giminey cricket

Imagine my delight and surprise when in stead of a carrier bag full of Alpaca fleece a huge bin bag arrived. It contained 3 fleeces one cocoa powder brown clipped from Barbilla (interesting sort of name that...) and a baby fleece  and another in a lovely dove grey from giminey. One is obviously the baby fleece  with a softer feel and shorter staple and since both were labelled Giminey I am guessing they are his..the grey has a lovely crimp to it while the brown is straight and eerily like human hair..

Wig anyone?

I decanted it from the plastic bags shook out a lot of general dust and dirt and put in cotton pillow cases for storage. I am sure plastic isnt good for storing wool of any sort.

Since Alpaca doesn't contain lanolin it can pretty much be combed and spun right off the bat, (is that a spinning pun?) Washing after spinning seems to be the way most go with it. The combing consists of little more than a flea comb to remove the vegetation, bits of hay and moss etc. I didnt see any actual Alpaca poo when i aired the fleeces off so nothing too nasty to worry about.

mixing the brown with the grey gives a nice blended effect..Lots of twist since its spinning quite fine, least I think it is fine. Not sure experts would agree.

So there we are lots to experiment with, maybe a ryeland alpaca mix?