Sitting at my spinning wheel, with the sun streaming in the windows, and 3 dogs cuddled around my chair and wheel, provides me with a sense of contentment and peace I haven’t been able to find anywhere else for the last little while. My thoughts drift away with the repetitive hum of the wheel and movements of my fingers and I feel ’settled’. I took a bad fall last week on the ice and sustained a concussion. After the initial obvious symptoms settled down I have been left with a lingering sense of anxiety, where there is no reason to feel anxious. Life is good. The best way to handle this anxiety is to either knit or spin and luckily I have a new spinning project to immerse myself in, thanks to the contact I made over the Christmas break, in Vancouver(see post January 3, 2008).

The package of dog hair from Cornelius arrived on Friday. I was a little skeptical opening it up; would it be clean? Would it be spinnable? What I found when I opened the package was a pleasant surprise. The dog hair is soft and clean with a lovely long staple, making it a joy to spin. A combination of 50% dog hair and 50% Shetland Top, which I purchased from www.rivercityyarns.com/, seems to work the best. I tried a few combinations and this was the best for producing a soft, even yarn which shows off the black, tan and ivory of the dog hair. The Shetland wool is a soft black so the colours combine very well.

I didn’t wash the dog hair before spinning it. Obviously this dog was well loved and cared for. As is the case with the yarn I’m spinning with my Wheaten dog hair, I prefer to wash it once it’s spun and plied. The washing seems to plump it right up.

Spinning dog hair just might become my specialty. I’m pretty excited about this free, and ever abundant, source of fiber. The possibilities are endless!

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