Recent Update: I ended up keeping the camel wool yarn because someone told me it felts really well. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. As for the goat’s down, I went back to the sample swatch to examine the yarn one more time and I’m beginning to suspect that the goat’s down wasn’t dehaired. If all these prickly hairs were gone, the underlying fiber is quite soft.(I would almost say it’s quite cashmere like)  It’s a damn shame. I returned the goat’s down yarn. We shall see how my refund goes.

Oh, where do I begin.

Someone on Ravelry had posted that a site called TAIGA YARNS was having a 50% off everything sale. Intrigued, I decided to checkout some of the yarns they were offering since I’ve never heard of them before. Turns out, it is a Russian yarn company (Troisk Wools) that’s been around for over 150 years. Russian yarns, you say? Yeah, not familiar with that part of the world. But, what caught my eye was the words “camel wool” and “goat’s down” I’ve read that camel is quite soft and goat’s down, I assumed was something similar to cashmere. So despite the really high minimum purchase ($100 or more to get discount) I got a bunch of the goat’s down, camel wool, camel-acrylic blend and merino wool yarn.

2 weeks (and a few days) passes. No show. I e-mail and receive a reply saying they’ll ship it out tomorrow. What the heck? Anyway, I received it yesterday morning and when I opened it, there were all these yarns with Russian and no English. Hmmm….No biggie. I opened the goat’s down bag and am horrified by what to me looks like spun pubic hair. There were literally 2 inch long coarse black hairs sticking out left and right out of this supposed goat’s down (looked to me like goat’s fur which is really really scratchy). I swatched it and washed it hoping it would soften up. Nope. It was just as if not more scratchy/itchy and I coudn’t fathom where and how I could possibly use this yarn. Returning it was my only solution (I hate doing this cuz I’m paying for shipping both ways but I just can’t stand this yarn).

Oh, the camels aren’t much better. They’re very rough and the yarn label actually says “100% wool” No mention of camel anywhere. But after confirmation from the company that it was indeed camel, I had to feel it again. Rough. I had misunderstood about camel yarns. It was camel DOWN that I was thinking of, not camel wool. Even the acrylic blend was rough. I’m returning the entire lot (minus the one skein of goat’s down i used to swatch and the merino wools which are quite lovely)

A learning experience for me – never buy yarns I don’t know anything about and never buy goat’s down or camel wool. Ugh!