Cat Hat and more dyed wool

Being a spinner, I used to wonder what it would be like to make something using dog or cat fur but for a long time I had no source.  Last year, a friend of mine gave me a bag of her cat's fur--I believe it is a Maine Coon cat.  Anyhow, this Summer I finally got around to carding it with some wool and silk (there is probably about 20% cat fur in it??) and spun it up.  There were some obvious white sections of fur which I saved out so I ended up with a grey heathery color and white.  The carder I used wasn't "fine" so the bats were a little textured and then so was the yarn.  I knit up a hat and here it is:

There was a little extra grey yarn but I used all the white.  It was a worthwhile experiment, but I won't repeat it with cat.  My husband is very allergic and I had to do all the carding and spinning away from home.  I knit it while he was out of town and vacuumed my place on the couch afterward.  I have made a couple of things with my dog's fur, and I will continue to do that!  I got her last Fall.  Her name is Sadie and she's a retriever mix.  Check back a few posts to see a pic of her.  She's darn cute!

Not long before knitting up this hat, I did some more dye exploration and dyed up the rest of my Suffolk wool.  One color way is greens and yellow-greens, the other is greens and blue-greens.  I like the results.

I'm getting into this dyeing thing...I'm sure there will be more!

The shirt off my back...

I'm working on weaving yardage in order to sew a shirt--a tunic.  I'm using the full width of my Baby Wolf for the first time--all 26 inches!  That means at 24 ends per inch, 625 ends total!  The warp is 10/2 cotton in royal blue.  I wove an overshot pattern in green that will be at the bottom of the shirt.  All the weft--blues and light green--is 22/2 Cottolin.

I have spent many hours scheming, designing and trying out patterns on pixeLoom.  I wound the warp in batches on my warping board.  I removed all the loom's harnesses and adjusted the number of heddles to just fit my pattern so there would be enough by not too many on each harness.  I had to adapt my pattern to share harnesses because of the high epi count.  Winding on the warp with such a thin yarn and at such a width gave me fits, but I accomplished it!

I threaded heddles, sleyed the reed (my husband likes to think of me as a weaving warrior who "slays" things--hee hee), tied on, adjusted the tension and away I went!  I've got the first 15 inches of the front (or back) woven.  I think it's turning out nicely.  I like the texture of the Cottolin for weft with the worry-free cotton warp.

I know people will ask me how many hours it took--No idea!  Maybe 30 so far?

Pics to show progress:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kangaposse/9129313679/

Threading the heddles and sleying the reed: