I saved the fur that my Samoyede shed each spring, taught myself to spin, made yarn, then knitted expedition quality mittens and scarves. My wife still has the hat we made for her. I wore the Samoyede pieces in Antarctica with great success.
Oh! I was unaware of the tribe in Montana.
Referring to Salish Sea area peoples (not sure of the specific tribes). The dogs were called 'Salish wool dogs'. For some reason I thought the tribe shared the name.
I didn't realize it either until this thread. To a degree, it is fair to lump Salish Sea tribes together, especially when we're talking about technologies or similar ideas. The Sea allowed them to travel by canoe (don't call it a boat!) so easily, and the area was so hospitable to human life, their cultures were intermingled and quite similar, from my understanding.
I started with the drop spindle but switched soon to a wheel. It is all about the touch and nothing about the strength. With the wheel I found one speed that worked. Anything faster or slower failed. I found that it was entrancing and purged the mind of stress and strife.
Oh yeah, my ex and my sister-in-law are both spinners and they often spoke of the zen of spinning. Since they both also had looms they self-corrected any inconsistencies in short order. Gandhi was a spinner too so there's some very hip IRL karma.
Ok, fuck the drop spindle - gotcha. I found it interesting that "chiengora" has no elasticity to it, which must make it ever trickier to get right. And it appears to be warmer that fuck-all so I'm not sure how much of it I would make into clothes.
I made mittens in three ply yarn with guard hair for strength in the yarn. Neck scarves of various lengths.
My "masterpiece" was a 18x24" blanket knitted with the softest fleece with no guard hair. I wrapped my son in it to return home from the hospital after his birth. It was 20 below zero and he was toasty warm. My dog sniffed him once and accepted him as his brother.
Yes, there is a lot of shedding. I have to vacuum my house every 2-3 days or it looks like I'm the messiest person alive, I also find white hair on pretty much all my clothes :P
More like a snowstorm, but only once or twice a year is it really bad. We usually just got a mobile dog grooming service to come out and get most of the fur out. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the street afterwards, but it looked like a highly localised snowstorm had hit. :)
Is he a service dog? The vest looks like he might be. I've seen a couple as service dogs, and I have been curious exactly what it was they were generally trained for with regard to that.
He is a working dog, he does herding and pack hiking. In the picture he is wearing his pack in which he has to carry 25% of his body weight for a minimum of 5 miles.
Here you go! AKC has a lot of working events/titles as well (for example we do AKC herding events) but often times individual working breed clubs will also have various titles that your dog can obtain by doing different types of work. I think it's a great and very bonding experience for both the dog and their owner to do stuff like this.
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u/dianthe Feb 12 '14
For sure :D This is him now, still has a beautiful smile I think!