Fibers hold a magnetic attraction for spinners. They call to us and draw us in. We hear them calling to us in the oddest of places; places where we do not expect to find fibers. We hear their seductive whisper: “Spin me, spin me”. We’re taken in and captivated by even the oddest looking fibers and must MUST! Bring them home and spin them up.

My odyssey with a bag of odd fibers began when I heard the siren call while poking around in ye local Everything Only One Dollar Emporium. Since the “bargains” at these stores tend towards things like extension cords with two female and zero male plugs, it’s certainly not a venue where anyone would go to look for spinnable fibers. Yet, there they were neatly done up in 2 ounce (56 gram) packages. Since the packaging was sealed plastic bags, there was no way to examine the fibers before buying but how wrong could I go for only $1.00US? I bought a bag.

On arriving home, I examined my purchase and found that I had 1 bag of “Bunny Batts Funfil”. The bag informed me that it was flame retardant, non-toxic, colorfast, 100% genuine polyester and that it was meant to be used as Easter basket filling and beds for Easter trees. It also stated “no mess, no loose strands”. Oh yeah. Well, obviously “they” had never tried spinning the stuff.


Opening the bag revealed the contents in all their glory - 4 little ½ ounce (14 gram) batts in four different colors: lavender, pink, yellow, and a minty green. Not colors that I would normally pick. I pulled a few fibers out of one of the carded batts and determined that the average staple length was only one inch (2.5cm) and than many of the fibers were shorter than that. This determined my spinning method would be traditional long draw.

The next step was deciding how to deal with spinning the mix of colors. I could spin small skeins of each color or I could tear the batts into small bits and spin the colors at random. I decided to spin the colors at random, paying no attention at all to how much of each color was spun at once. First, I tore the batts in half so I could spin half the fibers on each of two bobbins and ply them together later. My thinking was that, if nothing else, the resulting yarn would be an interesting color study of the way in which these four colors interacted with each other in the yarn.

The fibers drew out well for spinning but spinning was messy. Many of the shortest fibers went flying out of the yarn and those that were trapped by the twist poked out to make the yarn hairy and very coarse feeling. I kept my hand vacuum close by while spinning so I could clean up the mess before it got tracked all over the house.

The yarn did prove to be an interesting color study with areas of barber pole sections interspersed with solid color sections. All the colors worked well together and produced a lively and interesting but seemingly unusable coarse, rough, hairy yarn.



Now, I know that many spinners enjoy keeping their yarns in decorative baskets or bowls and enjoy looking at it and feeling it. And that’s fine. But I like to use my yarns. Which brought up the question of what could be done with a totally inelastic, synthetic, coarse, rough, hairy, horrible feeling yarn. A rug came to mind but 2 ounces (56 grams) is hardly enough for that and, while $1 for a bit of spinning fun is inexpensive, enough of this fiber for a rug would be costly.
I finally decided to make a set of woven coasters for use on the porch this summer. I dug out my old Weave-It loom and wove a set of 4 coasters. Each coaster took only 9 yards of yarn so I have plenty of the yarn left over. Each woven coaster came out differently and added yet another layer of interest to the color study.


An odd and inexpensive bag of fibers, found in an odd place turned into several hours of spinning and weaving fun plus an interesting color study and a useful item. Don’t pass the odd fibers by - they may be odd but they can give you a lot of bang for your buck.