Annie's Attic - Putting on the Dog

Putting on the Dog

Sue E. Hotovec

Create a special project from a beloved friend with your own unique blend of pet-hair yarn. It’s all Max’s fault. I never knew exactly what breeds he might have been but he was the world’s sweetest dog. Every spring he would shed bales of the softest, downiest undercoat. I would brush him, see the cream-colored drift of fluff that resulted and think to myself, “This would make an incredible sweater. Someday, I’m going to have to learn to spin and knit so I can make a sweater out of this.”

So I learned to spin yarn … dog, sheep, cotton, milkweed, llama, hemp, etc. … then to knit. When people hear about my hobby, it almost always generates a lot of questions.

Why pet hair?
First, it’s not practical for me to keep traditional fiber animals like sheep or llamas, but it is practical to have a dog that, in addition to loving companionship, provides me with a ready source of fiber to spin. Second, long after my beloved friend is no longer here, I will have this pair of cozy socks or that cute, fuzzy hat as a memento.

Doesn’t it smell?
While some dogs smell more “doggy” than others, once the yarn has been washed it usually doesn’t have a noticeable smell. There are exceptions, however. Someone once gave me hair from a wolf-dog hybrid that reeked. Even after multiple washings, it still smelled horrible. The yarn was gorgeous but I asked the person to please not save me any more hair.

What kinds of pet hair can you spin? You can spin almost any hair as long as the hairs are at least one and a half inches long. Most dogs are double-coated with stiff, coarse guard hairs outside and soft, downy undercoat next to the skin. For dogs, a slicker brush works well to collect the undercoat without getting a lot of the guard hairs, too. Some of my favorite breeds to spin are sheltie, husky and Samoyed. You can also spin hair from breeds without a double coat, such as poodle and Afghan hound. Longhair cats work well, too.

How do you turn the hair into yarn?
There are a number of steps involved in processing hair into yarn.

1. Collect the Hair
Naturally shed hair is best. Whenever I brush my dog, Callisto, I collect her hair from the brush and keep it in a grocery bag. I don’t recommend using clipped hair. Hair clipped from double-coated breeds will have a lot of guard hairs in it that will have to be picked out.

Some state and federal laws prohibit processing, buying or selling anything made from domestic cat or dog. These laws are designed to prohibit the killing of pets for their flesh or pelt. However, the wording of some laws is broad enough to include items made from shed or clipped hair. It’s a good idea to check the dog and cat protection laws in your area, especially if you plan to spin pet hair for other people or commercially.

2. Pick the card
“Picking” the fiber is sorting through the hair to separate the usable from the unusable. I work with three paper grocery bags: one for the collected hair, one for the guard hairs, twigs, matted clumps, etc. that get picked out, and a third bag to hold the hair for spinning.

“Carding” uses a pair of paddles with rows of small, bent-wire teeth to comb the hair so that all the hairs run parallel to each other. Sometimes the picking process will make the hair fluffy enough that it doesn’t need carding. If you want to blend the pet hair with another fiber, like wool, to modify the properties of the resulting yarn, you would need to card them together.

3. Spin
Spinning twists the hairs together to form a ply (single strand). Two common spinning tools are the drop spindle and the spinning wheel. A drop spindle has a weight at one end of the shaft (my first drop spindle was a pencil stuck through a foam rubber ball). You set the spindle turning in the same way that you would spin a top. A spinning wheel has a foot treadle to keep the wheel turning continuously. With both tools, it’s the rotation that supplies the twist.

Two things control the thickness of the yarn: the amount of hair twisted into an individual ply and the number of plies in your final yarn. A single ply will coil back on itself and is very difficult to work with. You generally need at least 2 plies to make a workable yarn. You make yarn by spinning two or more plies together, opposite the direction in which they were originally spun. For example, if your individual plies were spun clockwise, when you ply them together to make yarn you would spin the spindle or wheel counterclockwise.

4. Wash, set and dry
Wind the plied yarn into a hank by wrapping the yarn around and around, hand to elbow, the way you might coil a long extension cord or phone cable. Tie the hank loosely in about 4 places with lengths of string or other yarn to keep the hank from getting tangles. Submerge the hank in very warm, soapy water. I usually add a healthy amount of an inexpensive shampoo directly to the water for most house pet yarns. If the hair is particularly dirty or from an oily-coated breed, I may use a grease-cutting dish soap. Don’t agitate the yarn or it might felt; just let it soak for 10–15 minutes then drain. If the water was very dirty, repeat the soaking process. Rinse the hank by submerging it in clean water that is at least as hot as the water you soaked it in. Continue the submerge-and-drain process until all trace of soap is removed. Gently squeeze as much water as you can from the hank. Never wring it. Roll the hank in a towel to blot out more water. Hang the damp hank somewhere out of the way with good air circulation until it is completely dry. Don’t use anything made of metal (it may rust a bit and stain your yarn) or wood (it may be damaged by the moisture). Hang a weight from the bottom to straighten the hank. When the yarn is completely dry, wind it into a ball and it’s ready to use.

What is the yarn like?
That depends on the fiber you used and how you processed it. Dog undercoat yarn is very soft and fuzzy; most people mistake it for angora. Yarn made from single-coated breeds like Afghan hound will be smoother and not have the fuzzy “halo” that an undercoat yarn has. Cat-hair yarn, Persian or Himalayan for example, will be very soft and drape well. Since pet hair doesn’t have the crimp that wool does, it tends to be inelastic. Some pet-hair yarns, such as Afghan hound, will felt and others like the Samoyed won’t, so be careful which yarns you mix in a project.

What can you do with it?
Pet-hair yarn is virtually as versatile as most other types of yarn. As with commercial yarns, each yarn has its own characteristics and you need to pair a project with a suitable yarn.

One final thing to keep in mind: Dog hair is much, much warmer than wool. I had to give up my original dream of making a Max-hair sweater. After I started working with the hair, I realized that if I made a whole sweater with it, I’d never be able to wear it. Smaller projects such as ear bands, hats, mittens or socks are more suitable for pet hair, and will give the wearer a treasured item made from a beloved friend.••