my alpaca came

there’s 2 1/2 kgs of the stuff so i’d better get busy. i got 500g of best black fibre (from the saddle), which is glossy and long stapled, then 2 kg of neck fibre - which is shorter stapled, crimpy and much cheaper but just as soft - in white, grey and brown which is destined for carding and woollenish spinning.

from a first glance it looks to be pretty good in terms of vm, but at least one of the bags is really stinky, it’s giving the whole house a whiff of camel so i guess this is an opportunity to experiment with washing before i card.

very slowly i’m beginning to learn what makes for decent yarn, and it’s not necessarily what i would have expected.

this yarn looked lovely, a smooth even singles, with this one i thought i was finally getting the hang of spinning the alpaca. but in use it turned out to be quite wirey and decidedly unlovely. the fact that the needles are too big doesn’t help much. i’ll probably carry on with this, if only to get more practice with the branching out pattern.

whereas this yarn’s official title was “crappy alpaca”. it was from a freebie bag joanna gave me to play with that was so full of vm i had to throw most of it away. it was slubby, uneven and so softly spun it barely held together in places. so as a yarn it looked dreadful, but knitted up it’s a dream, soooo soft and light. there isn’t much stitch definition (which is a blessing given the state of my lace knitting), but otherwise it’s perfect. who’d have thought it?

125 meters (have decided to go metric :)), just over 50g, approx 12wpi (not fully metric :P) - just a smidge heavier than i would have liked, but not bad for a first try at spinning to order.

i recorded the details of the blending process in an attempt to keep some consistency between skeins:

1. weighed out 300g total fibre, using 4 different blues and 2 pinks.
2. divided up each colour into 6 equal pieces, then compiled 6 batches consisting of all colours (50g per batch).
3. each batch spins up to one skein (2 ply so half a batch onto one bobbin).
4. process each batch:
   • separate the colours into 2
   • take half a cardful from one pile, blend into a more even purple
   • add more fibre from the second pile so the card is full and blend lightly (2 or 3 passes across the cards)

this turned out 16 rolags, some noticeably bluer, others more pink. i plied the 2 halves together to even out the colour differences, so all the pinky ones went onto one bobbin, all the bluey ones onto the other.

one down, only five more to go.