preparing alpaca for spinning

Comments are always welcome here, and I do try to personally email a reply and answer as many as I can...forgive me if I owe you one ...I'm not as quick on the draw as I once was! I am working my way through my inbox and hope to get to yours soon- if I have not already.

One comment that I have been meaning to address is one from Knitchick, who was wondering how I am preparing the alpaca for spinning....

You may have said this before, but how do you prepare it? Do you wash it? Card it? I've been spinning it raw, but I really can't imagine doing that on the GW.

...so I will answer this question in a post... I continue to work with Violette's blanket. Oh, by the way...in case you have not met Violette yet, here is a nice photo of her. She lives a happy life at Finca Alta Vista farm.

I have been processing this fleece entirely by hand. I have not washed it before working with it. This is a lovely cria blanket, very clean in comparison to other alpaca I have worked with.

First I select a small bundle of locks...about as much as you can fit in a coffee mug (for lack of a better reference). I then flick the ends, and set this bunch aside to spin as prime. I spin it directly from the locks as described here.

But what to do with all the leftovers that remain behind in the flicker? Some of it has small bits of VM and chaff. But not enough to make it objectionable. Slowly, I have accumulated a bag full of these combings. I decide to pick it, and send it through the drum carder.

Next, I spin it on the Great Wheel. I can draw out a good length... 5 to 6 feet of very thin yarn, and as I do this, I can inspect it before winding on the spindle. Because the wool is drawn out so thin, most of the hay like bits fall out on the way to the twist.

Some of the slubs that have trapped chaff or short cuts are then picked out..one at a time, before winding on. Tedious. If this blanket had been sent out to be commercially processed, I doubt if the yield would be the same. I hate to waste perfectly good fiber just because of a little VM....but I do admit this method is very time consuming...The results are pretty much what I am looking for, so time is a trade off for quality.

The Great Wheel spun cops move to the Ashford for plying. Mostly because I have better control on that wheel, and don't have to deal with dropping and crossing the drive band on the Great Wheel.

The above photo illustrates an example of both styles of prep and spinning. The one on the left is the drum card prep...and the one on the right is spun from the locks. Both skeins have been spun on the Great Wheel.