Yakety Yak!

Photo from www.springbrook.com 

I finally got around to playing with some lovely yak down that I acquired a good 6 months ago. It is such a soft, soft, fibre!
Yak down obviously comes from the yak, a large bovine animal originating from Central Asia, Mongolia and parts of Russia. Basically, they are really hairy looking cows with bit of a hump (my explanation.. not the scientific explanation ;) ).
Any Google search of yak down will turn up that it is an extremely soft luxury fibre that is comparable to cashmere and according to Y is for Yak Down:

Yak down is 10-15% warmer than merino wool.

Yak down is similar in softness to cashmere, with a diameter ranging from 15-22 microns, but is far more durable.

Yak down is hypo-allergenic and does not scratch against the skin as do many popular wools.

Yak down remains very warm even when wet.

Yak down is extremely breathable, contributing to self-regulation of body temperature.

Yak down is very rare, adding value through interest and novelty when compared to popular and ever-present fibers such as wool or cotton.

Anyways! I only had about 50 grams of yak down. It was a sample amount to test it out and see if I could spin it. It comes as a lovely soft cloud as you can see below. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the staple, but its very short. In this particular cloud the staple length was about an inch long - very short!

To start spinning the yak down I stabbed a bit onto the spindle and just started spinning. I had often read that spinning with a luxury fibre such as yak down was hard to do, instead I found it the opposite - I found it extremely enjoyable, albeit a bit slow, but enjoyable. 

I didn't do anything to 'prep' the fibre. No combing, or fluffing. I did try to fluff it out a little bit to see if that made any difference and it just made it difficult to handle and it kept breaking off. The best prep for this fibre was no prep, I found.

The yarn it made was also lovely:

The spinning process wasn't as fast as I can do with longer stables like merino or merino/silk mix, instead it was a slower process. This was due to the short staples as it was easy enough to pull the whole cloud away from the spun yarn. Hopefully you can see in these photos how the twist goes straight into the fibre.

Excuse my cow print pajama pants :P

I always follow the rule that you never let the twist run into the fibre that you are drafting from because it turns into a twisted lumpy mess. When dealing with yak down, ignore that rule. The twist needs to go into the fibre a bit to hold all the short fibres together and then pull it out slowly. Then spin, then pull slowly, then spin, and pull slowly... and so on.

I decided to make the yak down into 2 ply. I think short staple fibres need to be plied due to possible breakage. Through the plying process the yarn broke 3 or 4 times and I had to felt the pieces back together to continue the ply. I do this by using a bit of spit (eeew? then you can use water instead but a bit of saliva won't hurt anyone) and rubbing the thread really fast between my hands. During the spinning process I was a little bit worried that I was over spinning the thread (I am often concerned that I'm over spinning my yarn, I've still yet to perfect my spinning tension). Anyway, because I was worried that I might over spin I must have under-spun the fibre since it broke a few times so I will keep that in mind next time and add those extra couple of spins that I left out this time.

In the end, I've a lovely small mini skein of yak down:

Approx 15cm in length

Close up of the yarn so you can see the ply a bit better.

There you have it. My first attempt at yak down. All in all it was fun to play with and easy enough to do.  I'd definitely have to put it up there as one of my favourite fibres. I'd like to try some yak down blended with something else in the future.

If you are hesitant about trying a luxury fibre considering some of the online buzz about how hard it is to use, just jump in the deep end like I did and spin up a smaller sample of it. It's easier than you'd expect.

Thanks for reading!

Stay spun :D

- Mokosh

Picture from Wikipedia