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Gesundheit!Seriously, though -- I had never heard that word, Qiviut, prior to my learning how to knit. But I am now fascinated by this very spendy, very hard-to-find luxury fiber, combed from the underwool of the artic musk ox. (No wonder it's hard to come by).
At about $75 a pop for a roughly 200-yard hank, I can't see myself knitting up whole sweaters in the stuff, but I would like to try it sometime, for a scarf, perhaps.
I recently stumbled upon a Qiviut knit-along, and although, as of this writing their blog hasn't seen any activity for a few months, there are still some good resources there -- namely, online Qiviut retailers and Qiviut-appropriate patterns.
As I type this, it's 82-degrees outside (bleh), so the thought of handling the "warmest of fibers" is not particularly appealing at the moment, therefore allowing my wallet to dodge a bullet, at least until another day. In the meantime I've been surfing around looking at some fantastic silk yarns, and so far, the best I've seen are sold under the Fleece Artist and Handmaiden labels. Golly, a girl could go broke over those yarns!
However, if your heart still belongs to the four-legged animal fibers, I leave you with this webcam image from Mountain Shadow Llama & Alpaca farm in Vermont:
And yes, they dye, spin and sell Qiviut, too -- gotta love those colors!
2 comments:
Give this place a look too. I've never bought from her but I have admired her stuff on eBay.
http://www.thesilkworker.com/
Silk is a joy to work with - think silk tank tops, silk scarves, silk silk silk.
sigh
FleeceArtist and Handmaiden are UNREAL--the colours are to die for and not actually that expensive. A skein of Goldilocks is $25 Canadian and it makes a massive shawl. It's nice to work with too. I would think that the higher the silk content, the higher the price but I thought that was fairly reasonable. Quivit sounds perfect for Calgary-it's currently -11C Brrrr!!!
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