Natural Gray Alpaca Fiber
Gray in alpacas is a pattern rather than a color. The color is caused by roaning -- mixing unpigmented fibers with pigmented fibers -- on a colored background. Silver-gray alpacas are roaning against a black background. Rose-gray alpacas are roaning against a brown or fawn background.
Big fiber processors will tell you not to breed for gray in alpacas. They say that gray is a bad thing and they can make gray by mixing white fleeces and black fleeces. I know gray sheep cause problems for large fiber processors who want their white fiber to be perfectly white -- so they can dye it perfectly yellow or perfectly blue or perfectly whatever. I can understand them discouraging large wool operations from raising gray sheep because if you accidentally mix a gray sheep fleece with a white fleece, then your bale of white wool isn't perfectly white.
I'm not convinced about mixing black and white alpaca fiber to make grays equivalent to the natural grays. I've blended quite a bit of alpaca fiber, and I have yet to create a mixture of black and white fiber that looks like a natural gray. Mixtures of black and white look like mixtures of black and white to me. They just don't have the same tones as natural gray alpaca. When I look closely at natural gray alpaca fiber, I see a lot of black hairs and a lot of white hairs, but I also think I see a lot that are in between. I am beginning to believe that gray alpacas are not a mixture of pigmented and unpigmented -- black and white -- fibers as we have been told, but a mixture of pigmented, unpigmented, and partially pigmented -- black, white and gray -- fibers.
At any rate, I just love natural gray alpaca fiber. Every gray alpaca is different, and each gray fleece spins up to a different appearance. I'm a small-scale fiber processor -- small even by cottage industry standards. I can breed for gray and work with natural gray fiber all I want.
We have two gray alpacas in our herd. Chloe and her half-brother Sindre. Chloe's fleece is a very uniform gray. When carded, you hardly notice the differences between the colors of her fibers. When spun, however, this seemingly uniform roving produces a gray yarn with some heathery salt-and-pepper aspects. In fact, it was spinning Chloe's fiber that gave us the idea for our HeatherSelect(tm) blends (which I'll discuss in the future).
I think the lack of uniformity is what attracts me to gray fleeces. Yarn from gray fleeces always shows greater color variation than the roving it comes from. The finer the yarn is spun, the more apparent the salt-and-pepper pattern in the yarn.
On the knitting needles: Some cruddy walmart-acrylic practice yarn and a badly mangled practice piece.
On the spinning wheel: Pinero -- and it may have seemed like a clean fleece when I decided to spin it unwashed, but it's sure making my hands dirty.
On the crochet hooks: Nothing at the moment.
On the skirting board: Puppies in the wool room blend -- drying further and waiting for a dry day so I can finish carding.
On deck: Another blend from the dog disaster in the wool room. The base fiber is a silver gray huacaya alpaca fleece to which I will add black baby suri. Both batches of fiber have a lot of color contamination, but that shouldn't matter in the blend. The end result should be a roving that spins to a gray yarn with black streaks.
Kim
Big fiber processors will tell you not to breed for gray in alpacas. They say that gray is a bad thing and they can make gray by mixing white fleeces and black fleeces. I know gray sheep cause problems for large fiber processors who want their white fiber to be perfectly white -- so they can dye it perfectly yellow or perfectly blue or perfectly whatever. I can understand them discouraging large wool operations from raising gray sheep because if you accidentally mix a gray sheep fleece with a white fleece, then your bale of white wool isn't perfectly white.
I'm not convinced about mixing black and white alpaca fiber to make grays equivalent to the natural grays. I've blended quite a bit of alpaca fiber, and I have yet to create a mixture of black and white fiber that looks like a natural gray. Mixtures of black and white look like mixtures of black and white to me. They just don't have the same tones as natural gray alpaca. When I look closely at natural gray alpaca fiber, I see a lot of black hairs and a lot of white hairs, but I also think I see a lot that are in between. I am beginning to believe that gray alpacas are not a mixture of pigmented and unpigmented -- black and white -- fibers as we have been told, but a mixture of pigmented, unpigmented, and partially pigmented -- black, white and gray -- fibers.
At any rate, I just love natural gray alpaca fiber. Every gray alpaca is different, and each gray fleece spins up to a different appearance. I'm a small-scale fiber processor -- small even by cottage industry standards. I can breed for gray and work with natural gray fiber all I want.
We have two gray alpacas in our herd. Chloe and her half-brother Sindre. Chloe's fleece is a very uniform gray. When carded, you hardly notice the differences between the colors of her fibers. When spun, however, this seemingly uniform roving produces a gray yarn with some heathery salt-and-pepper aspects. In fact, it was spinning Chloe's fiber that gave us the idea for our HeatherSelect(tm) blends (which I'll discuss in the future).
I think the lack of uniformity is what attracts me to gray fleeces. Yarn from gray fleeces always shows greater color variation than the roving it comes from. The finer the yarn is spun, the more apparent the salt-and-pepper pattern in the yarn.
On the knitting needles: Some cruddy walmart-acrylic practice yarn and a badly mangled practice piece.
On the spinning wheel: Pinero -- and it may have seemed like a clean fleece when I decided to spin it unwashed, but it's sure making my hands dirty.
On the crochet hooks: Nothing at the moment.
On the skirting board: Puppies in the wool room blend -- drying further and waiting for a dry day so I can finish carding.
On deck: Another blend from the dog disaster in the wool room. The base fiber is a silver gray huacaya alpaca fleece to which I will add black baby suri. Both batches of fiber have a lot of color contamination, but that shouldn't matter in the blend. The end result should be a roving that spins to a gray yarn with black streaks.
Kim
posted by Upper Alpacas | 9:18 AM
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