Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Wool and Mangalitsa

I've been asked many times if Mangalitsa wool is good for spinning. I haven't yet heard of anyone spinning it. I think it is good for felt, insulation and fishing ties though.

In Spain, there's a center for wool processing which will have a variety of fiber animals - sheep, alpaca, rabbits - and even Mangalitsa.

So I guess if it is possible to spin Mangalitsa bristles into something, they'll do it.

1 comment:

Brian S Codling said...

Here in Lincolnshire, England the wool of the Lincolnshire Curly pig was used in the 19th Century for spinning and then knitting into waistcoats for workers in the fields. The wool is not only warm but hydrophobic and we can speculate that,after getting caught in an English rain shower, all one needed to do was shake the waistcoat vigourously to get it dry. When carding the wool the bristles should be discarded. To make the wool easier to knit, by decreasing the risk of breaking, some longer fibres were often mixed in from e.g Lincolnshire long wool sheep. The Lincolnshire Curly Coat went extinct in 1972 but earlier in the 20th century they had been crosss bred with Mangalitzas which were very similar. Today we have reintroduced Curly Coated pigs, ie Mangalitzas, to Lincolnshire and have experimented with knitting up their wool. The small quantities available have necessitated small scale demonstrative pieces so far but we hope to do more in 2010. For those interested, we will post more details of our activities during the summer on our Blog at www.rectoryreserve.co.uk
Brian S Codling