Buffalogold

Can I really machine wash my Buffalo Gold garments?    

    The answer is a YES!, not only is it possible, we highly recommend it, at least to full up or fluff the garment.  All of our knitted show pieces -  even Myrna Stahman's lacy seaman's scarf - go into our front loader washer on gentle cycle.

The bison down fiber is a solid protein, without the "barbs" or hooks on the shaft that many other natural fibers have.  The down is a very "crimpy" fiber - lots of very tiny ups, downs and bends to the shaft itself.  Those irregularities, when overlaid on lots of other bison down, create the huge number of very very tiny pockets that trap body heat on the animal and give the wonderful insulating properties of the fiber. Those same ups and downs lock in place with the next one when twisted together into yarn, to create both a strong yarn and one where the fibers will not shift very much...they can't. They are each trapped by the crimp of the next bit of down and the next. Once those fibers are set in place in yarn... and the yarn is knitted, those twisty little fibers will not move much... even when washed. They move just enough to lock in place and thus "bloom", but not shrink or felt like wool.

On the other hand, un-spun bison fiber - whether the down or whole hair, will felt or interlock very tightly when wet, agitated and allowed to flip over each other in all sorts of directions.  Without the carding and twisting that is yarn making, the free fibers lay helter skelter over each other and then lock in place in a disorganized, but very dense and matted felt.   From all of this learning came Elizabeth Lang's admonition to us to be careful and not to "agitate" the buffalo when we were initially washing the raw fiber.  Thus a great yarn fiber is also a great natural felting fiber.  Another example of the ongoing story of how the buffalo - the American bison -provides so much.  We continue to be fascinated by this magnificent creature and strengthened in our resolve that more people need to be aware of the place it plays in our world.