Adventures of the Fiberdog

Years ago I was on a small wool market in Germany. As always I was looking for fiber to spin. I found a shepherd, who had unprocessed fleeces from his sheep for sale. However, none of them really called to me. I was about to turn away, when an unmarked fleece caught my eye. It was perfect for me! So I talked to the shepherd and asked about the price. He hesitated. "It is not for sale. It is from my favorite ram, who passed recently. He was a special boy.", he told me. That was of course sad for me, but I understood. Some things are just too special to sell. So we talked a little bit. About the ram, sheep and pets in general. I don't know what made him change his mind, but in the end he sold me the fleece (and for a very fair price, too). He had one condition though: I had to send him pictures of the finished product. Naturally I agreed and went home with this very special fleece. A special fleece  Preparing the fiber and spinning the yarn One thing I...

Dog hair: trash or valuable resource?    As you may or may not know, rough collies have a LOT of undercoat and now and then they are shedding it. If you brush your collie thoroughly, you almost get a second collie in undercoat. For years I watched my mother (a breeder of rough collies) throw away these huge amounts of hair, not thinking anything of it. And then I learned how to spin. I had already experimented with different types of fibers and I was curious what was possible. So one day I literally saved a handful of undercoat (from the lovely boy Lines) from the trash and took them home with me. My mother thought it was weird, but didn’t say anything. I experimented with the fiber and found out it was actually very spinnable. Very fine, lovely staple length. And the thought of knowing the donor of my spinning fiber from puppy on made me enjoy the spinning process even more. Next time I talked to my mother, I asked her to save all the brushings from her dogs ...