Spinning Molly

If you've been around this blog for a while, you may remember Molly. For the past few years, I've had a bag of her brushed undercoat hanging in a pillowcase in my knitting room closet. Over the weekend, I decided it had been in the closet long enough and began blending it with some combed merino to spin.

I originally intended to use my new blending hackle, but after a morning of utter frustration, I discovered what more experienced fiber artists already know: a hackle is intended to comb out the shorter fibers (here, the dog hair), leaving only the longer fibers behind to become roving. So a hackle is not the right tool if you want to blend shorter and longer fibers. Duh.

Eventually I switched to my hand cards, and things progressed rapidly from that point.

These are my poufy little rolags of fiber, all ready to be spun.

They look and feel like little golden clouds.

And they spin up pretty easily. I am trying to spin fairly thick singles so I end up with a bulky two-ply to use for a sofa blanket. Evidently, I suck at spinning thicker singles. I haven't seen such lumpy, bumpy yarn since my first attempts at spinning.

I'm not sweating it, though. It's going to be an afghan, so however the yarn turns out, it will work. I'll just let the end result dictate the pattern I choose.

And here is the first skein, all washed and pretty. As you can see, it's a fuzzy, thick and thin yarn. What you can't see is that it is incredibly soft. It feels like angora, only denser. Dog hair is supposed to be about eight times warmer than wool, so I imagine it will make for a very warm blanket!

Summer Fiber

One of the inevitable signs of summer around here is the dog hair. With three hairy dogs, there's always a lot of "free fiber" floating around. We don't have dust bunnies; we have dust buffaloes. But at this time of year, it gets a little crazy.

This is the result of ten minutes of brushing one dog. Bear in mind, that's a 110 pound dog, so you can imagine the size of the pile.

Good thing she's such a patient girl!

Now what shall I do with all this?

I Suppose It Was Inevitable

And I'm sure you all knew it.

It's official: he's staying. See the new collar and tag? We've renamed him Sam. I just couldn't see calling, "O'Malley! O'Malley!" across the park. He didn't respond to it anyway; it was the name the rescue group picked for him. He seems to like Sam better, or so I tell myself.

Could you say no to this face?

Or this one?

I held out for about four hours, which is probably some kind of record for me.

Both human and animal members seem equally content with the arrangement. Sophie hasn't chewed on a rawhide since Molly died almost a year and a half ago. Not once, until now.


And really, how could I turn down all this free fiber?

I now have dog hair to match every outfit.