Free yarn!

In November, 2013, this gorgeous little puppy joined our family. Her name is Stella, and she's a purebred Samoyed. I'll spare you all of the details of how and why she came to join our family, because frankly, this is a craft blog, not a dog-lover's blog...

Of course, if you're interested, just say so and I can go on about her for hours!

Why am I posting about dogs in my craft blog? Partly because she's my constant companion, and I knit a little bit of her into everything I make now, but mostly because she's a big, wooly, 62 pound SHEEP.

Some people I talk to think this is really horribly disgusting, but you can spin dog hair into yarn and knit with it. I've heard of people doing so to memorialize their pets after they pass away... so long as the dog has an undercoat, you can spin it and knit or weave it.

Stella is fully grown now, and I've been saving her shed undercoat ever since she started blowing her coat last summer. Needless to say, I have a lot of fur to spin. Dog hair often is used blended with sheep's wool, because it is a very warm fiber, and blending it with sheep's wool makes a cooler garment. Another benefit of dog hair is that it is water resistant, so it will keep you dry. It makes excellent hats and mittens.

Samoyed fur, in particular, has what we knitters call a "halo" when it has been knitted up. It behaves much like angora or cashmere, with a soft fluffy halo where the wispy ends of the fibers stick out of the knitted fabric.

A friend of mine sent me a couple of spindles to try out, and I discovered that dog hair is pretty easy to spin. I preferred the top whorl drop spindle that she gave me, and after about 45 minutes, had enough yarn that I could legitimately say I'd spun yarn!

It wasn't very much yarn, as you can see here, and it had a real thick and thin weight to it, because let's face it, I'd never spun yarn in my life... but I was happy to know I could do it, and it did look awfully soft and squishy. I really should have blocked the finished yarn, but I was excited to try knitting with it, so I skipped that crucial step, because it was just an experiment and I wasn't actually going to make anything with it.

Would you believe that even though I hadn't blocked the yarn (this step is important because it sets the twist) it only took me 20 minutes to knit up this little swatch? Look at how FUZZY it is! It is really soft, and not the least bit itchy. Did I mention that it is soft?

The only thing I didn't like about knitting with my hand spun Stella yarn is that sometimes, in spots where I had put a lot of twist into the yarn, it tended to loop back on itself... but like I said, I opted not to block the yarn, which sets the twist. Not important if you're just playing with the yarn, but if I had to knit an entire garment like this, it would drive me crazy.

I am pretty happy with my samoyed yarn. It's soft, warm, and unique. I don't particularly care if some people think it is weird or disgusting. Frankly, my dog is cleaner than the average sheep. I washed up the bags of undercoat using dish soap to get it totally squeaky clean, then let it dry for what felt like forever. Next I have to card it and sit down and do some spinning... but probably not for a while yet. There are other projects calling my name, specifically my Oakridge blouses...