A Woman Spent 11 Years Knitting A Coat And Hat Out Of Her Own Hair

A former schoolteacher from Chongqing, China named Xiang
Renxian has devoted nearly a dozen years of her life to making
a hat and coat for her husband—out of her very own hair.
She says her hair began to fall out when she was in her 30's.
"Throughout my youth I was always famous for my wonderful
long hair, and as I grew older I realized that, just like my looks,
my hair was losing its luster," she told the Global Times. "Many
people envied my long, shiny black hair so I wanted to keep
them, even the dropped threads."

Xiang said she collected her hair for years but didn't know what
to do with it .


It was only in 2003 that she decided to weave it into
clothing. "I wanted to find a way to preserve that, and
came up with the idea of using it to create something for
my husband. It took a while to perfect the techniques, it
was only when I was 49 that I started to work on this
project. Once I got into the technique that I developed, it
was actually not difficult to do, you just need patience and
I knew that I had the time."
She says she kept count of each strand of hair, and used a total
of 116,058 strands of hair to make both of the items she gave to
her husband.
The coat was Xiang's first project, for which she used 15
pieces of hair as one strand of standard wool. She began
in 2003 and managed to finish the main body only by
2008. Later, she started weaving the hat, with 20 pieces
of hair per strand. This she completed in 2011. "It takes
great patience as the weaving work could only be done a
bit each day due to the scarcity of hair," she said.
When the weaving was complete, she felt that the coat
needed a bit of a finishing touch. So she decided to weave
her name and the date of completion on to the cuffs in
white. She had to wait until the end of last year to collect
enough grey hair for her signature.
This makes me feel extra shitty about the last present I got for
my boyfriend for our anniversary. I got him a gift card to
Chili's. Not because I totally forgot it was our anniversary until
he texted me "Happy Anniversary!" when I was driving past that
Chili's by where we live and made a last ditch turn into their
parking lot to go scramble desperately for some kind of gift. No.
That didn't happen at all. That Chili's gift card is a true symbol
and token of our undying love that will live in his glove
compartment underneath those parking tickets he got, until the
day he realizes he's dead broke, starving and feels a craving for
some economically-priced casual dining.