First attempt at preparing Alpaca

Being the kind of person that I am, in that if I am going to learn to do something I want to have a full understanding of the process from start to finish, I purchased some raw Alpaca fleece from a local Alpaca Farm called Aston Alpacas, just across the county border in Leicestershire, whom I first came into contact with at The Whitacres and Shustoke Show in the summer.

I chose three different colour fleeces that appealed to me and here are the alpacas that the fleeces came from.

First up is gorgeous girl Giselle...

next we have pretty Amorcita...

and bringing up the rear is this lovely chap, Orlando.

Don't you just want to run your hands through their lovely coats!

Before doing anything with the fleeces I watched lots of know-how videos on You Tube and then I prepared Giselle's fleece.  I started by "picking it out", this is basically pulling it apart finely, which allows most of the dirt to fall out, so best do this over a bin or some newspaper and removing any large pieces of organic matter (hay, grass etc) and any really short knarly bits.  Next I placed some of the fleece in one of those "delicate garment wash bags" and plunged it into hot soapy water and pushed it down without agitating it, to avoid it felting, and let it soak for about an hour.  I then lifted the bag out, emptied the water and refilled the sink with more hot soapy water and done the same again.  The final soak was in plain hot water.  The next stage is to allow it to dry naturally before hand carding the fibre ready for spinning.

The raw fleece

 after being picked out

being soaked

 out to dry

close up of drying

carding

ready to spin

This is the resulting yarn.  I added a tiny amount of Mulberry Silk as I spun so this is 97% Alpaca, 3% Mulberry Silk.  There is 169g/193m of 2ply yarn.  I realise my spinning is not very good yet, I haven't been spinning long.

I will prepare the other two fleeces later in the year when the weather warms up.

I hope you have found this blog post interesting, informative, educational or maybe it has inspired you to learn something new...

click to discover more about Alpaca

Spinning of pre-dyed Teeswater locks

Following on from my post regarding the preparation of the pre-dyed Teeswater locks that I got off Ebay, I had to decide what I wanted to do with my little piles of different coloured combed locks.    I spun all of the red/pink and the red/white into a single, mixing the colours up as I went.  I then spun all of the red/yellow and the red/green into a second single, again mixing the colours up as I went.  

I then plied these two singles together to create a 2-ply yarn which weighed 123g and was approx 106m long.  I made a simple scarf with a button fastening with the finished yarn.

I had a bit of left over on the red/pink and red/white bobbin and so plied this back on itself to create a little skein of yarn which weighed 16g and measured 15m.  I donated this little skein to my kids school for their craft work.

With the blue/green combed locks I made a pretty single ply yarn which weighed 20g and measured approx 59m.  I made a beaded lace headband with this yarn.

Click to discover more about Teeswater sheep

Neptune Capelet - Design W419

Following on from making a firey red beaded edged capelet I decided to make another in vivid blue.  The yarn is Colinette Tagliatelli in shade Neptune and its a 90% Merino, 10% Nylon ribbon type yarn which is hand-dyed in Wales.  I love this yarn, so nice to work with.  I started crocheting on 14th April and was completed by 18th April 2012.

Blocking made a huge difference to the final item and those beads on the fringing are just perfect.

Preparing pre-dyed Teeswater locks for spinning

I purchased 2 x 100g of mixed colour dyed Teeswater locks off Ebay.  When I opened the bags, I discovered that the locks were a bit mucky and sticky and so washed them and then let them dry before I could do anything with them.

Once they were dry I sorted them into colours as best as I could but given the fact that most of the long locks were dyed two colours, this was quite difficult but I did manage to sort into piles of blue/green, red/pink, red/white, red/yellow and red/green.

Using a metal dog comb, I teased out the locks, one at a time, by holding in the middle and working each end independently and combing out the knots and such just like you would with long human hair.  Out of the original 200g, I was left with 164g of combed locks which are ready for spinning.

I will write a separate blog post about the spinning of this Teeswater.

Click to discover more about Teeswater Sheep

Firey Red/Orange Crochet Capelet - Design W419

There is a thing called "exploded lace", whereby you take an old fashioned doily pattern and instead of making it in thin crochet cotton a tiny crochet hook you use a heavy weight yarn and a big crochet hook and "explode" that lace, in other words you make a big version of a tiny thing.  

This crochet capelet has been designed using "exploded lace" and I used Colinette Tagliatelli in shade "Fire" to crochet the capelet.  It is a super bulky ribbon type yarn of 90% Merino Wool/10% Nylon.  I also used red and orange lustre glass beads on the ends of the fringing to match the yarn.

This starts from the neck down and I started on 24 January and was finished by 27th January 2012.

Marble Capelet - Design W419

This is my second capelet in this design.  I've chosen Colinette Tagliatelli in shade Marble, a ribbon type yarn 90% Merino, 10% Nylon and its hand-dyed in Wales.

Started crocheting with 6mm hook on 19th December and finished on 30th December 2011.  Blocking made a huge difference to the capelet and opened up the lace and made it drape as it should.

I used some peridot green lustre glass beads for the end of the fringing.

Burnt Ochre Capelet - Design W419

There's a bit of a new thing going around called "exploded lace", where you take an old fashioned doily pattern and instead of crocheting it in fine cotton using a tiny crochet hook, you use a slightly chunky yarn and big crochet hook and "explode" the lace.  This is made using that technique with the pattern modified, to remove what would have been the centre of the doily, to make way for your head to fit through.

I'm using Colinette Skye, a discontinued yarn, in shade Burnt Ochre and its an Aran weight 100% wool.  I started on 15th December and was finished by 18th December 2011.

I love how this has turned out.  I wasn't sure what beads to add to the fringing but I'd been given a bag full of old costume jewellery and beaded necklaces that used to belong to my late gran and late mother, mostly broken or seen better days and many were just plastic but there were some nice made of glass beads that could be repurposed.  I had taken these apart and cleaned all the beads and in amongst them were these foil lined amber glass beads.

After blocking I popped it over one of our black cushions to see the effect if was worn with a LBT.  Stunning!