A few yarns from down under

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NPR's Soundprint has an archived Australian Broadcasting Corporation "documentary" called Knitting With Doghair. Woven through the piece is an outlandish tale of a Catalonian Jewish dogfarmer who made a fortune from the fine canine fiber she produced. Among its many high points is a revisionist etymology of the Yiddish word shmata. A little later, an expert appeals to would-be doghair knitters to select projects that reflect the spirit of the breed from which the yarn was spun, "don't use a whippet's hair to knit a footstool cover!"

Soundprint episode (requires RealPlayer)



Apparently I was a little quick to judge human hair's usefulness in spinning. Aborigines in central and northern Australia have a tradition of spinning hair - sometimes in combination with other fibres, including down and feathers - into string called Wirriji, which has both practical and ceremonial uses.



The painting above relates to a story in which an ill-fated lover sings a love song while he spins some Wirriji. According to Aboriginal Art Online, in central Australian Aboriginal artwork, "a sinuous line can mean a snake, running water, lightning, a hair-string girdle, native bee honey storage, or a bark rope."

Well. We're back to where we began.