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BOULDER, Colo.—Angella Dirks dreams of a day when a knit scarf will be judged by the color of its yarn and not by the content of its fibers.
Which is to say, she can't wait for the nation to embrace dog hair. She and a band of like-minded enthusiasts are doing everything they can to turn garments knitted of canine sheddings from a pet-owner's fetish into a fashion trend. (click below to read more)

For nearly two decades, dog owners craving a memento of a canine buddy—a collie cap, say, or a Samoyed sweater—have been able to send hair brushed from their pet to any number of artisans who advertise online that they will spin the piles of fluff into a soft yarn.
Some dog-hair spinners have months-long backlogs of orders.
The thriving cottage industry was spurred by the publication of a how-to guide titled "Knitting With Dog Hair: Better a Sweater From a Dog You Know and Love Than From a Sheep You'll Never Meet."
But creating keepsakes for people who love their pets isn't enough for some dog-hair fans. They're on a mission to create a broader market for the stuff, to turn dog-hair mittens and shawls into objects of beauty desired for their own sake.
"You think, 'This is just smelly dog,' but it's amazing," says Ms. Dirks, of Louisville, Colo. "Dog hair does have beautiful qualities."
And, she hastens to add, when a sweater gets damp it doesn't smell like a wet dog.
Ms. Dirks and several fellow members of the Handweavers Guild of Boulder are setting out to boost acceptance of dog hair—or, as they prefer to call it, chiengora, a term built around the French word for dog that also evokes the luxurious feel of angora.
She and other guild members figure that Boulder is friendly territory for their dog-hair drive. The college town is so enamored of its dogs that officials rewrote the municipal code a decade ago, replacing references to "pet owners" with "pet guardians" to avoid sending the message that animals are property.
This is also the city that in 2008 fined a hair stylist $1,000 for animal cruelty after she dyed her poodle pink (with organic beet juice, she said) to raise awareness of breast cancer.
Eager to make their mark, chiengora artisans are peddling their dog-hair mittens, scarves and cell-phone covers in galleries and craft fairs across the region. They're teaching classes on dog-hair spinning and holding public demonstrations.
Last summer, Debi Dodge lugged her spinning wheel to the county fair and accosted anyone who walked by with a dog. "I'd ask if I could do a quick grooming" and spin the fur into yarn, she says.
Ms. Dodge also teaches a chiengora workshop at the Boulder yarn shop Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins. The class has drawn considerable interest, says Judy Steinkoenig, the store's co-owner. "People are so into the mechanized world, sitting in front of their computers all day, that for them to create something that lasts—there's a nostalgia for that," Ms. Steinkoenig says.
Furthermore, she says, dog hair has a certain cachet as a raw material for art. "I have a yellow lab and I'm always picking up free fur," she says. "It's all over my house."
Kendall Crolius, co-author of the "Knitting With Dog Hair" book, supports the effort to take the stuff mainstream, though she is quick to say that she can't picture "a huge industrial dog-spinning factory" popping up any time soon. "It's not ever going to be a big commercial operation," she says, "but I think it's going to continue to grow. It makes people smile. What can I say?"
While long-haired dogs provide the best fiber, spinners have crafted yarn from all kinds of critters, including timber wolves and cats.
"So far, I've only been bested by one dog. A Lhasa Apso," says Ms. Dodge, explaining that the pet's silky ringlets were too slippery to spin on their own and the owner wouldn't let her blend them with other fibers, like alpaca.
Cheingora can be expensive. Wool, cotton and acrylic yarn cost about $1.50 to $2 an ounce. Spinners generally charge about $12 per ounce of dog-hair yarn. That yarn can then be crocheted, knitted or woven into any number of items, which adds still more to the expense; a custom sweater of poodle yarn can cost several hundred dollars.
Dog-hair spinners say they're winning over the public, but it was clear at a recent craft fair that they still have a ways to go.
The near universal reaction to a pile of yarn labeled "dog hair" is a wince.
"How do you get it?" one shopper asked Ms. Dodge in a horrified whisper.
Once the artisans explain that they don't need to skin a dog to get its fur, most shoppers visibly relax. But that doesn't mean they're buying.
"Just don't wear that in a rain storm, right?" laughed David Johnson as he studied a dog-hair scarf at the craft fair.
Pat Martinek, a veteran dog-hair artisan, sighed. Like others in the business, she washes dog hair several times with a detergent before spinning it into yarn. Even when wet, a Golden Retriever scarf doesn't smell any more like dog than a typical wool sweater smells like sheep, she says. Still, it's a common concern among potential customers.
Ms. Martinek had set up her giant spinning wheel and was working with fibers the color of oatmeal, shed by a huskie named Frisket. As a small crowd gathered, she paused to explain: "This is dog hair."
John Girvan, who had been watching admiringly, looked up, startled.
"Holy cow. Really? I'll be darned," he said.
"It comes out so nicely," said Rick Caldwell, another shopper. "I never would have figured."
Both men stood a while to watch the spinning. Neither bought a thing.