Possum Yarn

I’ve just got back from New Zealand! There’s many exciting things to say about that but what I’m focusing on here is a specific yarn I found.

New Zealand is famously known for their sheep. They’re a large exporter of both meat and wool! Pretty much any ride through the country will reveal gorgeous hills covered in sheep.

Unfortunately for me, I have an allergy to sheep’s wool. Fortunately, New Zealand has a slightly lesser-known, unique fiber that they use for yarn: possum.

It is a little tricky to find possum yarn that isn’t blended with sheep’s wool, but I was lucky enough to find Zealana’s Air yarn at Knit World in Wellington. Possum fur has pretty short fibers and needs to be combined with other fibers to create a better yarn. This yarn is blended with cashmere (goat!) and mulberry silk.

Zealana’s site does a much better job of explaining it, but possums here are pests. The brushtail possum is native to Australia but invasive to New Zealand. They cause a lot of damage here by eating native bird species’ eggs out of their nests and by destroying native plants.

I personally prefer to work with yarn in the DK-chunky range, so lace weight was new to me. I scoured ravelry for a while before settling on the Fir Cone Cap by Sarah Pop. The yarn is very soft, and quite slippery so I opted for a pattern that used a needle size larger than what I had on hand. That is to say, I knit this hat using US size 3 (3.25 mm) needles.

If you can see my mistake in the brim, no you can’t

The asymmetrical brim was neat and looked pretty, although likely not something I’d personally do again. I generally prefer hats that don’t have a designated “front” or “back” because I will always inevitably put them on sideways. The lace was absolutely lovely. I’m not sure if I’ve ever done “true” knit lace before, but this pattern was super easy to memorize and worked up very quickly.

I opted to make the medium length hat, because I liked how that was sitting on my head while I was trying it on. My head is a bit on the smaller side and I prefer just a bit of slouch.

After wearing the hat about for a couple days, I have determined that this is probably the warmest fiber I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I was concerned that it would be rather insubstantial because of how light and delicate it felt, but found myself surprised and sweaty on most days. I think the possum hat might be a bit better for Chicago winters than New Zealand spring!