Combing some Suri Alpaca

Way back in 2015 I bought 200g of Suri Alpaca fleece from someone in Gloucestershire.  The fleece came from a female Suri Alpaca called Shimmy.  She must have sent me more than 200g because even after washing the dust and dirt out it still weighed 208g once it was dry.

I've put off working on this because I've never worked with fibre this long, silky and slippery before, most of it is between 5 and 8 inches in length.  Time to stop being scared of it and just get on and at least prepare it.

There are lots of different shades in this fleece and most of it could be easily separated from the other shades and so I kept it this way as I combed it so that I would have hand combed nests in different colours which gives me more options than just blending it all together.

At the end of combing I have 160g left.  Its incredibly soft and silky, very much like long human hair in terms of texture and apparently incredibly difficult to spin on its own as there is no memory to this fibre, no elasticity and you need plenty of twist to keep it together but not too much else it very quickly turns rough and rope textured, but not enough and it will stretch and fall apart. 

From doing some research Suri Alpaca is OK on its own if you want to weave with it but not so much for knitting or spinning, it has good drape but is likely to loose shape completely quite quickly so is better blended with something that will provide grip and elasticity, like wool, merino perhaps.  I do have some small amounts of merino in similar shades of brown so I will compare those and order more if necessarily and then make a gradient yarn in a blend of Suri Alpaca and Merino but I will have to cut the Alpaca fibres in half to make them similar length to Merino so that they will blend.  By blending with Merino it not only will it improve the finished yarn but will make the gradient go further meaning that I can make a much bigger shawl from this.