Alpaca Fun

Edit: I have been corrected by Mrs. Reidlinger that this is not alpaca fleece and is actually Rambouillet sheep's fleece. The brown fleece is also sheep but it was obtained a long time ago so its breed is unknown. I don't feel like editing the whole thing, so please accept this disclaimer!

Since it is absolutely beautiful outside, I figured I would use up what free time I have and come back to my neglected blog.

Earlier this winter, I was given a huge box of super dirty alpaca fleece from a family friend of David's. It was shorn two years ago and had been sitting ever since, so it was sent to me for practice.

It's some crazy practice.

This is what I'm starting with:

I've pulled out straw, styrofoam, plants, hundreds of burrs, a piece of wire, plastic strips, and two-year-old poop balls. This fleece is dirty as hell and starting to matt up in some spots. But underneath is a beautiful buttery-soft layer of heaven. And after washing, it's actually white!

After picking through a torn-off piece and shaking off what dirt I can, I plop it into a five-gallon Home Depot bucket filled with hot water and some gentle liquid laundry detergent. I was using Dawn dish soap but it wasn't quite strong enough for this filth. Even after a few minutes in the bucket, the water turns a stinky muddy brown.

When the bucket is cooled, the fleece gets wrung out and goes into the washer for a rinse - I fill up the machine with water and turn it off, and plop the now cooled fleece in to sit. It's important that the fleece doesn't get agitated, scrubbed, or moved between temps too quickly or else it will felt and be useless.

After sitting to rinse for a bit, I drain the washer and spin it. Lots more grass and dirt come out but as you can see, there's still a lot in there. This batch will join another in a second washing since the rinse water was still pretty filthy. The great thing about using the washer is that I can rinse and spin-dry a large amount! And that helps me get rid of the stinkies quicker so the animals quit dragging bits around the house to roll in.

Once I feel it's sufficiently clean, I'll spread the fleece on an old screen from the front door and hopefully get it outside to dry faster. Otherwise I'll prop it up in the basement and take up all our free space.

Then it's on to the tedious part: carding.

I was graciously given a set of old hand-me-down hand carders and I love them. They're missing teeth and they don't hold a lot, but they have character and still work hard. I brush out all this fleece bit by bit and put it in a separate basket for spinning later. The wool on the carders is from the same fleece delivery but from a different alpaca of theirs, I believe. It feels different so it might be sheep's wool but I'm not sure. Regardless, it was way cleaner, and the colors in it are just beautiful. I plan on using it for art yarn.

All brushed out, it's just little rolls of heaven. A lot more grass and dirt flecks are gone but there's still some remaining. It's harder to get out of the white fleece, so I'm just leaving it there. I'm practicing spinning lace weight with the white, and the grass bits give it a tweed look. More has fallen out while spinning, but there's still stragglers remaining.

So that's how my spring-in-February week is going, ending with today since there's no school so I can just stay here and be a wool hermit until work.

We've started planting a couple of seeds for the garden to start indoors, and I'm determined that this is the year I will learn how to Do Plants so I hope to get some more blog posts up about our summer adventures. 

Thanks for reading!