it's in no one's best interests to use the word "epiphany" lightly, but i can think of no more appropriate name for my experience while plying the dog hair singles.
plying. it's what i do on the spinning wheel. i should not spin singles on the wheel (like i did with the dog hair) -- i overspin. i know that, and should have done the coby dog singles on the drop spindle, where i seem to spin more comfortably.
but, like i said, i thought "icky dog hair", and interpreted the use of the wheel as somehow less tactile, skin-to-hair, than the drop spindle. i doubt i was even right. anyway, i had some very overspun singles, and i needed to ply them.
what else can i say other than while plying, i had an absolute THIS IS IT experience. no, i did not decide to overthrow all other yarns for dog hair, or anything that black and white. but i did see an awful lot of time and steps in the process of getting to where i was, flashing before my eyes; from a living dog that i had spent many years with, to her death, to the scuzzy bags of hair sitting in a spare room year after year, to the recent cleaning of the fiber, to the hesitant spinning of the singles.
and plying is so fun. so mezmerizing. and it just went and went. never broke, never got caught, it was absolutely like... like taking dilaudid, or watching "the magic of oil painting", or any other hypnotic experience. and i thought: THIS is the kind of experience you can make a life's work out of. THIS is ACCOMPLISHMENT. not the kind of "accomplishment" that gets you on "hollywood squares" or something -- but the kind that keeps you from getting alzheimer's, and puts a few roses in your cheeks.
knowing that it would interest few people, impress even fewer, and be personally meaningful to fewer folk than i could even seat on my couch made it no less special, interesting, or just plain meaty as far as creative experiences go. it just felt like heaven. i hope every decent and loving spinner out there gets a chance to just feel it once. it's not like wool. it's not like silk. screw anybody who has an issue with it; they don't deserve to know.