Plying 'Possum

From this...

I saw some yarn today that was 30% opossum. I shit you not. Yes, we knitters have always been an adventurous lot but it seems that we have finally reached the point where, in an increasingly desperate quest for novelty, we will spin the fibre of any creature with hair. No longer limiting ourselves to mammals, we have moved on to marsupials. Forget wool and mohair and cashmere, even angora is old hat (itchy hat, in my book). Now for a yarn to be considered exotic it must be at least bison or malamute or, apparently, 'possum. Even alpaca, llama, yak, and camel are too common now to warrant comment. Just for the hell of it, I Googled to see what else I'd find and discovered this 50% cashmere/50% combed mink yarn from Inner Mongolia.

(The 'possum yarn is from Down Under, where they specialise in marsupials, and the above picture is an American opossum, but you get the idea. The Kiwi variety just looks a bit more like a miniature kangaroo.  Speaking of which, I expect the next yarn from Oz to be part kangaroo or, perhaps, koala.)

...to this