Vibrant and incredibly soft rustic autumnal luxury! These downy blended tops consist of Bactrian camel down in two natural shades, dyed shades of smooth merino wool top, and black viscose tweed bits sprinkled throughout. These tweedy harvest delights spin effortlessly and are an excellent choice for beginners and advanced spinners alike! Spin from the fold to isolate the different colors or spin from the top to create a blended neutral with shifts of color. The pops of black viscose tweed create whimsical depth and texture to the finished yarn. You'll love the lightweight loftiness and smooth texture of your finished yarn.
Fiber Details:
Fiber content: 65% merino wool top, 25% de-haired baby camel down, and 10% viscose tweed
Micron count: 17 - 23
Staple length: 4 - 7 inches
Type: Blended top
Texture: Smooth, lofty, and tweedy
Care: Hand wash in cold water. Lay flat to dry.
Feltable: Yes
Please note: we've done our best to accurately represent the color of this fiber but the tone and saturation can vary between batches and especially from screen to screen.
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This fiber was featured in our September 2019 and November 2021 Fiber of the Month Club Package.
About Camel Down
This luxurious, exotic, and lofty fiber is prized for its softness and incredible thermostatic properties, making it suitable to wear in the coldest of mountain blizzards to keep warm and the desert heat to keep cool. When blended with other fibers as we've done in our Tweedy Merino and Camel Down Blends, the camel down adds an irresistible loftiness and warmth to the finished yarn.
Camel's hair is mainly collected in Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia, and China. During their natural molting season, from spring to summer, their hair is harvested by traditional hand-gathering methods and sent to the mill to process. Our baby camel top is gathered from Bactrian camels (two-humped). This type of camel is the most sought-after for textile fibers due to its dual fiber production. Such camels have protective outer coats of coarse fiber that grow as long as 15 inches and a fine, shorter fiber of the insulating undercoat that is 1.5-5 inches long.
The hair is not gathered by shearing or plucking; it is most often collected as the animal sheds its coat. Both the outer and the inner coat are shed at the same time, once a year. These fibers are collected by the herdsmen and combed, frequently by machine, in order to separate the desirable down from the coarse outer hairs. This process is known as de-hairing and is a very slow and expensive process. The resulting fine fiber can have a micron as low as 5 with an average of 17 and a natural reddish-tan color.
Camel hair is as strong as wool with a similar diameter but is less than that of mohair. Fabric made of this unique fiber has fantastic insulating properties and is delightfully temperature regulating and comfortable without being too heavy.
