Not hard at all. The only thing you need is the right kind of pet.
So goldfish and budgies are right out.
The best pets are the fluffy ones – the ones that grow a decent undercoat in winter. Huskies are good, and so are long-hair cats like Maine Coons. Also, Angora bunnies, and some lionheads, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some guinea pigs and ferrets didn’t produce small, usable amounts of undercoat.
The fluff can be collected through normal grooming. Keep it in a clean, sealable plastic bag until you have enough. When you have about 100g/4oz, you can try removing the hairs from the fluff, wash (if you don’t like spinning “in the grease”) and card, and spin.
This first spinning effort will tell you whether the fluff is worth spinning on its own – some of it may be too short – or whether you’d be better combining it with a longer fibre, like wool or cotton.
Here’s some people who made clothing from their dogs’ hair:
Angora bunnies produce Angora wool, that fluffy, soft stuff that makes gorgeous, expensive sweaters, so that’s pretty mainstream and commercial. However, here’s a video of a woman who keeps Angora rabbits (and poodles), showing the process of producing items from bunny to needle, which would be the same for any other animal fibre:
Sheep, not sheeps. It’s one of those weird English words that doesn’t take a ‘s’ when plural.
Technically, yes-ish. Wool is a winter undercoat which, in primitive sheep, is shed in spring. Most modern sheep have been bred to not shed their wool, although the genes do still exist in commercial breeds and one can often see sheep looking a bit ragged at this time of year, with clumps of wool coming away from their summer coat.
Not all sheep grow wool, and other members of the Caprinae family, such as Cashmere and Angora goats, do. Indeed, the undercoat of Angora goats, mohair, is so routinely sold as ‘wool’ – particularly in suits – that there’s no point in differentiating it now.
Confusingly, Angora rabbits, source of Angora fibre, not only have the name of the goat that does produce wool which is called mohair, but were originally known as wooled rabbits. (It’s also possible to spin Angora cat hair, but enough already).
So, there’s no reason why the undercoat of other animals cannot be called wool, too. However, in practice, these other fibres tend to take the name of the animal it comes from: alpaca, llama, guanaco, vicuna, camel, yak, bison, chinchilla, mink, possum. And finally, qivuit, from the musk-ox.
But if the fibre is from a plant, like cotton or linen, or is synthetic such as nylon or polyester, it is NOT wool, and I will get very sharp with you if you call it wool.
These yarns are usually called thick-and-thin yarns, or occasionally slubby yarns, though the latter usually means the yarn is largely of one thickness with frequent, irregular ‘bobbly’ bits.
Thick-and-thin yarns come in various weights from thread to super-bulky. You can knit any pattern that uses the same weight and gauge as your thick-and-thin yarn. This is because you will be using the appropriate size of needle. The ‘thin’ bits might look a little lacey, or the ‘thick’ bits may look bunched up, but your fabric will even itself out over all.
Thick-and-thin yarns are particularly good at injecting life and movement into otherwise dull and plain knitting. They transform boring stretches of stockinette or garter stitch into an interesting-looking fabric. Some people love the rustic, homespun, home-made look they give to otherwise ordinary garments, and they certainly liven up a basic scarf or cowl. They’re also much loved by independent hand-dyers for their more exotic variegated dyes, so you may well have a virtually unique item at the end of your knitting.
It’s possible to reverse shrinking, to a certain extent. The type of garment shrunk matters, as does the degree of shrinkage. The garment is, however, unlikely to recover to its former glory. The simpler the garment, the better the outcome: for example, a scarf or shawl will stretch out better than a glove or jumper. In general, it’s not worth trying this on baby garments: put them on one of the baby’s dolls or teddies instead.
The technique involves wetting the garment thoroughly and stretching it. You’ll need a lot of muscle power to do the stretching – you are, after all, tearing the bonds between the fibres that have snagged together. The garment should be pinned out at its maximum dimensions and be allowed to dry naturally. It’s sometimes possible to repeat this procedure for improved results, but the downside is that the fibres will weaken, and you may tear holes in it.
If this fails, you could gift it to someone whom it will fit! Alternatively, it could be cut up for use as placemats, cushions, or even blankets.
Cotton yarn expands when washed. It lacks the little scales that wool has, which can interlock causing shrinkage. So that fitted cotton sweater you bought will most likely become a baggy sweater after the first wash.
A blend of cotton and wool will, on balance, retain its shape – the cotton expanding and the wool shrinking should cancel each other out, although a lot depends on the relative composition.
Cotton wool pads – the kind of thing you take your makeup off with – will appear to shrink, but that’s only because they’re floofed up with air in the package. As soon as they get damp – with water or makeup remover – the air gets removed, and you get a flat pad of cotton.
Firstly, you need to know that wool garments do NOT need to be washed often. Hang them outside or beside an open window for a few hours after wearing – that’s all that’s needed mostly. Really: wool wicks off sweat and kills the BO bugs. Soiling can be scraped off carefully when dry, then shake out the garment and put it straight back on. For those particularly nasty stains, like red wine or tomato sauce, most can be soaked off on a very soapy solution followed if necessary with a rinse in a white vinegar solution. If any staining remains, you can reduce its visibility by gently plucking out some of the stained fibres. Never, ever use bleach on wool: it causes wool to melt and disappear.
So. Given that you only need to clean that pure wool suit or sweater every other month, you could consider getting it professionally cleaned. If, like me, even this small splurge sets your Scottish ancestors birling out of their graves to wail and groan at you of a night, you can hand-wash it on cool-ish water with a suitable wool washing agent (okay, okay Great-uncle Hamish, back in your box) or the cheapskate option, shampoo – for dry hair if possible. If your deceased Irish granny is giving you nocturnal earache about how she didn’t work three jobs to scrimp and save so that her grandchildren could wash their clothes by hand, you could use the wool programme on your washing machine. Again: really. Mine have survived front-loaders and top-loaders.
Then, the issue is the drying thereof. Unless the wool is “superwash” – it should say on the label – no tumble driers. Instead, roll the garment in a bath towel and squeeze, don’t wring the excess water out. Lay it out flat and pulled into shape and leave it somewhere airy and/or warm (but not in direct sunlight, or close to a heat source).
Because painting ourselves blue turned out to be a tad redundant?
Because somewhere along the route out of Africa, we figured out that wearing skins meant a dead animal who couldn’t provide us with milk, whereas wearing fleece meant a living animal AND more baby animals who could provide fleece and milk?
Because it’s insulating, waterproof, fireproof, and easy to manipulate into textiles?
Because a renewable resource is better than polluting the planet with plastic fibres derived from non-renewable fossil fuels?
Most people who claim to be allergic to wool have simply been wearing (or were forced to wear) wool that is not fit for purpose.
Wool comes in many qualities, from soft enough for baby skin (e.g., most merino, Blue-faced Leicester, Wensleydale) to fire- and chemical-resistant industrial carpeting. Historically, people wore underwear in the softer wools,
and outerwear in progressively rougher wool, up to Melton fulled twill for weather-resistant coats. Even then, there were differences: trousers or skirts for indoor wear were typically in softer wool, and usually worsted-spun*; outdoor clothing was more usually in sturdier, coarser wools, often blended with mohair, woollen-spun*, and ideally should be lined if you’re not wearing your merino long-johns or cotton petticoat underneath.
In addition, a lot of these ‘wool allergies’ come from a time when wool blends became A Thing because (1) the wool industry was going into decline and (2) more people had washing machines and wanted to wash their woollens in them. So your granny couldn’t afford the quality wool when she was knitting your school jumpers, and used a crappy wool blend with scratchy plastic in it, the washing machine battered the crap out of it, part-felted it á la Melton – and you blamed the wool.
So, the simplest solution for people who find wool scratchy – apart from buying better-quality woollen goods – is to wear something else next to the skin, such as a shirt under Granny’s Christmas sweater that she knitted specially for you with her crippled, arthritic hands, you ungrateful brat. Or you can try ‘superwash’ wool, which has the sticky-outy scales on each fibre chemically stripped off, which means it won’t felt, and isn’t (as) scratchy.
However some people are allergic to lanolin, the natural grease in wool. This is a pretty serious issue, as lanolin is the skin-softening ingredient in many lotions and moisturisers, and finds its way into soaps and makeup too.
To my knowledge, only sheep’s wool contains lanolin. That leaves a huge range of yarns available – note, I say ‘yarn’. Wool comes from sheep, yarn comes from everything else. You can choose from –
Animal
Angora:
English
French
German
Giant
Satin
Camellid:
Alpaca
Huacaya Alpaca
Suri Alpaca
Camel
Guanaco
Llama
Paco-vicuña cross
Vicuña
Cervid:
Cashgora (Cashmere-Angora cross)
Cashmere goat
Mohair
Nigora cross
PCA (Pygmy-Cashmere cross)
Pygora (Pygmy-Angora cross)
Silk:
Bombyx / Cultivated / Mulberry
Eri (Peace Silk)
Muga
Tussah
Other:
Arctic Fox
Bison
Cat
Chinchilla
Dog
Highland Cattle
Horse
Mink
Musk Ox / Qiviut
Possum
Reindeer
Wolf
Yak
Plant
Cellulose:
Bast Bamboo
Flax (linen)
Hemp
Nettle
Paper
Ramie
Cotton:
Acala / Upland
Egyptian
Naturally Colored Cotton
Pima
Manufactured:
Acrylic
Angelina
Carbonized Bamboo
Corn (Ingeo)
Chitin
Microfiber
Milk (Casein)
Nylon / Polyamide
Pearl
Polyester
Rayon / Viscose
Rayon from Bamboo
Rayon from Banana
Rose
Seaweed/SeaCell
Silver
Soy Silk
Stainless Steel
Sugar Cane
Tencel / Lyocell
Full disclosure: I haven’t tried all of these.
Of those I have tried, I would recommend the following as a substitute for wool:
Alpaca – any;
Cashmere;
Muskox/Qivuit for next to skin softness;
Angora – if and only if you aren’t afflicted with the scratchies. Angora is incredibly soft, but fuzzy and therefore tickly;
Bamboo bast or rayon – suitable for baby-soft skin;
Pima cotton – even though it dries the hands out as a knitting yarn;
Banana or soy silk – baby-soft;
Milk or milk and cotton blends;
Sugarcane;
High-quality acrylic, if you absolutely, positively must. It fills the seas with plastic micro-fibres, so think long and hard before you spend (serious, like cashmere-serious) money on this.
Of these, in terms of value for money, I’d go for alpaca, bamboo and cotton, in that order.
* – Worsted spinning sees the wool combed before spinning, so that all the individual fibres are parallel. It produces smooth, non-fuzzy yarn which weaves to a superior fine fabric. Woollen-spun yarns are simply carded without combing: the fibres are higgledy-piggledy and produces a fluffy, round yarn which is wonderfully warm – one example being Melton fabric, used for coats and blankets. While woollen-spun fibres are popular with handknitters, and worsted-spun with weavers, it is possible to use woollen-spun in weaving and worsted-spun in knitting.
Wool comes in hundreds of different qualities, some suitable for next to the skin, others better suited to outerwear. For thousands of years, people wore wool – either as fabric or fleece – from swaddling to shroud, with none of this crybabying about thquatching their thoft dewicate thkin. You got used to it, or you scratched.
Nowadays, people haven’t the skill or knowledge to select the right quality of wool for the purpose, and are too precious to give themselves time to get used to wool. They pronounce themselves ‘allergic’ (only a very tiny proportion are allergic to wool; ETA: Claire Jordan reminds me that more people are allergic to lanolin, the oil in sheep’s wool – that one is nasty), and never wear wool again.
Here’s an experiment. Grab a cotton wool ball or a face flannel, and scrub it, dry, over your skin. Or actually look when you’re towelling off after a bath. They all scrape your skin. In the case of the towel, you might well see what looks like dandruff flaking off your body as you dry. You’ll probably need to slap on a load of moisturiser, because the cotton strips the oils off your skin as well, adding to the flakiness.
The only reason cotton “feels” soft, is because the specific cotton fabric in your clothes has been chemically and mechanically treated to feel soft. Untreated cotton sandpapers the top layer of your skin off.
Pluck off a quantity of the fuzz, and put it in bleach. If it’s wool-only, or blended with silk or oil-based synthetics, the fuzz will completely disappear. If there’s some trace fibre left, it’s blended with a plant-based fibre.
I find wool-cotton blends to be rather heavy compared to pure wool or other wool blends, and they feel cooler to the touch. YMMV.
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