Alpaca day

There came a day, lo, these many moons ago (about ten, to be precise), when I chanced to win a fine lot of alpaca fleece in that great lottery known as eBay.  Large and pricey was the lot, so I arranged to share it with a person that I did then know; and yet, she disappeared into the dark mists of cyberspace, and never did I hear from her again.

And yet, the alpaca did remain, in the depths of the garden shed.  And I left it there, for the sight (and even the thought) of it did make me angry.  “I bet it will all be rubbish,” did I think.  “I would never have spent that much just for me.  And there is so much of it!  What am I to do now?!”.

Until a day came, upon which I had no plans.  And I thought, “Shearing time will be upon us again soon.  If I wish to buy fleece, I really should free up some space in the shed”.

So I unpacked the giant double-bagged lot, and pulled out the bags.  Within, were several separate bags.  I poked a hole in each bag to see what I had, and snagged a shot or two.  The two bags top right contain ‘seconds’ labels.  The other bags include:

• One bag of long, straight, ‘black’ locks (actually very dark brown; top of shot);
• Three bags of fawn locks, two of which also turned out to be seconds, or otherwise low quality;
• Two bags of cinnamon locks, with distinctly different textures;
• Two bags of chocolate coloured locks, one of which also turned out to be seconds.

After the last couple of years, I’m starting to feel I know my way around a sheep’s fleece, to skirt and sort it, at least, but I’ve never worked with any raw alpaca fleece before.  I had a bit of a google around, but I didn’t find anything particularly useful, so I figured I’d just go about the whole thing in the same way as I would for a sheep’s fleece, bearing in mind the things I already know about alpaca fleece:

• Alpaca fibre is technically all ‘hair’ (as opposed to fur or wool), and many qualities of hair will be present in the same fleece, including longer, coarser guard hairs;
• Alpaca fleece are (or should be) removed in two main sections: the blanket, which covers the back and sides of the animal’s body, from the base of the neck to the tail, and down to the tops of the legs, contains the best fibre.  The neck and leg fibre is a lot coarser.
• There is no lanolin in alpaca fleece, though it can be very dusty.

I tried to unroll the blankets as you would a sheep’s fleece, and came across two problems.  The first is that, probably because of hte lack of nice, sticky lanolin, and the slippery nature of alpaca fibre, the blanket does not hold together in quite the same way as a sheep’s fleece.  The second is probably due to the fact that these had been stored, tightly compressed, for such a long time.  After shearing, the blankets were obviously folded cut sides together, and then rolled.  The cut faces have sort of stuck to each other, with the butt ends of the sheared locks interpenetrating the ones on the opposite face.

Cut ends, chocolate blanket

The third thing I learned is that it is difficult to deal with alpaca fibre in even moderately windy weather.  A nice, heavy, sticky wool fleece would stay on the ground in one piece, when alpaca pretty much defines ‘flyaway’.

Anyway, some of the fleece here seems lovely.  The chocolate one, above, is one of my favourites.  Some of the nicest fibre seems to come from this cinnamon blanket:

Cinnamon locks

It is very light, silky and crimpy.  Sadly (and probably heretically), I’m not really all that fond of this most typical of alpaca colours, so I’ll probably be selling it on Etsy.  In fact, I will probably sell quite a lot of this stuff: there really is way more than one person needs, kilos and kilos of it!