Prescott Artist ,Jo Manginelli, knitted this more than interesting Buffalo Fiber Scarf.
Jo used parts of the Buffalo Mane as fringe adornment. It is always a pleasure to add such fun fiber art to my blog each day.
I checked around the net and found an article in the adn.com Anchorage Daily News. In an article written by Catherine Hollingsworth, a Daily News Correspondent. she writes about this and I was excited to read more about the Buffalo Fiber.
Hollingsworth writes:
"About 300 years ago there were between 40 and 70 million bison roaming the Great Plains of North America. Hunters took large numbers of the big animals for meat but also for the much-prized hides, finally pushing them to near extinction with only about 1,000 buffalo remaining in 1880. Bison have made a comeback with nearly 600,000 reported today in the Plains of Canada and the United States. Ranchers such as Ted Turner are promoting it, both for the excellent lean meat and for the wonderfully warm fiber."
"Although native to the Central Plains of North America, buffalo are now going to be raised in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. A recent article in the Anchorage Daily News mentions the efforts of the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development and its plans to have a herd of 30 to 50 bison on Umnak Island over the next several years."
"Much like the musk oxen, bison have a soft under coating of hair to keep them warm through the winter. The term wool does not refer to the hair of a bison, which is called buffalo down. This undercoat from a fleece, which is made up of both coarse guard hairs and soft downy like hairs, can be collected from the hides of the slaughtered bison and processed into yarn, making this once-wasted fiber one of the newest, most-exciting sources of luxury knitting fiber since qivuit, cashmere and yak. A 50-ounce skein sells for $48 to $60 depending on whether it is two-ply or three-ply yarn."
"The guard hairs of a buffalo fleece are hollow, while the softer, shorter hairs are solid and covered in scales. It is similar in width to a human hair. The hair contains no lanolin, which is the source of most allergies, making it an excellent allergy-free fiber. In addition, since lanolin is what attracts moths, this fiber is also moth proof. Buffalo down is a very warm, insulating fiber that is warmer and more comfortable to wear than sheep's wool. Spinners say that the buffalo down roving, with a short staple length of over one inch, has more bounce than other luxury fibers."
"Moisture regain, a measure of the amount of moisture that a fiber will hold without feeling wet, is higher in buffalo down than sheep's wool, making it warmer to wear when wet."
"Although legend speaks about the miracle of the magical white buffalo that represents a new age of peace and prosperity, buffalo yarn is only available at this time in the traditional natural brown. Some companies' future plans do call for white and black yarns to be added to their lines."