Ravenwood Cashmere is Naturally Processed! No harsh chemicals are used to wash or scour the fleece. Harsh chemicals are used by commercial operations to disintegrate dander and vegetative matter. This contributes to an even spin. HOWEVER, these chemicals also break down the ever so important quality characteristic of ‘crimp’ in the fiber. Crimp helps lock fibers together and traps air. That is what gives cashmere it’s high insulating quality, and produces a very warm yarn. We are committed to retaining cashmere as it is meant to be, very warm and lightweight.

Our animals are raised in a loving environment. They have free range of the woods late Spring Summer and Fall, helping to reduce brush and noxious weeds, while growing quality fiber. They are fed high quality grass hay and grain during Winter months, with alfalfa added while raising kids. We do not sacrifice the health of our animals to produce ultra fine micron count. They are up to date on vaccinations and trims. Contrary to what people say about cashmere raised in areas other than NE Asia, American producers can and do produce high quality cashmere, but without cost of health to their animals.

Our goats have their fleece objectively tested bi-enially to maintain the standard of 14-19 microns in their fleece. This also helps develop a good diet and breeding program.

We do not use kid fleece in our knitting/crocheting yarns. Kid fleece has the smallest micron diameter, but it also has the weakest tensile strength. This contibutes to breakage during processing, pilling and noiling. That contibutes to eventual pilling in the garment.

We do not use second runs that are shorter fibers, following subsequent runs through the dehairing machine, after Prime and First runs. These also contribute to shorter fibers that work their way out of the yarn, contributing to pilling in the garment.

Excluding these fibers from our yarns produces fewer skeins for us, but the highest quality, strongest yarn we can provide our customers.