[spinning] Carding Siberian Husky Fur

Many years ago a friend gave me a bag of dog fur. He has a pack of Siberian Huskies for sledding and an abundance of fur since this breed sheds it's undercoat twice a year. I brought the fur home and Googled the best way to wash it: stuffed into panty hose, soaked in a tub, dried in the sun. It's been so long but I finally took it out this weekend to card it into batts*. 

*Okay, WEBS is having their annual anniversary sale and I've been rummaging through my stash of fiber and yarn, distracting and convincing myself that I don't need any of the beautiful things that they're offering at ridiculously reduced prices... must... resist...

The drum carder, secured it to a table:

I had lots of random merino in my stash to blend with the fur- white, yellow, brown, three shades of blue. I was going to use it all, at a ratio of 4 parts wool to 1 part fur. On average, everything I blended was 20 - 25% fur. The supplies here are 2 oz merino, 0.5 oz fur (half of the contents of the panty hose snake), a long knitting needle to help take the fiber off the drum and a slicker brush for cleaning up the drums.

I'm no expert at carding, having only seen a handful of YouTube videos and using this drum carder twice in the past. I just did what I thought made sense. The staple of the fur is short- only about an inch. So, I would lay down a layer of merino, add the fur, add another layer of merino. Then blend this again because if there's anything I learned from all the instructional videos, it's that "once is never enough" when you use a drum carder.

The first layer of wool:

Then feed in the fur:

 

Kind of lump at first:

But things start to smooth out (also, lots of fur gets picked up by the smaller drum- I used to slicker brush to repeatedly take this fiber off and feed it back into the carder):

Add another layer of blue:

Use the knitting needle to separate the fiber on the carder, so that you can peel the whole layer off. If someone would like to give me an ice pick as a present, that would be so much better than this aluminum needle (which has started to bend). I promise I wonder consider an ice pick delivered in the mail as a threat.

Then peel:

This wool-fur-wool sandwich is then separated into strips and fed back into the drum carder.

If "once is never enough" then "twice is good enough for lazy people". The fiber is more uniformly blended:

If I were going to sell this or give it away as a gift, I'd probably run it through the carder again but, hey, I'm the one spinning it and I really don't have many F's to give. 

Here is the fiber ready to spin. Such a soft cloud. SO SOFT.

First time spinning:

Adding a lot of twist to help lock down the fur. Will process all of the yarn as two-ply. This picture is my practice yarn- I've spun more and the plies are a lighter weight and will be a finer yarn.

Once it's all spun and washed, I'll knit something. I can't wait to see what kind of halo anything knit with this yarn has.