Shenanigans! - I Can't Even, and New-to-Me Fibre

 Hey again - now we start with the flurry of info (I hope)

One of my other FFS projects was an 'attempt' to spin Highland Cattle. First, it needed a bath - and by the colour of the water, it REALLY needed one... (no pictures - but it was a very unappealing dark urine yellow-brown)

It looked like a pretty dubious prospect at first, so I flagged it for the 'I can't EVEN' challenge, then realized it's also the first time I've spun cattle hair, so it also qualifies as an entry for the 'New-to-You/Breed Study' as well. I like it when I can have things do double-duty!

Here's a photo of a sample 'lock' - it's not terribly long, but workable. On average, it's right around the 2", or 5cm mark... I'd bet a bunch of it is shorter.

2 very distinct textures!

For my first attempt, I carded the fibres together with my dog slickers, thinking it might be okay for a small bag, or something. The undercoat is very soft, and not unlike yak down, buffalo, qiviuq, or cashmere - though qiviuq and cashmere are generally longer. (I haven't spun any buffalo yet, but helped the guild dehair some for a class a few years back.)

I think it's what helped the initial yarn hold together. The coarser fibres are pretty slippery, but the finer ones made up for some of that.

It wasn't an *easy* spin, but went better than I anticipated. (still not something I'd recommend to beginners)

I did most of this first sample during an Office Hours - and Pimmie said it looked on-camera like I was spinning barbed wire... not entirely inaccurate! It's pretty bristly, and a fair amount of the hair fibre tried to shed out while I was drafting.

Usable yarn... sort of. (Who knew?)

That got me thinking: what would happen if I separated BOTH textures, and spun them individually? ("What happened when you tried?" - will echo in the back of my mind forever, I think)

...So I split them out, and did the following 2 samples entirely via hand-processing. These were going to be SMALL samples, and it wasn't worth trying to load even a dog slicker brush. It has also been awhile since I did fingers-only fibre prep - it would have been a nice change of pace, if it hadn't been THIS stuff.

The hardest part about the dehairing process was that the fibres aren't that different in length - and the hair portion is ABUNDANT. With the other similar fibres I've handled raw, the guard hair component was a bit more sparse, so the separation seemed to go more quickly... and it was generally from shed winter undercoat, so the worst of the hair remained on the animal.

This is ALL about getting enough twist into slippery, short, hair fibres to force them to hold together - it was considerably harder to make into a usable yarn, and kept drifting apart, or snapping on me - there was some mild cursing at this sample. I like the colour - shame it seems to only be in the hair, and not the undercoat.

THIS is the true 'barbed wire' yarn! Nothin' but prickles!

...and then, the only NICE part of this spin! As you can see, I missed a couple hairs, but overall, this is very soft, and was pleasant to spin. The 2 hairs beside the yarn are for texture comparison, because you can clearly see the finer-textured halo on this one.

I wasn't really trying for something super-consistent, but this was quite happy to be a fair bit finer than the first 2 samples. With no coarse hair fighting for dominance, this drafted more readily into a laceweight 2-ply - whereas the other 2 yarns are closer to a light fingering, after plying.

Totally wearable, and actually pretty nice - but VERY labour intensive!

So if I were stranded somewhere, with only Highland Cattle, or some other 'wooly coo' to spin, I wouldn't freeze, and might be pretty comfortable - but it's not the quickest process. I might even repeat that final exercise with the rest of the cattle fibre I have... eventually... for my own use only, most likely.

I suppose this means that someday, I'll have to do this again - if only for the bragging rights. (Now where can I find some Curly Horse? lol)