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Doggy Hair Custom Orders

 

Over the holidays, I had several orders for hats made of dog hair.  Four of them were to be made from some black poodle hair that the customer sent me.  The first was a lumpy knit hat similar to one on my website but with the poodle hair instead of wool. It also included some wool and art yarn with novelty fibers added in.  No sooner than I had finished this hat than another customer emailed me wanting a black lumpy knit hat with dog hair and mohair.  The second hat included some dark brown chow hair and lots of mohair in the art yarn.  The two hats came out looking somewhat similar but definitely not the same.

Meanwhile I had three more poodle hair hats to make.  Two of them were for children and were made from a blend of the poodle hair with some wool.  They were matching but in different sizes.  The original design for this hat was on my website, but in an adult size. It included some bits of colored wool added into the yarn for the row that frames the face and the ties.  There was a tassel with a wooden bead on top.  A different color bead for each child.

The last but not least poodle hair hat was all poodle and in a long round cap style.  This was for an older adult.  The little white hairs show up in this yarn and add some nice texture and interest.  I would have liked to keep this one for myself.  I have enough hats though!

New Hats

I've made quite a few new hats since I last had time to update this blog.  The holidays kept me pretty busy, though I didn't participate in any fairs.  Instead my daughter and I took our hats out to the local Farmers Market.  I sold out of ski caps, so have made a couple of replacements for my website.  This one with the multi-color top and long tassel was one of my favorites and the first to get sold.

 

Another was a nice combination of rusty reds and browns, but it got sold before I could get photos.  So I made a new one in similar colors.  The top of this one is multi-color around the top also, but in a more subtle combination of earthy shades.  The section that looks olive green is actually more brownish.  This hat is now up on the website.





I hadn't made any ski caps in bright colors lately, so I tried using some colors that ordinarily would probably not be considered likely to go well together.  This is a sort of game I like to play sometimes - take a pile of yarns that are all different colors and make them work together somehow.  I've also used a variety of textures here, including some bright blue dyed samoyed hair.   The ties are braided rather than crocheted.  Something I've been wanting to try out.  See close up photo below.

 

Mom and Baby Hat Set

My daughter, Allie, made these two hats.  She is also a spinner and hat maker.  Both hats are made from handspun and hand dyed wool, bamboo and angora.  The baby hat fits from 3 months to 2 years, and the adult one is a medium large to extra large. She wasn't really thinking of a mom and baby matching set, but it would certainly work well that way.

The adult hat is a slouchy style that she developed last winter.  It's a flattering style for most everyone, and works well for those who have big hair and like to wear it stuffed in a hat.  The colors are subtle shades of gray, blue gray and lavender gray.

Cute Baby Hat

Most people wouldn't think of making a baby hat out of dog hair.  Sounds awful - right?  Wrong.  Certain dog breeds yield some of the softest, nicest fiber you can find anywhere.  It looks like angora, which is Very Expensive, but is free for a minimal amount of effort.  Combing the clean hair during shedding - or anytime for that matter - and saving the combings is all that's needed.  Best breeds are samoyed, malamute, husky, akita, and probably more that I don't know about.  Poodle hair is really nice, too, but doesn't have the fuzzy halo characteristic of the other breeds.  Also poodle hair clippings can be used as long as they measure at least one and a half inches, while only combings will work for the others.  The poodle hair fiber comes out looking a bit like mohair.  So here is my latest hat made from husky hair.  It's incredibly soft, not to mention hecka cute!

The gray and white are the natural color of the fiber, and the pink is Corriedale wool spun and dyed by me.  The husky hair was more difficult to spin than some I've had in the past, but seems to have been worth the effort.  It's for a newborn, but I made it a bit larger since babies grow very fast.  This hat should fit very nicely by three months and last to about one year or longer.

Spring Skull Cap

Here in Northern California we don't get much in the way of spring weather.  It just goes from very cold to very hot.  We did have a week or two of nice in between warm weather a couple of weeks ago, though, at which time a long time hat fan decided he needed an all hemp skull cap.  This is what I made for him.

 

The off white is the natural color of the hemp, and the rest is dyed.  The subtle dark green stripes really set this hat off and looked great with my friend's redhead complexion.  He put it on right away when I delivered it and was mega pleased!  Hemp is a great light weight fiber for warm weather, so I will hopefully find time to make a few more of these type caps for my website.  Custom orders are also welcome this time of year from now until fall, when I start to get busy again.

Here's another view of Marks skull cap.

Sweater Project

I haven't made a sweater in awhile, so decided it was about time.  A birthday party was being held for an old friend, and I had 'nothing to wear' - that is nothing I wanted to wear.  I hate shopping so decided to make myself a new sweater.  I opted for an old favorite pattern called a bat wing sweater.  It's knitted all in one piece, starting at one cuff, then knitting right through the body and out the other arm.  I improvised (as usual) as I went along, so it was a challenge to remember what I'd done when I started on the second half of the body.  It all worked out though, and was a big hit at the party.  It's mostly wool, with some silk, dyed samoyed hair, and art yarn stripes that add a little bit of sparkly.

 It was pretty cold where I was going - the Ft. Bragg, California coast in March can be icy cold and very windy, especially since we were in a house overlooking the ocean.  The sweater kept me very warm, though.  I tend to spin a little on the bulky side, so most of what I make in wool comes out extra warm and cozy.  It's still cold here in the Mendocino County hills, with non stop cold rain storms featuring occasional snow, hail and sleet.  So I expect I'll get some more wear out of this sweater before I put it away for the summer.

New Hat

I made a new cloche style hat today that I like.  Too late for Christmas but just fine for the New Year.  I decided as I was working on this hat that I would use unusual color combinations and fibers.  A good way to spark some creativity.

So I started the top with some pre-dyed Corriedale roving in a range of colors from orange to greenish brown.  Then I decided to accent this with some green tussah silk that I dyed sometime last year.  I had some dyed dark brown husky hair handy so added that for a bit of soft, fuzziness.  While I was in pet hair mode I grabbed some puce colored lumpy poodle hair followed by a thin stripe of dark green Suffolk wool and a couple of rows of natural medium brown Corriedale wool. Then I decided to get really interesting so made a row of some black Corriedale plied with novelty yarn in rosy red and silver.  That led to a wide stripe of rose colored Corriedale followed by another thin stripe of the green silk.  Then more of the natural brown, another thin stripe of dark green, some more orange and a wide stripe of another natural brown that I think might be Merino.  The edge ended up with green silk.  I finished it off with a rose type flower made from the same two ply wool and novelty fiber.  I'm not telling how I made the flower because it's just too silly.  But it looks great.