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Pecos River Trading Company Info

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Fiesta Blankets

Shifting Sands Blankets

Mohair and Wool Blankets

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Information about our blankets and mohair

    Angora goats produce a beautiful luxurious fiber called mohair. Our goats are shorn two times a year, once in the early spring and again in the early fall. Mohair is a beautiful fiber in its natural white state. One of the great qualities of mohair is how it absorbs the dyes producing a brilliance of the colors.

    Our goats roam freely on the ranch in our pastures all year except when we round them up for shearing. It takes two or three weeks to round up all of the goats and get them ready for shearing. The shearing crew is booked  in advance and goes from ranch to ranch to shear. Goats are sorted in holding pens according to age and which pasture they come out of. As  the goats are shorn their mohair is put in sacks and packed down. Each sack will hold approximately 300 pounds of mohair. It takes about three to four days to shear all of our goats. Each man on the shearing crew can shear 75 to 100 goats per day depending on his speed and skill. The shearing crew ranges from five to fourteen men. Each grown (adult) goat grows about four to five pounds of mohair from shearing to shearing. Baby goats (kids) are shorn when they are six months old and every six months after that throughout their life. After the goats are shorn they are taken back to their pasture. Due to the fact that our goats live in big pastures they come in contact with grasses and weeds that get into their mohair. If you find small pieces of weeds or grasses in your throw or yarn, that is an authentic plant fiber from the Pecos River.

Shearing crew at the ranch.

    Our blankets are limited editions because we can only make about 100 each time we shear. We do not use all of our mohair for our blankets. We only use the young adult and yearling mohair. We have determined that is the best type of mohair for our use. As goats get older, their hair becomes coarser; kid goat hair being the finest, young adult hair that we use being the medium fine: and then goats four years and older having the coarsest hair.

    Our blankets/throws take over a year to make. It takes six months for the goats to grow enough mohair to be the length we need to make yarn. After we shear the goats we take the mohair to the scouring plant to be cleaned. Scouring takes out the grease and dirt, but not all of the plant fibers. We then take the scoured (cleaned) mohair to the textile mill to be made into yarn and dyed the colors that we want for our throws. After the yarn is made, the throws are hand woven and the fringe is hand-knotted.

 

 

For ordering information check out our ordering information page.

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