Some Notes on Spinning

I made a piece of fabric over the last weekend. Completely with things I had lying around the house. It is a very small piece of fabric, hemmed on my sewing machine and it may not seem like much, but as I go through the process I hope you will see why I find it to be important.

a swatch of gray fabric

Step 1: Get a dog?

So, this project was only possible thanks to Atlas. He is a 70kg (135 lbs) Bernersennenhund/Pyrenäen cross (Bernese Mountain Dog/Great Pyreneese), and the source of that swatch of fabric up there. a big o' Doggo looking at the Camera My spouse was kind enough to save his fur while grooming him for me to turn into fabric, yarn, and string. I have a whole bag of the stuff, but this is a nice fluffy pile: a pile of Atlas Fur

Step 2: Eat too much Asian carryout and make a spindle.

Almost everything I used for this project is made of yarn and chopsticks. Why? Because I had them. I have used fancy spinning wheels in the past, but a drop spindle is the most period accurate for Æthelric. I plan to go out to a park, find a nice straight stick, and try making a more period-appropriate spindle. For now, I have chopstick spindle. a drop spindle made of chopsticks There may be some purists out there reading this cringing that I have not discussed washing or carding this fur. That is because I didn’t! :D

I will wash the fabric, and yarn if I ply it to get the oils out. I remove anything else I find in his fur while spinning. As fur (ha) carding, I do not see a need to when spinning dog fur. I have carded the fur in the past, and I haven’t found a lot of difference in how it spins. This seems to work well enough.

For what it’s worth, I do tuft it out by hand before spinning it, so that does some alignment of the fur.

The spindle is made by putting two pairs of chopsticks at a 90 degree angle to each other around a central spindle. I did carve some notches in the central staff of the spindle to keep them in position. I kept the chopsticks unbroken on one side, and then used hair ties (yarn lashing would work here) on the open ends to hold them onto the spindle by tension.

Step 3: MORE CHOPSTICKS!

After spinning the fur on the drop spindle, I warped up a little frame loom that I lashed together with yarn and chopsticks. (Chopsticks are a fantastic tool. I don’t know what to tell you.) I used a file to make some notches 5mm apart to keep the threads sorted. (I also used a chopstick as a shuttle. :D)

a loom made of chopsticks

On this loom, I wove the sample fabric above with a simple plain-weave pattern. (For those not in the loop on that, a plain weave is over-under-over-under and is the simplest form of weave.)

Some Thoughts

I really like Fibre Arts, so I am a bit biased, but having a hand-spun, hand-woven swatch of test fabric is pretty amazing to me. I do plan to make a tunic this way after I have moved to more permanent housing and can set up a warp-weighted loom. For right now though, I have plenty of work just spinning the threads!

The complete set of tools and a rough order of the fabric was created were pretty simple to make, and if you have a dog and a free weekend, it might be worth giving a try! a complete set of fabric making tools made with chopsticks, yarn, and dog fur.