Spinning Misc Dog Fur

When I received a generous fiber gift, some of the fiber was dog fur of an unknown breed.  It is in some kind of batt, not a commercial roving or combed top like I've spun with before.  My wonderful benefactor received this fiber from her spinning teacher when she started out spinning.  It is perfect since I'm planning on spinning Indy's fur eventually.  I'm also not planning on spinning it particularly thin.

The fiber is arranged as a long batt with no particular orientation of the fibers.  I've been predrafting into a rolag of sorts before spinning each piece.  

I am going to spin this without dyeing it.  I see this as practice for the day when I finally spin Indy's fur that I've been saving!  I'm trying hard for as little twist as possible.  I think I'll N-ply it too.

There are some tiny bits of debris in this fur, and the fiber is so fuzzy that they are a little hard to pick out.  Is it strange to say that there is a lot of shedding when I talk about spinning dog fur?  Look at what it is doing to my pants!  (The photo doesn't quite do justice to what has been happening.  I have had to lint roll myself a few times.)

Indy was interested in the smell of this fur, but not super interested as he would have been if it were a real dog..  

This is not quite as pleasurable a spin as some of the other fibers spin.  I'm not sure why, if it is the softness or how the fiber was prepared, but it just wasn't my favorite.  With some other spinning projects I would be so excited to get to the end that I would power through, but with this project I took a few month break.  I finally finished spinning the singles, and got them all to fit on a single spindle.  

I feel like there is so little twist in this yarn that I am a little worried about it coming apart during plying.   The N-plying was so much more satisfying than the spinning of the singles.  I love the softness and the halo of this yarn.  It is a great bulky weight in a natural winter white.  

I noticed that my spinning was much thinner towards the beginning of the singles than it was when I started plying.  I think that the weight will still be bulky, but it will definitely have a good handmade feel to it.  In this thinner section I had the yarn break a few times, but with N-plying it is easy to ply it together and then these breaks are invisible with no knots!  I maybe put too much twist in the ply at the end as I was really excited to finish up this project after so long.  (So much for creating a balanced yarn...)  I soaked the yarn in hot water and then let it dry around the niddy noddy.  

If Indy weren't the same color as the yarn, I would make him something to wear out of it.  

76 wraps * 4 ft/wrap = 304 ft = 101.3 yards

7-9 WPI = Heavy Worsted Weight

Spinning Completed 5/29/13.