Posted on 12/12/2010 11:38:25 PM PST by Racehorse
Pendleton Woolen Mills is making new Navajo-style blankets using wool and blended hair shed by an unusual herd of white buffalo in central Oregon.
Ranching experts say fewer than 50 white buffalo, or American bison, live in the U.S., The Oregonian reported.
On a sanctuary east of Bend, 11 of them roam acres of isolated juniper forest under the care of Cynthia Hart-Button and her husband, Charles Button. It's one of the larger collections of white buffalos.
SNIP
Buffalo usually are black or brown. White buffalo are produced when recessive genes trigger the unusual trait. They are not albino.
Some Native American tribes consider them sacred.
"The significance of the white buffalo has been recognized by all the tribes that are buffalo culture people," Jim Stone, a Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux, told The Oregonian. Stone is executive director of the Intertribal Buffalo Council in Rapid City, S.D., an organization created to restore buffalo to Indian nations.
The white buffalo's presence is a prophesy of spiritual rebirth - "an indicator of better times coming to tribal people," Stone said. "Historically, that has been the view."
The first of the Oregon herd was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1997 into a small herd of black bison owned by Dena Riley and her husband, Jim. Hart-Button worked with the couple for a decade in Flagstaff.
Being in a single, small herd with the right genetic traits stacked the odds in favor of the unlikely white buffalo births, she said. "It's like winning a lottery ticket 11 times."
Hart-Button brought the herd to Oregon five years ago after Jim Riley died and a grieving Dena Riley decided to take a break from raising the buffalo.
(Excerpt) Read more at indiancountrynews.net ...
BYW Who looks at the keyboard while typing?
Isn’t typing still a required school class?
Oh silly me who actually uses typewriters.
In Michigan the furnace runs for about 7 months out of the year...dry's out the air in the house...
What OTC ointment do you use?
I have been putting neosporin around mine.
I tried some samples of Clinque but not sure if I want to invest in that, I suppose the wrinkles are going to come on at the rate they are regardless.
Having o2/mist concentrators in our room for KV (trach/quad son) I don’t need heat on in the winter and actually open the windows to keep us cool. We live on the PNW coast literally so the saline in the air is great for our health needs.
I am so use to sleeping with a fan on my bedside and that is the worst thing next to having a dachshund snuggle in my face.
I clean the fan thouraly and often but that doesn’t seem to help it is the air flow that gets my eyes.
I have really bad sleep apnea so the fan along with the o2 helps (cpap was a horrible exp. nightmares of being strangled)
I don’t think the settings were right and the guy that services our area is quick to get people into sleep lab but sucks at the follow up.
I am almost wondering if platic is an irratent as my nose canula and glasses seem to cause allot of intense itching.
Speaking of the Son is awake and needing medical care be back after first shift is over.
am sending you freepmail...:O)
Sir, I apologize.
Noli Perturbate.
Buffalo are double coated. It looks to me like they have a whitish outer coat with a brown undercoat, giving them the creamy beige appearance.
It also appears that the undercoat is a good deal lighter than the standard. I bet the calves appear very white and they darken as they age.
I’ve spun buffalo wool and it is very, very soft, like cashmere or qiviut (yak wool).
The fact that this wool has less pigmentation means that it can be chemically lightened and then dyed in pastels or brights with greater ease and less cost.
Pendleton Blankets are still made in Pendleton, Oregon and they are generally quite pricey. I imagine these will run to several hundred dollars or more as a limited edition.
But they shipped all their clothing manufacturing to Mexico didn't they?
Yes, but the fabric is still woven in mills located here in the U.S. And the wool itself is from U.S. sheep and scoured in their own company owned scouring plant, one of the few remaining in the US.
I did take wool and mohair to a mill and have them card and I'd go pick up the rovings. Usually 1 pound each...We had one ewe for the wool as mohair has no memory and you usually have 15-20% wool before making anything with it.
I use to get natural dyes from a catalog I had and would dye the mohair and wool, some rovings were multi-colored and some just one color...it was fun and I sure did enjoy it...also sold the best locks to doll artists for their wigs.. The doll customers brought in lot more money that the spinners....hand sorting about 500 pounds of mohair to get the best locks for dolls cost them the money for time spent. and since I was a producer I sold cheaper than most other sellers.
Always thought getting a couple of cashmere goats would be interesting. some of the farmers started to cross breed the 2 and called them cashgora's...hoping to get more production from the cashmere cross's....others cross bred with other breeds of goats hoping to get color mohair, but pure, un crossed mohair is always white with one mutation called champagne...If they cross bred back enough you could get a goat that looked like an angora but had color. Most were not successful. but there is fun in the trying....
Pygora (pygmy/angora cross) is popular around here. I bought 3 batches of the roving, 1 white and 2 multi dyed. I’ve spun the two dyed lots and it was lovely. Haven’t done the white yet.
When I first started to spin, I couldn’t master the drafting/pedaling either. So I spent a year just plying another spinners stuff for her because she hates plying. Then one day I got to fooling around with some pretty roving and suddenly I could spin.
I have five wheels now and I can tell you that Louet is the most idiot proof and most easily adjusted. All of three of my daughters can spin (youngest is now 13). They are all pretty much self taught and I think they learned young because I let them play with my wheels and always had a box of colorful mill waste roving to practice with.
I’ve always been a relaxed mother when it comes to sharing my toys, how else will they learn if they aren’t allowed to make messes and use stuff?
Although they aren’t allowed to play with my new cell phone. How will I learn to program it if they do it for me?
I read once that bison can bread very closely...
Breaded, sauteed, marinated. All sounds good.
Dough!
Is that wheat or rye?
Dough!
I'll never *ever* purchase another Pendleton product.
LOL! That’s funny!
You are such a colorist. ;o)
WELP...THAR YA’ GO. LOL
IT’S SO GOOD TO “SEE” YOU!
I am in the wool business (but I don’t work for Pendleton, even though I live only a few miles from them). Only the garment sewing is done in Mexico, thank the garment workers union for that.
But the wool is grown and processed in the USA. The fabric is woven in the USA. I believe they have 6 mills and one scouring plant still here in the US (one of only two left in the US and I’m sure the EPA plans to force them to China someday).
One day her husband went out to feed the ram that they kept in his own pen (nasty disposition) and he pushed the gate in instead of opening it out and entering...the ram saw the bucket of grain and charged the gate. Her hubby got a finger amputated between the gate and the post...
He called the guy that butchered small animals (goats and sheep) and told him he was going to shoot that damn ram and would the guy still process it if he brought him a dead animal....he shot the critter after bandaging his hand and had a couple of neighbors load the carcass into his truck....
I don't know why he got mad at me when I called him lefty four fingers, but I only did it once.....I thought he was going to shoot me too..
The friend who taught me to spin (the one who hates to ply) kept angoras until she got tired of the nasty disposition. Bad attitude must be one of the breed standards, LOL.
She still has a hundred head of ewes on her family farm, mostly Romney, with some merino, cotswald, lincoln, dorset and texel for variety. She keeps 7-10 bucks in a seperate pen and most of them are total sweeties.
Some old ladies collect cats, we collect sheep!
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