Heavy Weather

It's been a wet week, and the forecast is for rain, more rain, storms and thunderstorms every single day (even the partly sunny ones) until at least the middle of July.  The following week is Art Fair week in Ann Arbor, so more rain is virtually guaranteed.  In short, it's wet.  And that means ... mosquitoes.  Which in turn means I can't set foot outside my house, since the little buggers looooove me.  Pip is protected from heartworm, but he can still suffer the agony of the itch.  So we try to time our daily constitutional to miss the worst of the buggy activity, but there seems to be no time of day or night that they're not out in force.  So much for summer.

So we sit in the house and watch the rain, and today I watched a trio of bunnies cavorting in my neighbor's back yard.  When I moved here 20 years ago there were lots of bunnies -- many of them living under my deck -- but over time they disappeared.  Now they're coming back.  And I think they're living under my lawn this time around.  It's awfully spongy, and I'm anticipating major subsidence eventually, but somehow I can't find it in me to be upset about it.  My subdivision was built on their turf, and we need to find a way to coexist.  Anyway, Pip managed to miss the whole thing, and I know he would have enjoyed it immensely.

Pip, by the way, is my 4-year-old sheltie boy.  His registered name is Wyndmyst Ifanwy Hobbit-Forming and his call name is Pippin (but I mostly call him Pip) after Peregrine Took.  I knew from the start that he had to have a Hobbit name, and he rapidly showed himself to be very much like Pippin as portrayed by Billy Boyd in the LOTR movies, so he mostly named himself.  Besides, there are other connotations to the word "pip" that fit oh-so-perfectly.  For instance, if I say "he's a real pip!" most people will have a pretty good idea of what I mean.

OK, so I'm new at this, but here's a picture of the little guy.  I think the picture illustrates what I've said above, but it also shows how handsome he is, and how adorable.  He is also highly unusual for a sheltie in that he doesn't bark.  When he thinks there's a need, he'll bark, but not excessively, and otherwise, he's quiet.  After 40-plus years with shelties, I'm having trouble adjusting to the silence -- they're a barky breed, and I usually have more than one.  If things go according to schedule, I'll probably adopt another sheltie by the end of next year, and we'll return to a noisier ambiance chez Owens.  Meanwhile, I plan to enjoy the current peace and quiet.

The other thing Pip doesn't do is shed.  That would be a plus for just about anyone else who lives with shelties, but for me it's anything but.  I'm a spinner, and I specialize in dog hair.  Especially sheltie.  Shelties are a double-coated breed and they shed like crazy.  How ironic that my own dog doesn't!

Not that I lack fiber to spin: I have bags and baskets full of sheltie hair waiting to be made into yarn and then fashioned into items for sale for sheltie rescue.  (I'm ignoring all the bins of wool and silk and cotton and other fibers that I'm, well, ignoring.)  The most recent is the roving made from my sweet Lexi, who died three months ago.  So I've plenty to keep me busy until Pip finally decides to put out.   

So why am I doing this?

Mainly, I suppose, because it seems an awful lot of people have said I should.  As the title suggests,  this blog will mainly be about dogs -- and that will include my passion for the fiber arts: spinning, knitting, crocheting, and to a lesser extent weaving and felting, primarily using dog hair.  I've been doing custom spinning for over a decade, making yarn and keepsake objects for people from their dogs' hair.  The idea isn't new: the Victorians practiced something similar, with braided keepsakes from the hair of deceased loved ones.  I know how the Victorians felt: I have a lock of my father's hair, clipped from his head when he was a year old in 1912, and it's the only physical connection to him that I have.

I learned to spin for that reason: so I could have a tangible, physical connection to my shelties when they "went to the Bridge" as dog people say.  I've been knitting for almost 60 years, and crocheting for almost as long, and I thought why not learn to spin so I can make things from my own dogs' hair?  Anyone who's lived with even one sheltie knows they shed like mad, and it's all downy soft undercoat, which most people bag up and toss in the trash.  Spinners call dog hair "chiengora" because it's almost as soft as the bunny version (angora).  The best breeds are the double coated ones, the herding dogs and the BWDs ("Big White Dogs") like Great Pyrs, the northern breeds (Samoyeds, Malamutes, Siberians and so on) but there are plenty of other breeds -- and a lot of mixed breeds as well -- that spin up beautifully.

Eventually I'll take the time to post some pictures of some of the beautiful yarn I've gotten from shelties across America (it helps to belong to an e-mail list!) and some of the items I've made from it.  But for now, just getting the blog up and running will have to suffice.