G. Knerd

After writing my last post about my, er, somewhat gross experiment with spinning cat hair, I realized something.  I wasn’t trying to spin cat hair because I had something I wanted to make out of it, I wasn’t doing it because it brought me joy, I wasn’t even doing it because I thought it was a good idea.

No, my only reason for doing it was, in fact, to see if I could.

The “Because I Can” phenomenon can be a good thing.  It can lead to crazy-amazing feats of knitting, like a gas station cozy.  Or a car cozy.  Or any number of guerilla knitting projects.

Of course, to some people, all of those projects are crazy too.  It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

The real problem with the “Because I Can” urge is that it leads to doing things you really don’t need or want to do, just because you can.  I’ll knit a sweater out of my dog’s fur…because I can!  I’ll knit a sock with super-weird construction and uncomfortable seams on the bottom…because I can!  I’ll spin a fiber out of things I find in the street…because I can!

None of these things are necessarily wrong, mind you.  They’re just…well, they don’t align with my values, let’s put it that way.

So getting back to the original point – the motivation behind spinning cat hair wasn’t “Oh, I can get something nifty out of this”, it was solidly a “Let’s see if I can” (little sibling to the “Because I Can” impulse).  And, frankly, I just don’t have time for that kind of thing these days.  I don’t need to do “Because I Can” projects – I’ve got plenty of real projects with real outcomes to finish.

In short, the cat “fiber” is going in the trash, along with the little bit I’d already spun up.  Sanity has returned.

Bear Kitty’s response?  “Does this mean you’ll stop interrupting my naps to brush me?  ‘Cause that was pretty annoying.  Can I go back to sleep now?”

I don’t spend much time talking about Bear Kitty, but he’s really a very impressive cat.  For one thing, on one body he manages to fit enough fur to cover 6 normal cats – his coat is almost as thick as a sea otter’s (and nearly as waterproof).  This means he tends to shed…a lot.

In an attempt to combat this problem, I decided to try getting a FURminator.  This is one of the most amazing grooming tools I’ve ever seen – every time I brush Bear Kitty with it, I get a literal pile of fur.  Just one stroke of the brush (even after a full brushing just a couple days ago) gets an impressive amount of hair:

For a normal person, their reaction to a big pile of used cat hair would be “Ewww, gross.”

For a fiber-obsessed person, however, the reaction might be the same as mine, which was, “Hrm, that looks an awful lot like a free source of fiber….”

So, for the last couple months, I’ve been collecting the hair I brush off in a bag with the intention of spinning it into some kind of yarn.  What I’m going to do with the yarn once I have it is unclear at best, but I seem to think this is a good idea – I’ve started spinning it:

But then I look at the big pile o’ fur I’ve saved up, and I think that maybe – just maybe – this is all kind of gross and I really shouldn’t be doing this:

I might have to give this pursuit up – it only sounds sane if I don’t tell anyone about it.

Er…

….

…here, look at this cute picture of Bear Kitty instead of thinking about the dirty secret I’ve just revealed to you:

I’ve been trucking along on my Knitting Olympics project, but it seems that the kitties really don’t want me to finish.  First, Monkey Kitty took apart a ball of yarn, then he chewed on the cable for my circular needle (luckily, not enough to break it), and now Bear Kitty is joining the fray – last night while I was brushing his teeth (I, er, may, in fact, be a crazy cat lady) Bear Kitty bit down on my thumb hard enough to break the nail and draw blood from multiple locations.  I’m fine (and I’m not going to horrify you with pictures), but one of the wounds is exactly where I rest my thumb against the needle tip, which…well, it doesn’t feel great.

I’m continuing to soldier on, but I don’t think my progress will be as great as it was before the injury.  I’m going to call this part of the “Fortius” part of the Olympic motto.