Leather Therapy has been around for many years, and we decided it was high time to update the logo. We love our “Biker Bull”; he is strong but gentle, just like our products! Learn more today at www.leathertherapy.com, and don’t forget to share your stories if you’ve experienced the power of Leather Therapy firsthand.

Even if you don’t ride — four-legged, two-wheeled or otherwise — you just might find that Leather Therapy is useful for the many cool projects out there that use leather as a pattern material. Just for starters, check out Jezebel’s tutorial on making a designer leather-and-knit purse. Or show us your own leather-iffic creations!

It’s spring, so it’s shearing time! Alpacas, sheep, and even dogs with heavy coats get sheared around the Unicorn Fibre headquarters.

Did you know that some people save their dog’s hair to braid? It’s called chiengora when spun into yarn. (It sounds fancier than “Fido’s fur,” doesn’t it?) In fact, it’s said to be 80% warmer than sheep wool! Check out Chiengora Fibers, a company who makes it their business to process your dog’s hair and turn it into luxurious yarn.

If you  want to try out spinning a pile of your pet’s hair into fibre, grab your bottle of Unicorn Fibre Wash to soak the hair in first to deodorize and condition it, then use Unicorn Fibre Rinse to make it ready to play with!

Now here’s the fun part… the Chiengora Challenge! If you decide to create some Chiengora fibre of your own, tell us about it! You might just end up a winner of the Unicorn Fibre Rinse & Wash Gift Sampler Set. Simply email us your experience (500 words or less) of how you used Unicorn Fibre products to create your own stash of chiengora.

For ages now, I’ve struggled to get Merino clean. I can do it, but it takes loads of washing liquid and even more washes for the rinse as the liquid doesn’t want to budge.

I did five washes total, and I now have wonderful clean wool that took half the time to clean — and which didn’t mean I had to boil kettles. Also, for the first time ever: NO COMPACTING OR FELTING!

So, Unicorn has me well and thoroughly won over. I couldn’t rate this product highly enough! Thank you so much! I’ll most definitely be ordering from you in the future. You have a truly outstanding product!“

Mike, we’re glad you love it — and thanks for sharing your story. Like other wool when first shorn, raw Merino fleece has a high level of lanolin, as well as skin cells, sweat, dirt, and even stuff from the dirt like pesticide residue, food bits, etc. No wonder, then, that when it’s straight off an animal, it is known as “wool in the grease”!

Do you have a story to share with us? It could bring you a FREE Unicorn Fibre products Gift Set! Call or email us (info@unicornfibre.com) today!

Did you know, for example, that besides cleaning, Unicorn Fibre Rinse also refreshes and conditions natural fibres in an anti-static texturizing bath — with a hint of lavender, to boot? It’s Earth-friendly and biodegradable. We include these fun facts and more in the brochure.

MarieAnge of Ontario submitted the following entry:

My woolens are crinkled, wrinkled and bleak,
No sheep or llama would bleat
What a feat
This would be
If I won wash to make them neat!

We love it, and we love Jackie E-S for hosting such a clever contest. Happy Spring to everyone!

Unicorn Fibre products have become synonymous with getting yarn skeins and finished knitting and crochet projects sparkling clean, but every so often we hear about it being used for other items, as well! On our Facebook page, we recently showcased a mom of a solider home on leave from the Middle East, who wanted to wear his favorite jeans so badly but they had a permanent grease stain. We’re pleased to report that our Power Scour saved the day!

Paul Moskal, owner of Airloom Oriental Rug Washing Co., loves our products!

Since then, we’ve received another unusual testimonial — this time from Paul Moskal, owner of Airloom Oriental Rug Washing Co. in Tucson.

Paul writes, “I have been using the Unicorn Fibre product line for a couple of years now. The Fibre Wash and Fibre Rinse have become a staple to my rug washing process because I can trust them not only to clean, but make the wool have a nice hand after washing. My customers have been telling me for the last couple years, ‘our rugs didn’t look and feel this good when we bought them.’  I would not use anything else, and I never run out.”

Whether it’s denim, wool rugs or even that cardboard box of yarn stashed in your garage just hoping to come back to life after years of dust, mold and neglect — our products can truly be fiber’s best friends.

Do you have a story to share with us? It could bring you a FREE Unicorn Fibre products Gift Set! Call or email us (info@unicornfibre.com) today!

From a pool of comments on her blog post and on her HeartStrings FiberArts Facebook page, a winner was just chosen this week to receive a Unicorn Fibre Wash & Rinse Gift Sampler Set. Congrats to the lucky winner, Jesse of Massachusetts!

But the contest is still going strong! On March 20, 2012 (which happens to be Vernal Equinox, the start of Spring), another lucky winner will be randomly drawn from all comment entries since the beginning of the contest and receive a Unicorn Fibre Wash & Rinse Gift Sampler Set.

But wait, there’s more!!! The Grand Prize will be awarded on March 31, 2012. The prize is the Unicorn Deluxe Fibre Wash & Rinse 16-oz. Gift Set, valued at $31. The winner will be the one with the highest tally of entries (taking into consideration that a like and share of a comment either here on the blog or on the HeartStrings Facebook page also counts as an entry). In the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen randomly from the top entries.

As Jackie’s fans well know, she doesn’t endorse things on a whim — she truly believes in Unicorn Fibre products. We’re proud to be endorsed by such a special person, and hope that this contest simply spreads the word about how our products can truly be fiber’s friends!

Also, stop by and join our Ravelry group.  Here’s an interesting thread entitled “What’s Your Story?”  We love comments and questions of any kind from product users, or folks who are just curious about how to get the best results from Unicorn Fiber Wash, Rinse, and Power Scour.

In other news, here’s my Cashmere/silk Hitchhiker scarf, all clean and incredibly soft.  It feels and looks (and, certainly, smells) better than even before it got dragged through the rainy grocery store parking lot.  Now I can start wearing this piece every day again–even inside my house it’s nice to have something soft and warm draped around my neck!

Look at the colors!

Do you have a favorite handmade piece?

My DH was bored today so we decided to get out for lunch and some light errands.  It’s a nice, rainy, late December day in Pittsburgh and the grocery store was busy.  So I was nominated to run in for the plum tomatoes and cat food we decided we needed.  No problems there.  I got through the self-checkout and out to the curbside pickup just in time to jump into the car.   I felt like we were making a clean getaway.  But then DH told me that my scarf had been hanging halfway out the car door for part of the time that I was in the store.  Points to him for noticing and rescuing it, but who knows what kind of environmental hazards it was exposed to!  Mud, motor oil (gasp) or other garbage.  EEK!  After my recent destash of almost all of my personal yarn (I have enough “work yarn” to keep me busy for at least this lifetime,) I kept only the most special skeins in my collection.  One skein was a Tanglewood Fiber Creations Cashmere Silk in Lavender Moon (yum!) that I was holding onto until I found just the right pattern for it.  I swatched multiple times over the two or so years this skein lived in my collection, and nothing was quite doing it for me.  It turned out that the right project was the ingeniously simple Hitchhiker Scarf.  And it turned out that this precious pile of pure pleasure was  dragged for at least a few minutes through the Giant Eagle parking lot.  Double eek!

No worries, though–Unicorn products to the rescue!  Upon inspection, my treasure didn’t seem too oily or dirty, so I decided on a Unicorn Fibre Wash, followed by a Fibre Rinse refresh.  If I had noticed any bad oil or stains, after I stopped weeping, I would have reached for the Unicorn Power Scour, which is especially made to take bad stuff out of the finest animal fibers.

Now with more bowls of soaking knitwear!

So, I’ll give this a good final rinse and show it to you when it dries.  Stuff happens.  When stuff happens to your special knitwear, make sure you have some Unicorn products on hand.  Disaster averted!  Have you experienced any episodes like this?

My most recent adventure in fleece washing was the Coopworth Lamb that I bought at the Great Lakes Fiber Show in Wooster, OH this May.  Won’t you join me as I relive it?

My trusty assistants.

Here’s where it all starts.  No need to heat water on the stove.  I cranked up my hot water heater a little and the hot water out of the tap is about 136-140 degrees, plenty hot enough for my needs.  Of course, I will use the Unicorn Power Scour, which was especially formulated for this exact job, getting dirt and grease out of animal fiber.

My first thought was that I would measure out equal amounts of fiber for each small batch.  Many people have done side-by-side experiments, and have been quite scientific in their methodologies.  I am not a detail person to that extent.  So I didn’t end up using the scale.

Yum, Coopworth Lamb!

Here is the prizewinning fleece itself.  I think it was about 5 or 6 lbs, maybe a little more.

Here are some of the other tools I used, loosely following the Beth Smith tulle envelope method.

Here are some of the lightest colored locks.  But you can see the aforementioned “farm dirt” causing these silvery locks to look yellow. It’s important not to put too much stock in the color of your fleece when it is still dirty.

Nice and fluffy, though.  Not much VM, and nice crimp.  Coopworth is not the softest wool out there, but it feels good to me and will make nice socks or a jacket, maybe.

See how shiny it looks?  Still unwashed, mind you.  And aren’t those black strands interesting?  This gave me the idea to sort for color.

You can see there is a lot of color variation within this one fleece.  There were very white looking locks, and some dark grey, but most of it was “medium.”

I sorted…

and made a bunch of tulle envelopes.  Mine are small, and it was kind of fussy work.

I sorted, and packed…

And sorted and packed,

And still I had this much fiber left!

So, since I did not want to spend the rest of my life doing this, and I wanted to wash some fleece, after all, I shoved the rest of the locks into my 4 mesh lingerie bags, and I got down to business.

My routine is to fill up my buckets with about 5-6 quarts of hot water from my tap, with a big squirt of Unicorn Power Scour.  Not very exact, I know. You can see that in this bucket, the water is pretty brown.  That is the farm dirt and lanolin.

I then do a second wash, with the same amount of water and slightly less Power Scour.  This lamb fleece was really not too dirty, as you can see.

Here is another view of a “first wash.”
Kinda brown, but I’ve seen a lot worse! I follow the two washes with one or two warm water rinses, and incorporate a squirt of the Unicorn Fibre Rinse into this step.  It will help soften the fleece for spinning and makes it smell nice, but not perfumey.  I like the somewhat sheepy smell, and I never try to get out all of the lanolin.  I like a little in there because it helps the locks spin easily and it is a nice moisturizing treatment for my hands.

I then spread out the fleece in my yard and let it dry.  The locks in the tulle envelopes will be nice and organized for when I sit down to flick and spin them.

They are all oriented with tips in the same direction.  The locks in the mesh bags, not so organized, but will still spin great.  I will end up with more waste from those locks, I predict.

You can see here the difference in color between the washed and unwashed. Pretty dramatic.

Here are some of the clean lightest and darkest locks.  I wish I had more dark ones.  Something to look for in my next fleece purchase!

Do you like to wash your own fleeces, or are you now intrigued to try it?  You can get free samples of the Unicorn Power Scour and Fibre Rinse, which gives you enough for a small scale experiment.  Here’s the little bit I’ve spun up so far.

The lamb locks are very clean and soft. I wonder what my yarn will be like and what I will knit with it?