Spinning Short Fibers

Often when I am doing custom spinning of dog hair, I have to work with short fibers. I'm talking about fibers less than 1 inch long. In these cases, I have found that blending those fibers with wool or another long fiber will provide a good base for the yarn. The longer fibers help the yarn stay together and hold the shorter fibers in place.



I recently completed spinning Airedale fiber which was pretty short. I started out with 8 oz of dog hair and began blending in a wool that matched the base color of the dog hair. It didn't take much, only 2 oz but it made spinning the dog hair that much easier to do.



I first carded the wool then split up the batts. I hand-picked the dog hair after it was washed and dry then laid a layer on the take-up trough of my drum carder. I then laid a piece of of the carded wool batt ontop and began carding.



Once the dog hair was transferred to the carder I added more underneath the wool batt until everything was on the carder. I pulled the batt off, then repeated the process once more. I then ran the entire batt through the carder a couple more times to really blend the fibers together.



The end result I think turned out much better than if I had tried to spin the dog hair by itself. Also, because I blended a long fiber with the short fibers I didn't have to put more twist in the yarn than usual to keep the yarn together. This allowed the yarn to be airy and have some bounce instead of being too dense and having a solid feel to it.



Another tip I have is if your yarn comes out a bit mroe scratchy than you wanted due to the fibers used, try washing the yarn in hair conditioner. Hey, it works for us right? I've found that it won't completely soften a harsh fiber, but it can improve it somewhat. And it smells pretty good afterwards too!