Making Hair Rats

In order to properly wear my ridiculous hat, I require a new rat.
I had saved up enough hair to fill my hair receiver, plus a small bag, so I thought there would be enough.
First, I suppose I should warn the people who are squeamish about this sort of thing. There are lots of pictures of clumps of hair in this post.
Personally, I shall never understand why anyone would find hair to be "gross" the minute it detaches itself from the scalp, but some people do and I have warned them in bold letters.

Hair receiver, having received several weeks worth of hair.

All the clumps, before washing.

I washed the clumps with shampoo. It did not turn out well. Maybe the water wasn't cold enough or maybe I agitated them too much. Whatever the reason, they felted slightly.

All the hairs are tangled up and matted.

It was very difficult to pull the clumps apart and fluff them up enough to get suitable rat materials.

A fluffed up clump. Still a bit snarled and matted in some places.

I wanted a big C shaped rat to go around the back of my head, which will hopefully help create a hedgehog. I started wrapping the hair around and around, making sure to put the pieces containing the most purple bathrobe fuzz on first so they would end up in the middle.

The beginnings of a C shaped rat.

I kept on fluffing up the clumps and wrapping them around the rat.

Fluffed up clumps on the left, not fluffed yet clumps on the top, and the end of the in-progress rat on the right.

I tried to stretch the bits of fuzz into longer shapes so that they would be easier to wrap around.

After about half the hair was added the rat looked awful. It wasn't wrapped quite as tightly as it should have been and the hairs were not holding on very well. It was lacking structural integrity.

A disappointing rat in progress.

After adding all the washed hair, the rat was a nice size and shape, but still not holding together well. I tried poking it with a felting needle, but it didn't help.

Thankfully, it was several weeks ago that I washed the hair clumps and I had accumulated a bit more hair since then. I found these unwashed clumps extremely easy to pull apart.

Wispy bits of hair!

I fluffed all of these clumps out.

And I wrapped them all around the rat. It was a definite improvement, but I didn't have enough clumps.

Before making this rat I had made 5 others and it hadn't occurred to me to wash the hair for any of them.

All of my rats.

You can really see the difference in texture. The earlier rats are very smooth and they hold together wonderfully. The newest rat is horribly scruffy looking. I will add more layers of unwashed hair as I accumulate them.
It seems that slightly greasy hair makes much better rats. It's probably more historically accurate too.

The unwashed hair rat on the left, the washed hair rat on the right.

I'm not sure where I will store this new rat. The other 5 hang from a shelf in a brown string bag I made, but this rat won't fit in there. Perhaps I will keep it in a box.

5 rats in a string bag.