TNGUN offers some of the best premium angora KID and yearling hair for reborn and other artist dolls.
Thank you for considering They Never Grow Up Nursery's premium angora mohair. This information sheet will help you decide if this mohair is right for you.
~see available mohair here~
I have been reborning life like baby dolls since the spring of 2005 and have only ever purchased raw hair from the same Oregon farm as I find it to be the absolute ~Best~ Premium Angora mohair on earth. This gorgeous mohair is always soft and silky, never brittle, and has a lustrous shine.
What makes Quality mohair??
It begins at the farm...
The most important attribute to good quality mohair is how the goats are raised. The owner of the farm where I purchase my raw mohair takes the best care of her award winning goats. She takes utmost care in the selection of feed to produce healthy goats which produce healthy, glossy fiber. She does not keep aged animals for fiber but rather keeps a young and fresh herd from high quality, fiber producing stock. She never shears bucks beyond the first 2 clippings for fiber as they emit a very strong odor that is hard to remove from the mohair. Even when I receive my mohair raw, it does not have an odor to it and washes up so fresh smelling. She shears when the weather turns to cool nights and warm days and vice verse. Those cool nights and warm days can destroy a healthy pelt of fiber so she keeps a close watch on the weather. Due to the climate here in the West, where we have two defined seasons where this change occurs, means that the locks usually will never be more than 7 inches due to the short growing season.
Spring and Fall fiber shopping:
I am very choosy when I purchase my fibers. I purchase mostly first and second clip kid hair, some yearling hair depending on it's characteristics and adult hair from one particular goat. You see, the hair grows thicker and a bit coarser with each and every clipping. My goal is to provide soft hair for all of my babies...and yours too. The locks I choose must be at least 5 inches long and must have a good amount of lanolin/grease on them.
The clippings of hair are named by the goats that they come off of. I meet the goats each spring and fall when I hand select the clippings. Lucy is the old "lady" in the herd. She is the one adult doe that I ALWAYS buy from as her hair has always been exceptionally silky, soft and lustrous. When I process the hair, I note on a card inside each bag which goat that clipping came from and which clipping it is (1st clip kid, 2nd clip kid, yearling and adult). This note is important so that my buyers can request a specific clipping in the future. Of course, eventually those clippings run out but I am pretty good at selecting another clipping that closely matches the one they liked.
When I bring the fibers home from the farm, the long process begins! After sorting through the mass of locks, categorizing them into length and amount of curl (or lack of curl), the locks are banded on the cut end of the lock to keep the locks in place during the dye bath. The hair is then hand washed one banded lock at a time, allowed to air dry and then combed. Once combed, they are rinsed again to get them wet and cooked on the stove in special acid dyes made for mohair fibers. Once the color has set (the water literally turns from colored to clear) and the dye bath has cooled, the locks are then hand washed again, rinsed, conditioned (mostly for my combing benefit!), hand combed again and rinsed two more times. The bands are then removed and they are allowed to air dry. Due to the banded locks, there is a light colored band at the cut end of the lock. I leave this attached for two reasons: One is that it helps you to know which is the cut end of the lock~this is VERY important in rooting the hair. The hair MUST be rooted at the cut end of the lock otherwise the hair on the head will never be "right", and two, for those rooters that root from the cut end of the lock, rooting that light color into the head will create a more realistic scalp and head of hair.
There usually is still a little bit of vegetable matter within the locks. I have no idea how to ever go about getting it all out, but the matter falls out during rooting and they have never been a problem.
~see available mohair here~
I have been reborning life like baby dolls since the spring of 2005 and have only ever purchased raw hair from the same Oregon farm as I find it to be the absolute ~Best~ Premium Angora mohair on earth. This gorgeous mohair is always soft and silky, never brittle, and has a lustrous shine.
What makes Quality mohair??
It begins at the farm...
The most important attribute to good quality mohair is how the goats are raised. The owner of the farm where I purchase my raw mohair takes the best care of her award winning goats. She takes utmost care in the selection of feed to produce healthy goats which produce healthy, glossy fiber. She does not keep aged animals for fiber but rather keeps a young and fresh herd from high quality, fiber producing stock. She never shears bucks beyond the first 2 clippings for fiber as they emit a very strong odor that is hard to remove from the mohair. Even when I receive my mohair raw, it does not have an odor to it and washes up so fresh smelling. She shears when the weather turns to cool nights and warm days and vice verse. Those cool nights and warm days can destroy a healthy pelt of fiber so she keeps a close watch on the weather. Due to the climate here in the West, where we have two defined seasons where this change occurs, means that the locks usually will never be more than 7 inches due to the short growing season.
Spring and Fall fiber shopping:
I am very choosy when I purchase my fibers. I purchase mostly first and second clip kid hair, some yearling hair depending on it's characteristics and adult hair from one particular goat. You see, the hair grows thicker and a bit coarser with each and every clipping. My goal is to provide soft hair for all of my babies...and yours too. The locks I choose must be at least 5 inches long and must have a good amount of lanolin/grease on them.
The clippings of hair are named by the goats that they come off of. I meet the goats each spring and fall when I hand select the clippings. Lucy is the old "lady" in the herd. She is the one adult doe that I ALWAYS buy from as her hair has always been exceptionally silky, soft and lustrous. When I process the hair, I note on a card inside each bag which goat that clipping came from and which clipping it is (1st clip kid, 2nd clip kid, yearling and adult). This note is important so that my buyers can request a specific clipping in the future. Of course, eventually those clippings run out but I am pretty good at selecting another clipping that closely matches the one they liked.
When I bring the fibers home from the farm, the long process begins! After sorting through the mass of locks, categorizing them into length and amount of curl (or lack of curl), the locks are banded on the cut end of the lock to keep the locks in place during the dye bath. The hair is then hand washed one banded lock at a time, allowed to air dry and then combed. Once combed, they are rinsed again to get them wet and cooked on the stove in special acid dyes made for mohair fibers. Once the color has set (the water literally turns from colored to clear) and the dye bath has cooled, the locks are then hand washed again, rinsed, conditioned (mostly for my combing benefit!), hand combed again and rinsed two more times. The bands are then removed and they are allowed to air dry. Due to the banded locks, there is a light colored band at the cut end of the lock. I leave this attached for two reasons: One is that it helps you to know which is the cut end of the lock~this is VERY important in rooting the hair. The hair MUST be rooted at the cut end of the lock otherwise the hair on the head will never be "right", and two, for those rooters that root from the cut end of the lock, rooting that light color into the head will create a more realistic scalp and head of hair.
There usually is still a little bit of vegetable matter within the locks. I have no idea how to ever go about getting it all out, but the matter falls out during rooting and they have never been a problem.
~Click here to see my blog post about processing mohair~
How kid, yearling and adult hair root:
There are many variables to rooting the different types of mohair.
Kid hair is very fine and roots best with a very small gauge needle rooted just a hair or two at a time. Kid hair is so fine that when using a larger needle and a larger lock of hair, the needle will grab many of the hairs and root them all at once creating an undesirable head of hair. It will be pluggy and thick. Creating a realistic and beautiful head of kid hair takes many, many hours and a lot of patience. My newborn babies are rooted with kid hair.
Yearling hair is more forgiving, allowing for a larger needle to be used, taking less time to root. The hair is naturally thicker, creating more hair and color with fewer pokes to the head. I sometimes use yearling hair on my toddlers.
Adult hair is the thickest of all and easiest of all of them to root. This hair is best on toddlers.
The variables that I speak of are in regards to matching up your needles to your mohair. There are many different needles out there on the market and each reacts differently with each grade of hair. My recommendation is that you have on stock many of the needles and try them with each grade of hair until you find a match that you are comfortable with using.
Kid hair is very fine and roots best with a very small gauge needle rooted just a hair or two at a time. Kid hair is so fine that when using a larger needle and a larger lock of hair, the needle will grab many of the hairs and root them all at once creating an undesirable head of hair. It will be pluggy and thick. Creating a realistic and beautiful head of kid hair takes many, many hours and a lot of patience. My newborn babies are rooted with kid hair.
Yearling hair is more forgiving, allowing for a larger needle to be used, taking less time to root. The hair is naturally thicker, creating more hair and color with fewer pokes to the head. I sometimes use yearling hair on my toddlers.
Adult hair is the thickest of all and easiest of all of them to root. This hair is best on toddlers.
The variables that I speak of are in regards to matching up your needles to your mohair. There are many different needles out there on the market and each reacts differently with each grade of hair. My recommendation is that you have on stock many of the needles and try them with each grade of hair until you find a match that you are comfortable with using.
I cannot tell you just how thrilled I am that top artists like Laura Tuzio Ross, Rachel Maynard and Cassie Peek have used my kid mohair and tell me that they love it! Some of the photo's in the gallery are courtesy of these exceptional artists.
Because I am a reborn artist as well, I am unable to have very much hair processed and available at one time. To manage my inventory and allow buyers to immediately purchase what is available, I post my hair on my Artfire selling site. (Click the purple Artfire word to be taken to available mohair). Artfire has an easy Paypal checkout and you do not need to be a member of Artfire to purchase from there.
It is very difficult for me to provide custom ordered mohair but if you have special need or questions regarding TNGUN premium mohair, please use the Contact button on this site to send me an email.
Thank you!
A photo gallery of processed and rooted TNGUN mohair:
