I ended up with an alpaca fleece. It wasn't really intentional, and I never did photograph it. (That'll teach me, ba goom!) It was during a horse transaction that ultimately didn't work out well for me . . . and when it became clear that that transaction was another dead end road down which I had driven and wasted money, I consoled myself that at least I had quite a lot of dusty, dirty alpaca fleece that ultimately could be turned into something lovely, or at least perhaps something I could clean and card and sell off a bit at a time.
Well. I have haunted the Ravelry forums about cleaning alpaca, and visited ebay numerous times for materials. I discovered that alpaca fleece needs to be skirted, washed and picked prior to carding and spinning. Okay, I figured I could skirt the dang thing on plastic in the kitchen, wash it in garment bags, and pick by hand. Then I unfolded the thing on newspaper, started picking through the clumps of poop and straw, and decided that dealing with it by hand would ultimately cost several thousand dollars (including surgery for my right shoulder that the doctor said I needed in 1996!); scratch that idea. So away to ebay to look for a wool picker (which I found but did not buy) and a drum carder (which I may yet buy!). That lowered the cost to process about three pounds of fleece to under a thousand dollars, and obviated the need for shoulder surgery. Still not much profit margin.
Then the latest issue of Spin Off arrived, and I learned that (O! Frabjous Day!) there is a fiber mill in Colorado. Not only that, it's relatively close to me; since the suby gets 26+ mpg highway, and the weather was predicted to be lovely for a few days, away I went to call the fiber mill. In the process of talking to Andrew at SpringToo Fibers I learned that he could skirt and wash and dehair the nasty fleece for under $75 plus postage to mail it back to me. Snork, chortle, squee! Plus, if I brought the thing out to him, he'd give me a tour, show me the process, and evaluate the fleece.
The appointed day dawned, and the fleece and I set forth. I knew sort of vaguely where I was going, and as it turned out, by the time I got there, I realized I'd been right by the location a couple of times. On the trip out, I was vaguely sad . . . the last time I'd been that far out that direction, it was with my now (thanks be!) ex-husband in the phase of trying to save our marriage, and hauling a horse (another horse deal that didn't work out so well for me, but at least didn't cost me money). I got to thinking about the losses of the last several years, and was somewhat weepy. Fortunately, the fleece was very quiet throughout the process, so I was left alone with my music and tears.
Then I arrived, and in the face of the three rooms of SpringToo Fibers, each of which is festooned with bags and bags and bags of fibers in varying stages of being processed, my sadness went POOF! Andrew greeted me, gave me the tour (wow, amazing machinery, which of course I didn't think to photograph (apparently a slow learner) or to even ask permission to photograph (realllly slow learner). Then we settled down to evaluating the fleece. Very, very, very dirty fleece. (Still quiet, but very dirty). Then Andrew got his hands digging down in the box and pulled out clumps of fiber . . . and the fibers tore easily. The last time recently I saw that look on someone's face was when the sewer rooter guy said "well, the bad news is . . . you have a broken sewer pipe in your crawlspace." So when I saw that look, I was immediately grateful that I hadn't invested $1000 in tools and materials to make processing a dirty, nasty, damaged fleece a really costly nightmare. Andrew told me he could process the fleece for me, but that neither of us would really like the results, and if I was really lucky, I might end up with the most expensive ounce of Huacaya alpaca in the history of fleece processing. Sadness descended again.
But the trip was not without benefit. I walked away with a lovely russet brown cria fleece, a bag of tussah silk and a bag of black diamond (for blending, you know!). And a Huacaya fleece on order to be washed and dehaired -- the most lovely grey color that comes out of the dehairing machine looking like a lovely rain cloud (I like the rain; others may feel differently) and which, when blended with the black diamond and some tussah, should dye up marvelously.
And in the meantime, there is the cria . . .
Well. I have haunted the Ravelry forums about cleaning alpaca, and visited ebay numerous times for materials. I discovered that alpaca fleece needs to be skirted, washed and picked prior to carding and spinning. Okay, I figured I could skirt the dang thing on plastic in the kitchen, wash it in garment bags, and pick by hand. Then I unfolded the thing on newspaper, started picking through the clumps of poop and straw, and decided that dealing with it by hand would ultimately cost several thousand dollars (including surgery for my right shoulder that the doctor said I needed in 1996!); scratch that idea. So away to ebay to look for a wool picker (which I found but did not buy) and a drum carder (which I may yet buy!). That lowered the cost to process about three pounds of fleece to under a thousand dollars, and obviated the need for shoulder surgery. Still not much profit margin.
Then the latest issue of Spin Off arrived, and I learned that (O! Frabjous Day!) there is a fiber mill in Colorado. Not only that, it's relatively close to me; since the suby gets 26+ mpg highway, and the weather was predicted to be lovely for a few days, away I went to call the fiber mill. In the process of talking to Andrew at SpringToo Fibers I learned that he could skirt and wash and dehair the nasty fleece for under $75 plus postage to mail it back to me. Snork, chortle, squee! Plus, if I brought the thing out to him, he'd give me a tour, show me the process, and evaluate the fleece.
The appointed day dawned, and the fleece and I set forth. I knew sort of vaguely where I was going, and as it turned out, by the time I got there, I realized I'd been right by the location a couple of times. On the trip out, I was vaguely sad . . . the last time I'd been that far out that direction, it was with my now (thanks be!) ex-husband in the phase of trying to save our marriage, and hauling a horse (another horse deal that didn't work out so well for me, but at least didn't cost me money). I got to thinking about the losses of the last several years, and was somewhat weepy. Fortunately, the fleece was very quiet throughout the process, so I was left alone with my music and tears.
Then I arrived, and in the face of the three rooms of SpringToo Fibers, each of which is festooned with bags and bags and bags of fibers in varying stages of being processed, my sadness went POOF! Andrew greeted me, gave me the tour (wow, amazing machinery, which of course I didn't think to photograph (apparently a slow learner) or to even ask permission to photograph (realllly slow learner). Then we settled down to evaluating the fleece. Very, very, very dirty fleece. (Still quiet, but very dirty). Then Andrew got his hands digging down in the box and pulled out clumps of fiber . . . and the fibers tore easily. The last time recently I saw that look on someone's face was when the sewer rooter guy said "well, the bad news is . . . you have a broken sewer pipe in your crawlspace." So when I saw that look, I was immediately grateful that I hadn't invested $1000 in tools and materials to make processing a dirty, nasty, damaged fleece a really costly nightmare. Andrew told me he could process the fleece for me, but that neither of us would really like the results, and if I was really lucky, I might end up with the most expensive ounce of Huacaya alpaca in the history of fleece processing. Sadness descended again.
But the trip was not without benefit. I walked away with a lovely russet brown cria fleece, a bag of tussah silk and a bag of black diamond (for blending, you know!). And a Huacaya fleece on order to be washed and dehaired -- the most lovely grey color that comes out of the dehairing machine looking like a lovely rain cloud (I like the rain; others may feel differently) and which, when blended with the black diamond and some tussah, should dye up marvelously.
And in the meantime, there is the cria . . .
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