I saw this book on Amazon but I don’t think I’ll buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Knitting-Dog-Hair-Better-Sweater/dp/0312152906/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_pop_t
What I really want to know is this:
Do you have to use a sheepdog?
Should you wash the dog before you shear it?
How many dogs will I need to make a baby blanket?
Somebody must know about this stuff.
My girlfriend checked out that book from the local library. I consider myself pretty rational, but somehow the idea was strangely repulsive. Yet, I can’t really explain how wearing dog hair differs all that much from wearing the hair of any other animal.
My last dog was a very large Samoyed with long, white hair. People can and do knit with their furincluding the ancient Siberian people that they got their name from. I have seen some of it and you can make things that are quite attractive with their fur including whole sweaters and blankets. They shed most of the time, especially in the summer so there is never a shortage of fur to make things with.
I have it on good authority that depending on the breed, it can be very waterproof.
Stinky when wet, tho.
I have spun dog hair into yarn, but I have never made anything with it. You don’t have to have a sheepdog for this. Any double-coated dog that sheds that fluffy undercoat (e.g., the above-mentioned Samoyed) will produce fiber that can be spun. You don’t need to shear the dog; just collect what comes off when you groom him/her. I spun yarn from my sister’s pomeranian’s hair. I also spun some from a mutt – but the mutt had a double coat.
As far as the doggie smell goes, if you wash either the hair or the finished yarn and use human hair conditioner on it, it will remove the doggy smell. I washed it before I spun it, because I couldn’t stand working with stinky fiber.
My guess is that you’d need about 10 grocery bags full of dog hair to produce enough yarn for a baby blanket, but a lot will depend on how finely you spin it.
I had a spinner ask me for hair I groomed from my afghan hound. It was incredibly soft and quite long. I don’t know what, if anything she made from it.
StG
Would you feel better about it if you knew that the technical name for dog hair among spinners and knitters and other fibercrafts folks is “chiengora”? I kid you not.
There is an older gal who does spinning and other demonstrations at the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, and she has some lovely dog hair yarns. She says it still smells in the rain though… I hadn’t heard about conditioning it.
My grandmother had collie dogs and used to give their hair to a friend that spun and knitted with it in exchange for knitted items. She had a pair of mittens that were really soft and warm. Yes, they were smelly when wet.
My sister spun some wool from our Samoyed many years ago. We used to have a little square of cloth she made from it. She also spun the hair from our (sweet, dumb, good-natured and long-haired) cat. She made my grandmother a hat.
Grandma loved the hat but was not much for cats so she never wore it, but she never got tired of talking about that hat.
(Insert cat/hat jokes here)
I can’t believe I’ve never done this, because I’ve knitted some weird objects (knitted teacup anyone) and fibers keep getting more and more exotic. Bamboo, soy yarn, etc.
Someone gave me a copy of this book as a joke. I DO know a woman who did this, and yep…still sorta stinky. It looked beautiful and I’m like you, I don’t understand why this type of animal fiber would hold a smell more than, say, an alpaca. But from what I’ve heard, it’s darn hard to get rid of.
We have Standard Poodles. A few years ago, we contributed a bunch of shorn poodle coat to someone who spun it into yarn and knitted a beautiful shawl for a woman who recently lost a beloved pet.
Poodle coat is a lot like wool.
The alpaca wool I have seems to have been heavily processed- that might have something to do with it.
People knit with both dog and cat hair. It’s also possible to knit with human hair, although most of the examples I’ve seen have been more of the ‘art project’ type and not so much intended as usable objects.
oh, woosh. woosh woosh WOOSH!
I don’t get it. You really can knit with dog hair with good results and some people do.
??
A connection between username and OP?
I got nothin…
Heavens. I wasn’t expecting so many earnest responses… it’s terrible to have to explain your jokes.
Knitting… wool… must come from sheepdogs?
Did you honestly think i’d shear a dog?
Please tell me you haven’t made a baby blanket out of your smelly dog’s hair… i have a smelly dog that i love dearly, but really.
I’m hopeless at this Straight Dope stuff… someone give me lessons.
I’d pay a lot for enough Samoyed yarn to make a sweater out of.