth every penny of the £2
I'll be on the lookout for that book now haha
Great find. My guess is that a needle felter or doll maker needed some hair. The rest went to charity.
That would make sense yes
I did not get it obliviously....but saw unused colonoscopy bags....
that's... interesting...
❤
Het lijkt niet de puntkrullen te hebben die ik zou verwachten van vies mohair in zakken... weet je wel, toch? Het lijkt mij meer kasjmier.
Maybe even a rarer find from a thrift store. I suggest save all the combing waste and card it with a wool. It will give you a lovely, fuzzy finish on a mostly sheep wool yarn.
I am saving the carding waste in any case!
Ik denk dat ik eens moet uitbreiden qua kringwinkels te bezoeken :p Nicest that I found so far is a pretty small wooden chest (not textile related, but I store pieces of yarn in it)
Al moet ik zeggen dat de kringwinkel hier heel lang hopeloos was, maar sinds enkele maanden hebben ze een craftcorner...
@@MijnWolden leuk leuk, hier heb ik zo een paar weefbobijnen ook maar echt "craft" kun je dat stukje daar niet noemen
Have you ruled out pygora or alpaca?
It surely isn't alpaca, but I have not enough experience with pygora to rule that out. But isn't pygora a hybrid from the angora goat that gives mohair?
Someone had sent their breed study bags to the op / thrift store but the price they put on them was crazy and at the time I couldn’t afford it much to my disgust.
ah man that's a pity
did you go back and ask about the fiber
No I didn't, maybe I should have
Wow, the thrift stores here would throw it away on donation. They have no idea and would just see dirty animal fur.
Only recently has my thriftstore made a "crafting corner", a couple of months ago I couldn't even find decent knitting needles there if I wanted to. So hopes are yours might do that in the future too
maybe someone’s beloved little pet goat???
Oh that would be so sad that it ended up in the thrift store!
mohair is hair not wool!!!
While what you are saying is correct, I feel like those extra exclamation marks make your statement a bit more rude than it should be. I think that my video gives enough evidence to suggest that 1) I actually know this (cfr. "it feels more like hair", "I can see someone make doll hair from this" but that 2) I am not a native English speaker, so that words are slightly harder for me. And in my native language "wol" (wool) is used for every part of the process, no matter what the fiber is. We call acrylic wol even.
hehe since you're asking: when you talk, you sometimes make such long pauses in between parts of your sentences that I feel like I'm hanging over a horrifying clif, and all I can hope is that you can save me with the rest of the sentence. Did it make me run away from your channel? Apparently not. So you may proceed with your "weird" talking, I think we'll be fine =D
thinking about words is hard, you know? :D
@@MijnWolden well, thinking is already something many people don't do before opening their mouth, so I say that's a quality ^^