A Humorous, ‘Tongue In Cheek’ Guide To Harvesting Your Pet Fur
Do you love DIY? Dream about knitting? Have a long-haired pet handy? Fantastic!.. come with us as we combine your love of ‘doing it yourself’ and knitting to create some superbly cheap and (mostly) trauma free DIY knitting yarn using ‘Fluffy the kitten’, ‘Thumper the bunny’ or any other long-haired pet º you possess!
Pet Yarn Production – What You Need
If you’re going to get into production of superbly cheap and sustainable pet yarn for knitting then you’re going to need some essential equipment. At the very least, you’re going to need some way of extracting fur from your pet (¹electric clippers), a pair of stout leather gloves, eye and face protection plus of course a knitting loom. If you don’t possess a knitting loom or any other of these items then remember… necessity is the mother of invention so look for inventive ways of doing the same job… yarn is basically twisted strands of fur so I’m sure there is something you can knock up!
First step in the production of pet yarn would be the actual extraction of the pet fur. If you don’t want to use the quick and easy way of using normal household electric clippers then you can use a pet comb to extract the fur. This can produce large quantities of fur from long-haired pets – perfect for creating superbly soft yarn you can use for knitting.
I’ve Got Fur! What Now?
Once you have got a nice big ball of fur then you really need to think about cleaning it. Pet fur is typically covered in all sorts of nasties which (²especially if you’re a pet allergy sufferer) you need to remove before attempting to further handle the pet fur.
Plenty of hot water and soap generally works and if your animal has the potential for fleas, use a good flea shampoo too. The last thing you want is a cardigan with additional crawly bits!
OK… All Washed.
Now that you have some nice clean fur to work with, you’re going to have to start to pick out the fur. You can use a very fine comb for this – the idea is to get all of the strands of fur going in the same direction so that you can then tease out the strands and create a thread. In the traditional production of wool, spinning oil is added which aids the slip of the individual strands against each other and this also helps the individual strands to stick together. I’m guessing you don’t have any spinning oil handy, so resist the temptation to use a ³well known household spray-on lubricant and use olive oil instead – it’s much better for your health and will give a lovely ‘just baked’ smell.
Once you have teased out your pet hair, you can now start to spin the pet hair into strands. These strands form the basis of your pet hair wool. If you don’t have access to a spinning loom (recommended) then you can improvise with a manual drill from your toolbox (you did say you like DIY right!). Advisory: Under no circumstances try to use your electric hammer drill for this. It won’t work too well and the loss of fingers may be a real danger, even if you’ve ‘put it on a low speed’.
Get one of your friends to hold the teased ball of pet fur whilst you slowly spin the drill. You’ll of course have to fashion some way of gripping the pet fur on the drill. Any sticky tape will work here, but do bear in mind that using superglue probably isn’t the best of ideas, especially if you don’t want a semi-permanent reminder that you have a pet with long fur…
Fantastic! I have a bit of spun pet fur!
Whoa! Hold on there cowboy… you don’t have pet fur knitting yarn just yet!
Traditionally, yarns are made from many different strands of spun fur. You’re now going to have to spin together at least two yarns – this increases strength of the yarn and means that you have a chance of making that jumper or pair of socks you’ve been dreaming about.
Again employ your handy drill and spin the two threads together. More complex yarns are actually woven together so reply three or more ‘plies’ so you’re really going to have to harvest that kitty…
º Doesn’t work well with Lynx, Bear or any other type of carnivorous mammal with long claws and bitey incisors for some reason, you have been warned!
¹ Works well for sheep, so thought we would mention it, however your kitty may be mightily unimpressed with this method. Eye, hand and face protection may come in handy here, as may ready transport to the emergency department of your choice.
² In this case we’d have to ask… why do you have a pet?!
³ WD-40 etc… Unless you really want to be covered in petrochemicals.
| If you don’t think harvesting your kitty is a good idea (and we can’t say that we’d blame you!), then you can always visit Pack Lane Wool – they have a large range of knitting yarns including the insanely popular Sirdar Indie, Twilleys Yarn and Wendy Yarns. |