High quality yarns bring a little bit of luxury

Luxury, high quality yarns. That’s what mother daughter team, Irene and Michelle Rawlings, focus on these days at Camelot Mohair.

Irene started working with mohair raising angora goats from her property in Sutton outside of Canberra back in the 1970s. She wanted to keep up the quality of fibre in Australia after noticing much of the Australian produced high quality fibre was going overseas. Together with daughter Michelle the pair raised the goats on their goat stud, now in Gundaroo, and over the years they both did everything from spinning and dying the yarn, to creating very high quality garments for men and women, and even creating blankets that ended up in Kensington Palace.

Winning many awards including the Australian Craft Show, and appearing on Better Homes & Gardens with knitting patterns in mohair yarn in the 1990s, the pair really scaled back their business after Irene unfortunately endured a bad back injury. Today they run up to 500 goats at a time at Gundaroo and really focus on the quality of the fibre – young kid fibre is used for luxury garments, whereas fibre from the older goats is used in upholstery. They now focus just on yarn production and at the markets they sell mohair, in both brushed and loopy varieties, merino yarn, and luxury natural blends including cashmere-merino and silk-merino. These are just perfect for designers, knitters and craftspeople looking for something high quality to create with. They also sell a great range of buttons – perfect for knitters who need specialist buttons to make a well finished garment.

You can find this lovely range of yarns and meet Irene and Michelle at the markets each week.