Wednesday, October 19, 2011

What to Do with Dog Hair

Yes, some dogs are still shedding...and my e-friend Juniper Russo just published an article about what to do with all that free, usable fur:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9036137/5_green_ways_to_dispose_of_dog_hair.html?cat=53

If Yahoo hadn't purged my articles from Associated Content, she would have been able to link to an article of mine that explained more about how to knit, spin, weave, crochet, or embroider with pet fur. Of course you're not going to use your pet's whole coat in the way Cruella DeVille planned to do. What you do, only with very shaggy pets at this time of year, is cuddle, pet, and groom the mats of dead hair out of your fluffy friends' coats, only now you have something constructive to do with the hair after harvesting it.

If you live with a lot of very hairy cats and dogs you would harvest enough fibre to make into a sweater, but it'd be an awfully warm sweater...cat and dog hair is actually warmer than wool, when they're spun the same way. Better just to knit a border around the cuff of a wool or mohair sweater with your pet's fur and, if you have enough material left, use it to knit a pet blanket.

Even in spring most pets won't yield enough fur to make a full-sized sweater or blanket anyway. What I've collected from the entire Patchnose cat clan, after grooming them and saving their fur for years, is about enough to knit borders around two sweater cuffs and one blanket. Of course a large, long-haired cat like Graybelle shed more hair in part of one spring than my short-haired cat family have shed in four springs and summers. From a Collie or English Sheepdog you might get a dog blanket's worth of pure dog-hair yarn in one year.

Anyway, after reading Juniper's article you not only have access to a full-length book about Knitting with Dog Hair, you'll also have four other Green options for dealing with the stuff some dogs provide to their humans in such abundant quantities. And you'll also be contributing to the support of an adorable, quirky, fatherless toddler, since AC pays writers per page view.

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