How to Knit a Goat Hair Sweater

Collecting goat hair for knitting is much the same as collecting any animal hair for textile use. There are mohair goats and cashmere goats and just plain old pet goats. All goats have hair that can be collected, washed, spun and knitted into goat hair garments. Here is how to make a goat hair sweater.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Sheer the goat and gather the hair which is called fleece. Goats are harder to sheer than sheep as they are nervous and squirm around more.

2. "De-hair" the fleece and remove the coarse, straight, guard hairs and just use the soft undercoat.

3. Gather about 2 and a half pounds of goat's hair to knit a large sweater. This is about the amount sheared from an averaged sized goat per shearing.

4. Wash the goat fleece with mild liquid shampoo and lay it out to dry. Fluff the goat hair to facilitate drying.

5. Card the goat hair with hand carders to prepare it for spinning, then hand spin it with a light tension. Use the overlapped technique to join pieces, but don't knot goat hair.

6. Choose a sweater pattern and knit the sweater as you normally would if you used wool or synthetic yarn.

7. Substitute goat hair for commercial yarn. Anything that you can knit with commercial yarn can be made out of goat hair too. Goat hair is much the same as sheep's wool.

8. Use larger sized knitting needles when using goat hair yarn. Go at least two sizes up in needle size to make a goat hair garment. Goat hair is very warm and the larger size needles will make a garment that is a looser knit.

Tips & Warnings

• Use Kool-Aid to dye the goat fleece. Soak the fiber in warm water and then sprinkle with the Kool-Aid. Wrap the fleece in plastic wrap and 'cook' it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Let sit undisturbed in the microwave for 5 minutes, then cook again for 2 more minutes. Let the fiber cool, then rinse carefully in cool water to remove excess dye.
• Do not rub the fleece or it will felt.