Our First Angora

Our first angora my daughter received as a birthday gift for her 4-h projects that year. It was a fawn colored English angora doe. She was so fuzzy and cute we named her Peaches and could not resist taking her home. We learned to groom this darling doe and my I learned to spin the wool of these lovely angoras we are raising. As I added more and more color to my collection I warned up to the idea of learning to spin. So one spring I saved up for Ashford spinning wheel I knew was for sale. There was a spinning guild in our area and I’d talked to one of the members and find out more details. My wheel sat in the living room gathering dust for four months while I gathered books and read up and gathered courage to tackle another project.

I was waiting for school to start so I would have a moment or two for my self. A fellow angora raiser shoed me how to operate the wheel, I spent the next week trying to make yarn! I worked until after midnight one evening and was finally able to get some strands to hang together. I was so excited to get half a thread of yarn I shouted whoopee! Add I woke up everyone up! I learned to spin on angora combings, sheep wool is much easier to learn on! I now that now!

I’m knitted a sweater with handspun silk angora for the holidays Christmas! I finished up a lap robe last week I made up from some local sheep wool.

English angoras have the finest wool, when grooming, we would do a health check, take note of the over all vigor of the animal, the English angoras have extra fur or hair on their face and ears. The require the most grooming. We clip their toenails, mostly for our own protection from being scratched. I loved the French angoras and added a pairs for my own spinning needs.