How to spin dog hair. How to make yarn by hand

If you or someone you know has a dog, you can try making some great wool yarn. Dog yarn has always been distinguished by its healing properties. Due to its structure and density, it creates excellent insulation and improves blood circulation.

The manufacturing process does not require much time and effort. You just need to prepare everything and study the stages of work. Usually yarn is made in several stages. We will tell you how to do this in our article.

Before you start making yarn, you need to do preparatory work. To do this, we need to perform a few steps.

If you have found a way to get it, you need to correctly collect the yarn. After every brushing dogs collect hair from the brush. Mechanically remove coarse hairs and dirt. Place the wad in a cloth bag or cardboard box.

IMPORTANT! It is better to avoid storage in plastic bags and take care of good air circulation in the bag.

Wash

After collection, it is necessary to properly wash the workpiece. To do this, place a soapy solution in a basin or bowl. Immerse the product in it, gently press it with your hand and let it soak. After that, draw clean water and get rid of the soap residue until clean water starts to run.

IMPORTANT! All actions should be performed carefully and without sharp twisting in order to avoid breaking the fibers.

Drying wool

Drying is final stage preparation. Do not artificially create conditions to speed up the process.

The best source of warm air is sunlight. Circulation is also important fresh air. If possible, simply take the workpiece outside and spread evenly on the newspaper.

Wool making

After creating several such threads, you can get to work and make various warm clothes.

Please yourself and the whole family with warm and useful things made of dog wool. Store them properly and they will serve you for a long time.

If you also have a desire to start knitting toys from dog hair, then I offer a small master class during which you will learn how to spin and understand that doing it at home is not so difficult.

It is better to sort the combed wool immediately and sort it into bags.

Some spinners do not recommend washing wool, they say, dirty is better spun. I don’t know, only our dog lived outside in winter and summer, so he had enough garbage in his wool. Yes, and the smell was still the same - a dog from her carried a mile away.

So the second step is washing. I always wash in lukewarm water with some detergent for wool. It can be "Villus", "Weasel" and so on. Someone erases even with mustard, but I have not tried it.

After the wool dries, be sure to treat it with an antistatic agent, otherwise it is highly electrified. And yes, it will smell better.

The dried wool must be prepared for spinning. For this, spinners use carded combs or special brushes. We don’t have either one or the other in the store, so I used the most budget option - I bought two brushes for dogs at the pet store and this turned out to be enough to comb the wool in a couple of evenings and prepare a tow, from which I spun yarn for their toys.

To spin the yarn, you need a spindle or a spinning wheel (manual or electric). If there is a craftswoman near you who knows how to spin, be sure to take a few lessons from her, believe me, it will be much easier than mastering this art using the Internet. At one time, while my mother was alive, I did not do this. I don't know why. Probably, it seemed that there was nothing complicated in this. Or I thought that such a skill would not be useful in life. And then she regretted it. Need to study. Necessarily. Even if you are not going to do it seriously.

But since I didn’t learn when I had the opportunity, I later had to learn on my own. Nothing happened with the spindle, there was no hand spinning wheel, so I bought such a BEP-01 electric spinning wheel in the online store:

Here she is still brand new, clean, beautiful. I paid about two and a half for it, now you can buy the same one in an online store for 3700. But I would rather find some craftsman who made an electric spinning wheel himself, because, you see, it is plastic and plastic in Africa. The coil stand has already fallen off, the drive has also broken, the machine itself has turned yellow from time to time and looks like a liquid C grade. But for now it works and thanks for that.

Learning to spin on an electric spinning wheel is easy. The main thing is to thread the thread correctly, install it as expected (at first I couldn’t figure out that it needed to be unrolled) and practice a little.

I spun dog hair on ordinary bobbin threads No. 40 or 50. The thread must be inserted from the side on the left side and pulled out through a round hole with a hook, then, as in the picture, put in a slider hook, tied to a bobbin, fasten the bobbin on a typewriter.

Be sure to raise the machine and set the desired twist (left or right). The finished machine should look like this:

Now all that's left is to spin. I must say right away that you won’t be able to get an even thread at first - somewhere it will be thicker, somewhere thinner, somewhere even bald. Here you need to adapt, practice a little, and soon you will realize that it turns out that it is not so difficult to spin dog hair at home. As the finished yarn is wound on the bobbin, move the slider hooks.

My first bobbin of dog hair yarn:

Then there will be another one, and another, and another ... After everything has been spun, you need to twist the thread, that is, connect the two together.

That's all. Now you can knit. There was a lot of yarn from Bourgeois wool, several kilograms. And we just didn’t knit with her - socks for the whole family, mittens, I knitted a hat and a bactus for myself, and my daughter even managed to knit a sweater. Still left for toys.

Our dog is no longer with us for a long time, alas, their age is short. But the memory remains. And for a long, long time, our Potbelly stove will warm the whole family with its warmth, and toys knitted from its wool will remind us of those years when a big, beautiful, kind and very beloved dog lived next to us.

Online marathon "Knitted horoscope-2020"

An online marathon in preparation for the Year of the Rat has begun on the site "Needlewomen on the Internet". At the first stage, the participants of the marathon will knit these rats and mice:

Natural wool products have a number of advantages, because they are able to retain heat better than other materials and not let moisture through, which is very important. In addition, the lightness of products made from this material is pleasantly surprising, so it is used not only to create clothes, but also for the manufacture of various kinds. decorative elements, because in how to spin wool at home, there is absolutely nothing complicated and supernatural. And what is remarkable, there are several ways to learn how to spin wool, and it is not at all necessary to purchase a special installation for this, called a spinning wheel, because in this matter you can easily get by with just one spindle, which, by the way, is also quite realistic to make with your own hands, using the available tools.

Yes, of course, work goes much faster on a professional spinning wheel, however, for beginners it is still difficult to come up with something more convenient than a spindle, even if it is homemade. To make it, you will need one wooden dowel that acts as a rotating shaft, a hook, two disks for the whorl, as well as rubber bushings with a diameter equal to the diameter of the dowel used. The scheme for assembling a home-made spindle is also not difficult, because for this it is enough just to insert a hook into a dowel pre-cut with a saw or a sharp knife and put on two bushings with disks so that they are rigidly fixed. It is noteworthy that the dimensions of such a spindle, called drip, can be changed using the usual winding of adhesive tape. As for the course of work itself, in order to understand how to spin wool on a spindle, one should first of all learn how to prepare it.

And the first thing to learn is that it is better for a beginner not to start spinning using a whole piece of wool, called a roving, and it is best to divide it into 10-12 equal parts, gradually using each of them. In addition, it is recommended to wash and dry the uncleaned wool in order to partially rid it of its natural gloss (oil), otherwise it will be extremely difficult to spin, especially if we are talking about a person who is not sufficiently trained. To do this, the fleece is washed by hand in hot water, adding powder or shampoo (it is important not to overdo it, so as not to expose the wool to repeated rinses) and leave it soaked for an average of 45 minutes. The next step involves a thorough rinse in soft water, delicate wringing with a long-haired terry towel and drying. Ideally, wool should dry in an open area in sunny, windy weather, because then all these processes take place as naturally as possible.

Particular attention should be paid to combing wool, for which it is desirable to fix it on a special machine using a professional comb (carder) or a more budgetary option in the form of a regular dog comb. It is recommended to comb the wool in only one direction, doing this until it becomes even and fluffy. In addition, you should make sure that it is completely dry, because this material tends to retain moisture for a long time, while having a completely dry appearance. After the end of the preparatory period, you can safely proceed to the process of spinning on a drop-type spindle, for which you must first fix the edge of the yarn on a metal hook mounted on a dowel. The spindle itself is recommended to be held in the right hand, and the yarn in the left (for the left-hander, on the contrary), because then it will be easy to twist the fiber.

The number of fibers drawn from the fleece during the spinning process is responsible for the thickness of the yarn being made, so the more there are, the more voluminous the woolen thread will turn out. Usually, during spinning, the fibers of the roving tend to twist, so only during the working process it will be possible to assess how thick and dense the working thread becomes. If desired, its diameter can be adjusted in one direction or another by adding or, conversely, removing an extra number of fibers.

It has long been noticed that it is the dog's coat that surpasses the sheep's in many qualities. Those who do not throw away, but process the material obtained by combing out a shaggy friend, act very wisely.

The effectiveness of this raw material has long been confirmed by traditional medicine.

In order to spin dog hair at home, you need to learn this skill constantly, acquiring the skill every day.

It's great when people can make things themselves from valuable healing yarn, while extracting great health benefits.

Medicinal qualities of yarn

Since ancient times, people have known how to properly spin dog hair. Everyone is well known medicinal properties yarn. It is widely used in the treatment of joint pain and colds. For greater benefit, knitwear is recommended to be worn exclusively on the naked body.

Yarn in contact with the skin has an irritating effect and leads to blood flow to the sore spot. Gradually, relief comes. A wide range of therapeutic and prophylactic effects of yarn on the human body has been noted.

But there are some peculiarities in how to spin dog hair.

How does the breed of dogs affect the quality of wool

The choice of wool for spinning must take into account several factors. For example, the down of a husky dog breed is hypoallergenic and odorless. It can be used for people with allergies.

I would like to know how to spin dog hair at home and what breeds of long-haired dogs are best to use. For example:

Collie is a Scottish Shepherd.
Sheltie.
Samoyed dog.

Although it has been proven that the coat of any dog is useful, the difference lies in the length of the fiber and its stiffness.

How to choose wool for spinning

It is very important to distinguish between the outer coat (long and harsh) and the undercoat (down).

Down is obtained by combing dogs. To obtain a high-quality and durable thread, it is spun by hand, using a spindle.

It is advisable to use only dog fluff, but sheared wool can also be taken. The resulting material should be well combed.

The longer the fibers, the better. It should be noted that in the end the yarn will be stiffer and more prickly than from fluff.

When combing out the wool, you can immediately lay it out in different packages in order to figure out how to spin dog hair and with what tool. In one bag put soft fluff taken from the withers and back, and in the other - everything else.

How to prepare material for spinning

How to spin dog hair at home? A difficult question for those who first decided to do this.

The very first thing to do is sort out and free the available material from debris and tangles. If there is still dirt that cannot be disassembled, then it is better to wash it. For this you need:

Place the wool in a mesh bag designed for washing wool.
Put in a container with powder, you can use liquid detergent.
Pour warm water for thirty minutes.
Remove wool from container.
Rinse with plenty of water.
Hang bags to drain water without wringing.
Lay out the material to dry for at least two days.

After this treatment, the wool is well combed. Does not smell of dirt. She is good at chess and carders.

How to comb wool

For easy and high-quality spinning, the dog's undercoat must be combed out on time and well. It is necessary to make a thorough combing no more than twice a week. The accumulated wool must be pulled by hand before spinning, or hand combs are used for this.

In small portions, the wool is placed on one comb and combed with the other comb in the opposite direction until an air ball is formed. It is necessary to repeat this several times, ensuring that the coat becomes uniform. Then remove a soft fluffy lump from the cheese. The resulting lumps are collected in one large tow. Tows are made in different sizes, to whom it is convenient.

The combing process will go faster if you use a drum carder.

Looking at the resulting air tow, it becomes clear how to spin dog hair.

What spinning methods are used at home

Depending on what tool will be used for spinning, it will be necessary to attach a tow.

There are several methods for spinning dog hair:

Hand spinning without tools.
Handmade with a spindle and a wooden spinning wheel.
With the help of a mechanical spinning wheel with a pedal.
Using an electric spinner.

How to spin dog hair with at least one of these methods?

It is best to start with hand spinning. This method will help you visually see how the thread is twisted, how many turns you need to make in order to get an even yarn of a certain thickness and strength.

What types of spinning can be used at home

Once the dog hair has been combed and the roving is ready for spinning, you can start creating yarn.

According to the technique of execution, yarn can be divided into three types:

thread based.
Single.
Twisted.

Warp spinning is used when yarn is made from short fibres. To do this, you can use cotton or. During spinning, the fluff is twisted around the warp, and not vice versa. You need to make sure the opposite doesn't happen. If the yarn is too twisted, then you can try to fix it. Rewind the resulting thread several times into balls, back and forth.

Can be rewound on a spinning wheel in the opposite direction. It is recognized that spinning with a warp is much easier than without the use of an additional thread.

Spinning dog hair without a warp is used when yarn is made from hair from long-haired dog breeds. A single thread is obtained by drawing a fiber from a tow and twisting it. Such a thread can not be twisted.

Knotting means twisting two strands into one.

You can mix strands obtained from different dogs, as long as they fit in thickness and preferably in softness.

Knitted yarn differs in volume and looks more even in a knitted fabric.

An easy way to spin without a spinning wheel

If there is no spinning wheel at home, but there is dog hair, and you really want to spin it, then the question certainly arises of how to spin dog hair without a spinning wheel. There is a way out, you need to take a tow and attach it to something.

For example, tie a skein of wool to a stick or to the back of a chair and try spinning. To do this, you need to slowly pull out a thin thread of the same thickness from the tow and twist it constantly, otherwise it may break. After receiving the yarn desired length, thickness and twist, you need to wind it on a spindle. Then continue in the same order. When the ball has become about the size of a fist, the thread should be cut off.

You can not tie the tow to the chair.

Before spinning dog hair with a spindle, you need to take a ball of fluff in left hand. With your right hand, pull the thread out of the lump, while twisting. In this case, the spindle should be on a plate or some kind of bowl with a flat bottom without a recess. In this case, the twisting of the strand occurs quickly. If the thread was spun thin, and suddenly a thickening appeared, then it must be untwisted and straightened.

Next, spin about fifty centimeters and wind the resulting yarn onto a spindle. Tie the thread with a fixing knot at the top of the spindle. Thus, continue to pull and twist the thread until the tow for spinning is finished.

When they don’t know how to learn how to spin dog hair with a spindle, you can try using a flat wooden stick or pencil. All other actions are the same. Pull the thread out of the tow, twist and wind it around the middle of a pencil or stick.

Spinning on a spinning wheel with a spindle

The most famous grandmother's version of spinning dog wool by hand at home. The spinning wheel is placed on a stable surface, such as a stool or bench.

A hand spinning wheel consists of a vertical part, a tow is attached to it, and a horizontal part (bottom), where the spinner sits.

After fixing the fluff on the spinning wheel, you need to pick up the spindle. It is best to attach fluff to the spinning wheel with an elastic band. Tie a cotton thread to the middle part of the spindle and wind it clockwise. The tow should be on the left side of the hand. They begin to pull the fibers from the tow with three fingers of the left hand. Connect the cotton thread to the strand and at the same time rotate the spindle clockwise. Thus, the thread was spliced with a strand. Secure the twisted strand at the top of the spindle with a locking knot so that the thread does not fall off when rotated. Continue to rotate with your right hand, slowly releasing a small amount of fluff from the tow for twisting with your left. At the end of spinning, rewind the thread from the spindle into a ball.

For knitting use yarn in two additions. To do this, you need to connect two threads and twist them.

Spinning dog hair by hand is quite difficult and time consuming. In order to get high-quality thread, you need to have experience in spinning. Therefore, to help the spinner, a spinning wheel with a wheel was invented, which has come down to our days.

Wooden self-spinning wheel helps to spin quickly

The foot-operated mechanical self-spinning wheel has become a household helper for women. The spinner no longer spins the spindle, it simply does not exist. Pressing the pedal with your foot sets the spinning wheel in motion.

The tow is attached to a stick or a spinning wheel. A cotton thread is attached to the spool of a self-spinning wheel and passed through the hooks of the bobbin. It must be connected with a strand of tow. Pulling a small strip of wool from the tow with your left hand, put it on a cotton thread. At the same time, they begin to rotate the spinning wheel, pressing the foot on the pedal. The process of twisting the thread and winding it on the spool begins. At this point, you need to look to see if the thread is twisted too much.

If nevertheless this happened, then you need to manually pull the thread and unwind it in reverse side. The speed of the spinning wheel is controlled by a pedal. The more you press the pedal, the faster the wheel spins.

The tension of the thread is regulated by belts that are stretched over the sinuses of the wheel and on the pulley. The spinning process is fast. Spinning dog hair, like any other, on a mechanical spinning wheel is not very easy, it requires certain skills.

Electric spinning wheels spin well and quickly

The invention of the electric spinning wheel has a number of advantages. This is compactness and speed. Experts say that when working on it, almost no skills are required. The principle of forming a thread from wool is the same for spinning wheels - a strand is pulled out of a tow, twisted and wound into a ball.

Then the finished yarn must be knotted. If there is no such function on the spinning wheel, then you can twist it manually on a spindle.

The photo shows what this device looks like. We spin dog hair on an electric spinning wheel in the same way as in other cases - separating small pieces of combed wool and twisting them.

How to straighten yarn with a winder

To further align the thread and avoid distortions when knitting, it must be wound into a skein using a winder. A winder is a device necessary for winding yarn into a skein. In other words, it is called sparrows.

The dried yarn must be put on the horns of the winder and wound into balls. Wonderful dog hair yarn is ready to use.

How to wash finished yarn

Tie the rewound yarn in several places and send it to the wash:

Place the skein in a container with warm water and liquid detergent.
You need to wash carefully.
Rinse in water with hair balm.
The last thorough rinsing should be carried out in a large amount of water with the addition of a few drops of essential oil.

Wool does not need to be pressed. Hang the skein on clean gauze or on a clothesline. As it dries, the coat takes on a wavy appearance. In order for the yarn to straighten well, it must be pulled back with a weight. Gradually, the load can be added so that the thread is smoother.

To have enough hair, collect it after each combing of the dog. You can knit warm clothes for loved ones with your own hands, since this wool is also healing. The pleasure of work and the resulting handmade products will last a long time. The best thing to do is to leave the pet's down and learn the material, how to spin yarn from dog hair.

Mankind has long learned to use the woolen cover of domestic animals for their needs. Animals were sheared, wool was prepared, and later things were knitted from yarn, fabric was made. Unlike today When everything is made with special equipment, except for shearing cattle, our ancestors made yarn by hand.

The process was quite lengthy and labor intensive. To process the sheared fur into a finished thread, a lot of time was spent at the spinning wheel. Not without reason in Russian fairy tales, girls and women are constantly described sitting behind this device.

The coat is heterogeneous, and consists of fluff, soft and guard hairs. If the awn is not separated, then the final product made from such raw materials will be prickly and unpleasant. Therefore, in order to avoid manual sorting, first “combing” is carried out, obtaining the most delicate downy material tow. Weightless Orenburg shawls are made from it. In the future, during the haircut, I capture a little more than half the length of the hair.

Such material is also quite soft, easy to process and forms the basis for simple yarn. It was combed, getting rid of various natural debris. Sometimes, before spinning, the raw material was soaked to give softer properties, followed by drying in the sun. The wool remaining after the final shearing is either combed to remove the outer hair, followed by soaking and drying, or without treatment, it is put on a rough material.

Spinning accessories

Before the automation of the process, only two main tools were used: a spindle made of wood and a weight for a spinning wheel (spindle). Often at home they did without it.

To simplify the process and make it more convenient, they used a board (spinning wheel) fixed at the level of the face.

Manufacturing technology

A small fur ball of tows was tied to a spinning board.
A small strand of wool was carefully pulled out, up to 5 centimeters wide and up to 10 long.
I twisted it with the help of a spindle into a thread until the moment when the thread begins to gather in rings.
The finished piece was fixed on a spinning wheel at one end.
The next piece of fluff was connected to the free end and twisted with a spindle until rings were formed.
Further, the process also occurs, gradually adding new portions of the tow.
Excess thread that interferes with work is wound on a spinning wheel.

When a fairly large amount of finished material is formed, it is twisted into a ball and continues to be spun again. If the thread broke in the process, its ends were moistened, a little fluff was added and twisted again.

In order to obtain a multi-colored, practical material for future clothing in which one could work, various natural dyes were used. As a rule, these were decoctions of plants that give the desired color, but sometimes mineral compounds were used, like ocher.

After preparing the sheared wool coat, it was placed in a special vat with ready-made dye, and boiled for some time. After drying, they carried out another comb to soften and unravel the tow. But most of all, the dazzling White color finished yarn.

As you can see, it was quite a long and painstaking work. But, having spent so much energy and so much time, our ancestors provided themselves not only with warm clothes for cold winters, but also with the most exquisite things that still amaze the whole world with their quality and originality of execution. It would be useful to recall the Orenburg and Pavlovo-Posad products, which are of high value and demand in Western countries.