I must admit to being a procrastinator. As with most procrastinators, the things I tend to put off doing as long as possible are those things that must be done and yet they are things that I really do not want to waste time doing. For me, vacuuming is one such thing - the machine is loud and heavy and running it takes time that could be better spent in other pursuits such as making yarn. So I really, really tend to procrastinate on the vacuuming as long as possible. Which means that yes, I do have some dust bunnies.
One night lat week I was happily spinning away while watching TV when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted some strange critter running through the room. The creature was the wrong color and too big to be one of the cats; too small and also the wrong color to be one of the dogs.
Since I live in the country, I wondered if a racoon or some other wild animal had gotten into the house and went to investigate. What I found was a dust bunny. A rather large dust bunny, actually more like a dust elephant. Well, when your dust bunnies are as large as elephants, it might be time to actually break down, stop procrastinating and vacuum. Or maybe not.
I picked up the dust bunny and was halfway to the wastebasket with it when it hit me - this thing is full of fibers! Fibers equal something to spin. If the dust bunny could be spun, then dust bunnies would qualify as “fiber producing animals” and vacuuming them up would be inhumane.
Have I mentioned that I hate vacuuming?
An examination of my prize dust bunny showed that it was composed of dog hair, cat hair, short bits of wool, a bit of human hair, some miscellaneous unidentifiable fibers, a lot of bits of vegetable matter (vm), and a lot of...well...dust. Hmmm...interesting. I rounded up a herd of dust bunnies and set to work. I decided to pick it, card it, and spin it woolen. Picking was a dusty matter and it was impossible to remove all of the vm. Carding removed a bit more of the vm though there was still a lot left in the batt. I picked a bit more before rolling the batt into a woolen rolag. I then spun the fibers woolen but found myself stopping with each draw to pick out yet more vm. Aha! Dust bunnies can be spun and must be protected from those predatory vacuum cleaners.
The resulting dust bunny yarn is strong but quite hairy and has a tendency to halo. Since dog hair tends to develop a nice halo much like angora, this was expected due to the large percentage of dog hair in the blend. But this is not the nice, soft, angora type of halo - nope, this halo is coarse and quite picky. Not a yarn anyone would want next to their skin. What this yarn would be useful for is problematic - my best thought to date is tabby weft for rug weaving.
Even though I proved that dust bunnies are “fiber animals” and that their “fur” makes useful yarn,I did fail to convince my husband that dust bunnies deserve to be protected from the vacuum cleaner.
Left: Dust bunny rolag
Right: Dust bunny yarn
