The dog is done!

Great news, I have completed the commission to spin the dog fur!  To recap, the fur came from Alaska, a rescue dog who is believed to be half Malamute.  The task was to spin the fur pure.  It has been a long haul, the fur was very short and slippery, but I can report I have finished the job.  I have spun nearly half a mile of pure dog fur.

Here is the result:

 This is what nearly half a mile of spun dog fur looks like!

Spinning dog fur - progress report

I've now washed all of the dog fur in Unicorn Power Scour, it is dry and no longer smells of dog!  I took some photos of the fibre at different stages to show you how it balls up during washing:

Strange isn't it?   No other fibre I've worked with behaved like this.

Here's the fibre after I pulled the balls apart:

The fibre didn't felt at all and the balls came apart easily.

Once the fibre was dry, I ran it through my Ashford drum carder.  The drum carder has two spiked rollers, or drums, the small drum feeds the fibre onto the larger drum, the fibre is not supposed to get tangled on the small feeder  drum.  No matter what I did, the dog fur embedded itself into the teeth of the small drum and didn't transfer very well, as you can see in the picture below.  The drum carder is supposed to take 65g of fibre but the most dog fur I managed to get onto the main drum in one go was about 2g.  As you can imagine, carding this fur is a slow process!  

After struggling for a bit, I had a brain wave.  I originally bought my drum carder when I was working on a commission to spin a pet rabbit's fur.  Rabbit fur is one of the finest fibres you can spin.  The salesperson assured me a packer brush would help.  A packer brush is a bit like those draught excluders you put in the letterbox, it's a lot of soft bristles close together.  The packer brush is detachable, when fitted to the drum carder, its job is to push the fibre into the teeth of the large drum.  Here is a close up picture of the fitted packer brush:

The packer brush worked really well, I got 8g onto the drum instead of 2g! 


After carding the fibre I made rolags, since the dog fur doesn't hold together very well I rolled the fibre into rolags as I pulled it off the drum.  Here are two rolags of husky fur, they weigh between 1g and 2g each.

Here is a close up of the rolag, you can see the shorter darker guard hairs mixed in with the fluffy undercoat:

I spun two singles using the long draw technique.  This fibre is so unforgiving.  Wool pretty much spins itself, you can watch TV and spin no problem, but the dog fur needs full concentration, it untwists at any opportunity and the first single I spun broke frequently.  Here's the first bobbin: 

This yarn is a celebration of a much loved pet so I am spinning the fur as it comes rather than picking out all the odd hairs.  The fibre does vary, there are some coarser fibres even among the undercoat and there are patches which are full of very short black hair.  If I wanted the softest yarn possible I would need to pick these bits out, however, the aim of the project is to make a yarn which is true to Alaska the dog, so I am leaving in all but the coarsest fibres.

Plying is a fiddly job.  You need a lot of twist in the singles to keep the fibre together, also the yarn is slubbed with thicker and thinner places so when I ply the singles it is a difficult job to produce a balanced yarn.  The thinner parts of the singles have more twist than the slubs and thicker parts so I have to work at the plying to even out the twist.  However, I am proud to say the two skeins I have finished are well balanced yarns.  You can tell if a skein is balanced or not when you take it off the bobbin and let the skein hang, if the skein twists on itself it is not balanced, if it hangs in an open loop then you have a balanced yarn!  

Here is the first completed skein:

 
I have now completed two skeins and I feel like I'm getting the mastery of this unusual fibre.  Now all I've got to do is spin that pillow case full of remaining dog fur! 

To see more of my work and to buy handspun yarns please visit my online shop:

www.shearersgirlyarns.co.uk 

Spinning Dog Fur

I have a new challenge.  Has anyone out there worked with dog fur?  I have taken on a commission to spin some husky fur, this is not something I have tried before. 

I met the gorgeous Alaska last week.  Alaska was born in Battersea Dog's Home.  Luckily for Alaska, he was soon homed and now a few years later (it would be rude to reveal a gentleman's age) Alaska would like to give his human a present made from his fur.  Alaska's mum was allegedly a Malamute and his father is unknown.  Whatever the father was, he must have needed a step ladder.  I was expecting a great big scary wolf but the fellow who arrived at my door was about the size of a sheltie and extremely cute. 

Alaska has a double layered coat, the outer coat ranges from white through shades of grey to black, the fibres are quite long, straight and on the coarse side.  The undercoat is soft and fine, mostly white in colour and rather short.  The fur I have been given to spin is brushed out undercoat which Alaska has naturally shed, this means at the end of each hair there should be a small nodule, the root.  Fur which has been cut off the animal does not have this nodule.  Hair which retains the root is easier to spin as the nobbly bits help to hold the fibres together.

Wool fibres from sheep are a natural velcro, the fibres are barbed and will cling to each other, making spinning easy.  Hair fibres on the other hand are smooth and require coaxing to stay together.  Hair fibres, such as alpaca, mohair and angora, are often blended with wool, the wool locking the more slippery fibres into the yarn.  In this case, Alaska doesn't want his fur hobnobbing with any other animal's fibre so the challenge is to spin a pure dog yarn.       

As the fur is very short, I will need to use the long draw technique (explained in the post 'How does spinning work?').  The end result will then be a fluffy yarn with a halo effect.  I just hope I can produce a yarn which holds together and doesn't fly apart!  The next decision is whether or not to wash the fibre before spinning.  Any ideas?  The fibre doesn't smell too much but it does have a smell and I'm sure no one, however much they love their pet, wants to walk around smelling like a dog - sorry Alaska.  I do remember an article in the Reader's Digest many years ago about someone who had a tame wolf.  They spun the wolf's fur and made a jumper.  Whenever they went out wearing the jumper, other dogs either attacked them or ran away wimpering in terror.  

I'm worried that if I spin the fibre in it's raw state I may not be able to wash the finished yarn enough without damaging it to get rid of the smell.  On the other hand, the fibre may become matted during washing.   I think I am going to test wash a small amount of fibre and see what happens.  I have the very good Unicorn Power Scour which fellow ravelrers (is that the right word?)assure me removes the rather potent whiff of ram.  Anything which can clean a year's dirt and and grease from a sheep's fleece should be up to cleaning dog fur, after all, Alaska changes his underclothes regulary so his fur can't be anything like as bad as a fleece.     

Before he left, Alaska gave me his paw and we shook on the deal.  There's no going back now.  I will be recording my progress here so do return and find out how the washing and spinning goes!