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Sunday, October 19, 2014

3 Bags Full.... of Alpaca Fibre

Well, 2 bags and a basket to be precise.

This is 2 days of work.
The white is 700g of cria fleece which will be blended with 18 micron merino, the bag in front is 1kg of tan/white alpaca and the basket contains the rest (about 600g) of the tan fleece which I want to wash and comb.
The 2 bags are going off to the wool carders tomorrow for processing. I still cleaned all of this fleece, lock by lock, with a flick carder to get all the VM out and believe me it was full of the stuff. But, if you send rubbish off to the carders you get rubbish back, and I want to have nice fibre that's a pleasure to spin, so time spent on it now will pay off in the long run.

The white alpaca is so soft, I'm going for a 70/30 blend with the merino. The tan fleece is also lovely and soft - I'm tempted to just have it washed and carded and kept as 100% alpaca. All the fleece have staples of about 7".
I've just made a start on Radar's, it's chocolate brown with black and so far I have skirted it, taken off the legs, neck and belly fibre yet I can't see any guard hair in his fleece at all. It's very crimpy and silky soft. I think I may send it to the wool carders next month if I have it prepped by then. That will be 3 down, 2 more fleece to go. The end is in sight...

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