Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Preparing Doggy Hair for Spinning

My Ravelry friend Teresa sent me a couple ounces of washed dog hair ↓

We wanted to see what kind of yarn it would make. I was a little worried at first because it was so "hairy", and thought that it would probably be too prickly. I've only spun the undercoat brushed from my Golden, Cassie. This was cut, not brushed out, and had lots of short hairs, like the second cuts from alpaca shearing. I threw away lots of those shorties.
This picture of my drum carder shows me adding the dog hair on the metal tray. The turning/crank handle is on the right.
I added a layer of the dog hair and then a layer of a white alpaca/merino roving that I pulled, separated, and fluffed up. I continued layering until I filled up the drum, removed the batt and set it aside. The batts are pretty much a 50/50 blend.
After I carded all the doggy hair, I split the batts and ran them through again. This may have been a mistake because I created some little merino noils (lumpies). I probably won't run it through the second time if I do this again.

I think these batts look gorgeous and have them all packaged and ready to send off to Teresa in Atlanta, Georgia. There's 4.2 ounces here. I wanted to spin up a little to see what it would spin like but all my bobbins are full. I will just wait for word back from Teresa.

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