Spinning cat fur into yarn

After recently spinning some samoyed dog fur and enjoying that, I was pleased to be asked to spin some cat.

Although the mass of fibre felt soft, each hair was only millimetres long, impossible to spin by itself. Blending it on the carders with a little wool of the same colour helped it hang together. I found that really thin punis worked the best.
Some worked beautifully with the long draw - stretching out like chewing gum. others were a little less willing and so some very short draw and double-draw had to be employed as necessary
 The singles weren't as even as I'd have liked. I wanted to make sure that the proportion of cat in the yarn was as high as possible, but the higher the proportion of cat, the harder to spin and the lumpier the yarn. However, plying evened things out a little.
 This is the first two skeins, this is about half way done. When finished, around 350 yards altogether.




No comments: