Spinning Husky

This is Nikki.  Nikki is a 10 year old Siberian Husky. 

Nikki hasn't had much formal training.  She's been a natural "teacher" dog for lots of fosters and puppies that have boarded with us.  The thing Nikki is best at, though, is shedding.  She's a natural at that, too.

She's got a beautiful reddish coat and she leaves it behind wherever she goes.

Since I don't have carpeting here in the new house, Husky-fur dust bunnies blow around everywhere.  I guess in the old house, the carpeting caught it all.

I've been itching to spin something directly off of an animal and my alpacas won't be sheared until springtime.  So, I'm spinning dog hair.

This box from one brushing session that lasted about 10 minutes.  That's all she would put up with.  The fur is about 6 inches deep in the box.

Before it can be spun, it has to be hand carded to get the fibers to go all the same way.

These are my brand new hand carders.  I've never worked with carders before and there's been a definite learning curve. They almost look like dog slicker brushes.  Next to the carders are the finished "rolags" of Nikki's fur.  These are what come off the carders after you've run the fur through a few times.

Once I got some rolags ready, I couldn't wait to start spinning.

So, here's what it looks like on the spinning wheel.  It almost comes out looking like twine.  I'm not sure what I'm going to make out of it yet.  Hopefully I'll have a better idea when I get a couple of bobbins of yarn spun up.