A Tall Muskox Yarn

One day in the summer of 2004, my parents, who were on a road trip to Alaska and the Yukon, called me from their car so that my dad could ask me if I wanted any muskox yarn. I said, uh, sure, and he asked me what I wanted to make with it, adding the caveat, "Not an afghan. It's pretty expensive." I told him to surprise me. My father is very much a process-oriented person and was very excited by the whole concept of my making something out of such an unusual and exotic yarn. My mother, a relentlessly practical woman, interjected things like, "It's too expensive to be worth it!" and "She'll have to hand wash it!"

Dad came back from their Alaskan road trip with a hat kit for me, and I knitted a little brown cap for myself. Mum told me how much it cost and said I was not allowed to ever throw it out, that if I got tired of it I had to give it back to her so that she could shadow box it or something.

I'm not sure I ever would have thought yarn could be made from muskox hair. It doesn't look like a feasible project. But I am increasingly realizing that yarn can be made out of virtually anything. The muskox has a two-layered coat, and the yarn, called by the Inuit word "qiviut", is made from the soft underwool. The muskox sheds this layer every spring. The muskox aren't sheared as sheep are. The wool the yarn is made from is gathered from the pelts of hunted muskox, gathered from the wild during the molting season, or obtained from farmed muskox. Qiviut is stronger and eight times warmer than sheep's wool, and is softer than cashmere.

You'll be glad to hear you don't have to have parents who travel to Alaska to get muskox yarn of your own. In Alaska, the Musk Ox Producers' Cooperative, which is owned and operated by native Alaskans, sells hand-knitted qiviut items. Because the muskox yarn and knitting industry was developed to give the indigenous population of Alaska gainful employment, the co-operative doesn't sell much yarn, but they do sell the cap kit my father bought for me.

Alternatively, the Quebec company Cottage Craft Angora has, besides some hand-knitted items, 100% qiviut yarn for sale in not only its natural brown but in a range of attractive dyed colours, and in both 2- or 3-ply. At $39 a skein, it's probably not a purchase you'll make lightly, but keep in mind you are getting an unusual and high-quality product and helping to support a grass roots industry in an economically challenged region.

If you really feel like splurging, Cottage Craft Angora also has hand-painted qiviut/silk blend yarn for $150 a skein. Much more attainable is their superwash blend, which is 10% qiviut, 10% cashmere, 10% bamboo and 70% superwash merino, or their qiviut/angora blend yarn. They offer other yarns as well.

And keep in mind... even if you don't ever own any qivuit yarn, you have learned a great new word that will allow you to triumph over your next Scrabble opponent.