Welcome to my new blog! Here I will share our progress as we wander our way through the wonderful world of alpacas. While we have been raising alpacas for quite a few years, we are now looking at processing our fiber ourselves, which is where the adventure begins.
Today is the shipping date for my new electric carder, the Strauch Finest Doublewide. I figured if I was going to learn to card, why not learn on the best, right? I chose the larger size because we are processing fleece from 20 or so alpacas, and a suri llama as well. While I wait (impatiently) for my carder to arrive, I am finding that the preparation time for the fiber is nothing to sneeze at as well.
Of course, the weather is not cooperating, and we are supposed to get rain for the next couple of days. Well, fleece + rain = big yuck. So, I started working inside, sorting the fiber and hoping to take it outside to clean. Well, as you can probably guess, that didn’t work! Our afternoon rain started this morning. I shook out what I could, and I am off to wash the fiber.
My first batch will be washed using a children’s shampoo with cream rinse. I read that this helped with the static problem when carding and spinning. We’ll see.
I’ll keep you posted!
Pat
Tags: alpaca, batts, electric carder, fiber, roving, shearing, washing fiber, yarn
