Angora bunny

angora fleece

Last week I was given 2 shopping bags of white angora bunny. I tipped one onto the table and was surprised to find mice had been nesting in the bag. Fortunately the mice were gone but their droppings and additions to the nest like shredded paper remained. More importantly they don't seem to have chewed the fibre.

I sorted the bunny into 4 piles, one was rubbish, the second was really short pieces, the third pieces about 1 inch long and the fourth and largest pile was fleece about 3 inches long.

For my first experimental blend I decided to use 30g superwash merino to 20g of the 3" bunny. As I'd heard that angora is easier to handle if it has been rested in the freezer I put it into a plastic bag and "froze" it. I divided the 50g of merino and bunny into 4 equal lots and carded 1 lot at a time using an Ashford Wild Carder. I made sandwiches of merino with bunny as the filling. After about 3 or 4 cardings the fibres looked evenly blended. There were a few specks of dirt in the angora but I figure they will come out when the spun blend is washed. Next time I would put the merino through the carder on its own first to encourage the fibres to spread out easily.