Woolthing

More spinning today.  I got the alpaca yarn done.  Phew.

I’m very happy with it.  And now I need to think of what I want to knit with it.

This is what I finished today.

This is all of it together.

Three days of spinning  totals about 13 ounces, 1440 yards.   I have lots more of this fleece.

Wendy sent me a picture of Prada so you can see how it all started.  Imagine my surprise to realize that Prada is actually a girl.  Here she is.  She’s pretty cool.  I hope I did her fleece justice.

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Yesterday was challenge day for the bike riders and for spinners.  I chose to set myself a number of challenges at the same time.  I wanted to spin 100% alpaca.  I wanted to spin lace weight.  I wanted to spin a mile and I wanted to bring out the best in an alpaca fleece I had gotten a couple of months ago.

I had gotten a couple of alpaca fleeces from Wendy at Dream Weaver Alpacas.  And I fell for Prada’s fleece.  Prada is an alpaca that would have gotten culled out of the herd by most breeders.   His fleece was multicoloured and that makes it a pain for anyone who sends fleece out to be processed.  I wanted to use the unusual to make something exceptional.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of Prada but here is picture of the fleece as it is drying in the sun.

He had a bit of brown, a bunch of grey and a lot of black.

I separated each of the colours out and carded them into different batts.

I split each of the batts in half so that when I plied them together I would retain the colour shifts.  8:00 a.m.,I got my wheel set on it’s fastest ratio (33:1) and  I started to spin.  By the time I’d gotten through the first bit of my three batts I knew that I wasn’t going to get it all spun in one day.

I discovered that I needed to put quite a bit of twist in the singles.  I got the first bit done by 12:30 and the second half of the first three batts done by 4:00.  I treadled fast and got some music with a good strong beat to help me keep my feet moving.  Well, I thought I’d get it plied in short order and then spin up another bobbin full.  Not so fast.

The alpaca needed even more twist in the plies to stay together.   Alpaca is smooth like hair.  Wool has little barbs on it that help it hold together.  If I didn’t put a lot of twist in, it started to drift apart.  Well,  that was why I was doing this wasn’t it? so that I could learn how to spin alpaca.  I went on a plying marathon and that is where the real challenge began.  I find plying to be … well … boring.  Faster music, faster treadling, I mean my orifice,

(minds out of the gutter) was getting hot.  I wanted to quit.  I didn’t need this.  I could finish it tomorrow.  Why was I doing this?  I was doing this to proof that I could.  I finished plying it around 7:30.  I skeined it off so that I could measure it.  665yds.  Yes, I’m counting the plying this time so I did make a mile of spinning.  2 bobbin of singles at 665 and the plying makes over 1900yds of spinning in one day.  Oh and the best part.  I like the yarn and I like more every time I look at it.  It isn’t all flash and sparkle.  It’s soft but solid and strong.  It has presence.

I meet all my challenges.  So what did I learn.   I can spin fast if I have to, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

Today I continued spinning on the rest of the alpaca that I had carded.  I spun at my own pace, which is still pretty quick but I enjoyed it a lot more.  Do you suppose we all have a beat that we are happiest moving to?  A cadence that is all our own.  It might explain those different tastes in music.

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Today being a beautiful day I took my coarse carder outside to do some carding.   As I was working away I noticed a helicopter going around in a search pattern and I wondered what I might look like from a bird’s eye view.  I had a rack with alpaca on it drying beside me …

And I was working with a strange contraption that only fiberistas would recognize.  For all I know I could look like I was involved in some illegal activities.  No one has come to my door yet so it must be all right.  I’m trying to prepare all my fibre for the tour de fleece.  So I was carding up some Romney that I’ve had for a while.  I’d dyed it and made some yarn out of it and then lost interest.  Well, since I’m working from my stash and I want to finish up some projects it seemed the perfect thing.  Here’s what it looked like before carding.

And here it is on the carder.

This is a hand crank carder so it’s a bit of work turning the handle and impossible to take a picture of as you have to hold the fibre with one hand and crank with the other.  That’s an at rest photo.

Here’s what it looks like after it comes off the carder.

That’s about 100 gms.  I’m going to spin it up very thick and then two ply it to make a big yarn.  I made some a while ago and it looks like this.

The colours are a bit richer than the photo.  Thats around 800 gms and 3-4 wraps per inch.  I originally thought I’d weave a rug with it but I might crochet it to give a warm bouncy rug.  So far I’ve got 9 batts and I think I’ll get another 3 or 4 but it will spin up fast, just a couple of days of work.

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Today my hubbie and I went to Vancouver Island to get two things.  One of those things was some alpaca fleece.  We were so lucky.  I called to say we were running a bit late and Wendy ( the alpaca raiser) told me breathlessly that they had just had a baby, known as a cria, born just a few moments ago.

When we got there we were called to the back of their house to see their alpaca and this is what greeted us.

Less than a half hour old and not even standing yet.  How cute is that.  Her momma nuzzled her and she tried a couple of times.  Fell over once and then needed a bit of rest.

We went to look at some of the rest of the herd.

I like alpaca.  They are pretty and they’re soft and they’re smart.  If I had the land that’s the fibre critter I’d want to raise.  I now have the fleece from a couple of these guys.

When we got back to the cria she had taken her first wobbly steps.  With some of the other girls and her mother watching over her.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the rest of our day.

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