I've bought some Black Alpaca

I had the opportunity to buy some beautiful black alpaca, a little late in the year, but seeing as I've just got my blending hackle I jumped at the chance as I may need some black to make interesting yarns.

I bought a 1Kg bag from Aston Alpacas and after washing all the dust and dirt out, Alpacas love a roll in the dirt, and removing a few bits of slightly coarse fibres I am left with 823g.  It will be beautiful once it has been combed to get the bits of grass etc out of it.

Angelo - the Cotswold lamb - Part II

So, Angelo's fleece was 1950g when it arrived and after having the second cuts removed and being washed I am left with 1413g, which needs to be hand combed.  Look at the lovely pillowcase full of gorgeous locks.  Please see Part I for more info.

Now to the combs.  With this fleece I made sure that I loaded the combs up with the cut end on the comb and the tip hanging down like it was on the sheep.

As you can see the tips are still a bit tight and a bit mucky but the combs should get these loosened and opened up.  The photo on the right I think looks like Santa's beard.

Slowly turning locks into fluff...

We have fluff.  Wow, look at the white fluff.  Beautiful!

A hand-combed nest and a small sample of spinning.  Not quite got it right but it was good to practice so I know how to adjust my spinning to this fleece and what I want to get from it.

Spinning the singles ready for plying and showing fineness with the UK 1 pence coin.

I plied the singles and skeined them up into just over 100g in each skein because they still looked a little dirty to me, something I really noticed  just as I was about to wash the second batch of 3 skeins and so I lay one of the first 3 skeins, which was all nice and clean, in amongst the yarns waiting to be washed.  As you can see from the photo on the left, there was a bit of a difference in colour.  This is down to those tips still being a little stuck together and discoloured as I combed them but its all come out in the wash.

I got 10 skeins of yarn, all around the 100g or thereabouts mark and all in the sport weight range, all absolutely beautiful and soft with high lustre.  The last photo shows them all lined up in number order, Skein 1 on the left, Skein 10 on the right.

These are going to make some fabulous wedding shawls, can't wait to get cracking on these but I have so many other things to do first.

Angelo - the Cotswold ram lamb - Part I

Through one of the fleece/spinning forums that I am part of, a very nice farmer has been welcomed to our "flock" so that he can sell his award winning fleece direct to hand-spinners.  He keeps and shows a beautiful flock of Cotswold Sheep.  These are one of the Longwool breeds and he shows his sheep and then after the fleece have been sheared, he shows those too then at the end of the show season he sells the fleece to hand-spinners.  I put my name down for one and it has arrived.  WOW, its beautiful!!!

This is Angelo, the ram lamb that the fleece has come from and a photo of the fleece that Rob sent to me before I purchased it.  Angelo's grandfather won the title of Champion Ram at the Royal Show.

Rob looks after his sheep extremely well and spends hours picking out all the VM from his fleeces so that they are in pristine condition for showing.  This fact, and the fact that his fleece are out-of-this-world, make his fleece highly desirable and there is currently a waiting list, which at the time of writing is about 2 or 3 years long, meaning that is the length of time you have to wait to get your chance of getting your hands on one of these.

The starting weight of this fleece is 1950g but as you can see, its not white and its full of gorgeous lanolin which is great for the sheep, the fleece and my hands but not so great for my hand combs.  Nice long staple and lots of lustre.  Can't wait to see the wonderful yarn that this will make.

There was a small amount of second cuts and rubbish weighing 96g, a very small amount given the size of the fleece and a pile of locks waiting to be washed looks fantastic.

Washing

I used my usual method of washing a fleece which is separating the locks from the whole fleece and using net laundry bags to soak the locks in hot soapy water, regular dishwashing detergent is fine.  I usually use one that also has anti-bacterial qualities too.  My fleece has 2 hot soapy soaks to remove dirt and grease, followed by 2 plain hot water soaks to remove any residue soap and also to remove any further dirt trapped in the locks.  Important: always run the hot water first, then add the soap and carefully/gently swirl the water.  Do not shake your hands in the water, you do not want a bubble bath.  Carefully lower the bag of fleece into the water and push down slowly and gently into the water.  That is it, leave it alone for about 20 minutes, do not touch it or you will end up with a bag of felted mess.  The hot water and soap will do its job perfectly well.  When it comes to changing the water, you carefully lift one end of the bag over onto the other end (fold in half basically) and then lift the whole thing out and let the water run out before gently squeezing most of the excess water out, DO NOT WRING.  Fill sink with fresh hot water and go again.

Just look at that water, and that is from the second hot soapy water soak.

Clean by comparison, or is it?

The locks on the left have been washed but the tips are still a bit mucky but these can be gently rubbed underneath the water and usually loosen up and shed their dirt.  The locks on the right are in need of washing.

Lay out to dry, whoops, missed a bit of a dirty lock there, which was soon rectified.

Just ignore our mess in the background, my hanging drier is out in the utility room/storage area for some of the gardening bits and pieces and recyclable boxes etc.  Look at how clean it looks close up now.