Since I started spinning there was one material that I was pretty interested in trying to use, since I find it to be a terribly interesting thing: human hair. It's durable, long lasting, shiny and everywhere! The connotations it brings up can give anything made of it an interesting commentary, since it's been used historically.
I got some hair from a friend, just what was collected in her hairbrush, and went to town! Since she has long slightly course hair I had to condition it first, and comb it so that all of the hairs were facing the same direction. I was able to spin my own hair first, and spin it directly from the round sort of 'pads' that came off of my hair brush, but my hair only goes down to my shoulder, so when I pulled on a hair it would slip out of the tangle. Since this brown hair from my friend is rather longer, when I tried to spin it from the round from the brush it just pulled into knots.
Human hair is not ideal for spinning though. Unless you are skilled enough (which I am not) the ends of the hairs will stick out. This isn't usually a problem for spinning materials like wool, since each hair is so thin that it just gives it a fuzzy look, instead of a spiny one like human hair. But it's certainly manageable! I don't think it would be possible to spin it much thinner than this without considerable skill, certainly the thicker you spin it the easier it will be. Unfortunately it's not always easy to get a lot of it to spin with!
This is how much thread I got from 2-3 sizable pads of hair from a hairbrush, so not much! It's still enough to make something small though. I'd love to try weaving it once I get enough, but weaving is notoriously yarn heavy.
I'd like to say that once you go through the trouble of cleaning, brushing and spinning that it's easy to work with, but I can't. It's incredibly springy! It does not like being pulled into tight curves AT ALL. Of course you can always make it do what you want, but it takes some patience. I'll try to dig up some photos of the tatting that I did with my own spun hair!
Right know I'm trying to make an embroidery out of it, I'll post progress photos of that too!
Hi! I am very interested in seeing if you have done more with this...trying to start my own project, too!
ReplyDeleteBritt-Marie
Hello! I haven't actually done anything with it since this post, though I still have the 'yarn'.
DeleteIt's difficult to work with, and I only have so much of it, so I wanted to wait for the right project to use it on. Let me know if you have any other questions though that I could help you with :)