Natalie w/ Muse

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Notes from Natalie Kestecher

About a year ago I moved from Sydney to one of the colder cities of Australia, Melbourne. Circumstance had it that I would have to leave my dog behind and so I decided to try and figure out a way of staying warm — and keeping my dog close by in one way or another.

I had some vague, childhood memories of a neighbour who used to collect her *samoyd’s fluff, spin it and then knit huge, woolly pullovers. Why couldn’t I do the same with my dog’s hair? Well there were a few reasons- one was that she’s very small and it would have taken years of haircuts to even get a scarf out of her and another was that I don’t know anything about knitting, let alone spinning.

In the meantime I decided to research the history of this noble craft and find some enthusiasts. Surprisingly, there was not a lot of information to be found (and not too many enthusiasts) so I had to fill in some of the gaps with a little fiction.

My program, “Knitting With Dog Hair,” is the result of this venture.

*A large, white, fluffy breed of dog.

Equipment

Most of the recordings were done on a Sony mini dat, using a regular sony stereo mic and an MS5. I used an editing program called Session 8 in pre production but the show was mixed by sound engineer, Russell Stapleton in an ABC studio on the MFX.

About Natalie Kestecher

I’ve been producing programs for Radio Eye at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since the late 90’s but I’ve had all kinds of jobs including selling shoes, teaching English to migrants and magazine editing.

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Additional Support for this work provided by

with funding from the

and
The National Endowment for the Arts