From: vln@icpsr.umich.edu (Victoria Neff)
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.textiles
Subject: Re: recent/current projects
Date: 12 Nov 1992 22:12:51 GMT
Organization: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
NNTP-Posting-Host: tdis.icpsr.umich.edu

In article <1992Nov12.131545.24905@walter.cray.com> ljensen@ferris.cray.com (Laura Jensen) writes:
>Congratulations Victoria on the inauguration of your new drum carder!

Thank you!

>The Corgi down reminds me of a few questions - 
>
>1) Where does one go about finding dog and cat hair?  I haven't tried
>to ask the local dog groomers yet, but I was curious about other 
>people's sources.         

Well, I used my own dogs, but if I wanted more, I'd go to my local dog
club and talk to people....  If you want to spin the hair, you want it
to be from an animal that has been groomed regularly.  You want hair that
is relatively clean and matt-free...

>1a) Who, besides HM Queen Elizabeth II, owns Corgis?  Is their down
>nice/fine/crimped?  

Besides me, you mean???  :-)

Corgis have two coats.  A downy (fine, crimped) undercoat, and a hairy
outer coat (just what you'd think of as dog hair).  The down is fairly
nice, but lots of it has a hair-like tip, which isn't so nice, at least
not for next-to-the-skin.  The color is nice -- a reddish beige.  At least
for my dogs, which are red.  Corgis also come in tri-color (black and
white with red trim here and there).  I don't know what color their down is....

The color is mostly in the tips, so the down with the most color (the most
noticeable tips) is also the most itchy....  The fiber runs from about
1 1/3" (ruff and pants [back of the hind legs]) to 1/4" or less (on front
legs).  I just saved the stuff that was 3/4" or so.  More or less.

>2) When someone _gives_ you fibers for spinning, what do you make
>for them in return, and what proportion of the finished yarn do 
>you use for it?  (This is perhaps more of a manners question 
>than a fiber question.)

My only gift of fiber so far was several fleeces from someone who kept
the sheep and goats as pets.  I made her a hat which included some of
the black wool (well, dark brown), some of the white wool, and some mohair.
She was thrilled....  And the fiber wasn't worth much more than that, either,
as it was full of burrs (@#$%^&*!!) and other vegetation.  I wouldn't take
more fiber like that as a gift!!  You don't even want to use it for mulch,
because of all the nasty seeds in it!  I LIKE handling raw fiber, but I
don't like picking over every lock to get out the nastyness!!!  Generally
speaking, fiber is WAY too cheap (especially wool) for me to want to spend
my time that way!

So my limited experience is that gift fiber is worth about what you paid
for it....  Your own intuition is probably a good guide.  If I helped with
grooming the animals in question, and kept the result, I'd feel that a
very token gift was all that was necessary.  If someone gave me bags and
bags of pristine unmatted Samoyed down, I'd feel something more extravagant
was in order....

>A few months ago, I started saving combings from our cats.  They
>don't have particularly long hair, so I wasn't thinking of spinning
>it; I was more thinking about incorporating the hair into a felt
>ball for my in-laws' dog!  I kept the fiber in a sandwich-sized 
>ziploc bag, not particularly crammed in, and in a few months of
>light handling (Izzy picking the bag up in her mouth and running with 
>it plus my adding fibers to the bag) the fiber had resolved itself 
>into semi-felted shapes _just like hair balls_.  Now, I am wondering 
>what is unique to the cuticle structure of cat hair to make it
>perform this way, in an enclosure?  Any thoughts?

Nothing unique about this -- any dirty fiber (sorry, no apersions cast
at you, just assuming the fiber wasn't washed between combing and storage)
will felt if kept in a sealed container.  Clean fiber will do it, too,
but not to the same extent.  This is why fiber is not stored in airtight
containers.  Particularly UNSPUN fiber.  If your yarn or your garment
felt just a little, you may not even notice, or care if you do notice,
but if your unspun fiber felts, even just a little, it is, as you found,
very noticeable!!