Naughty Puppies Blend
In spite of all the other work I need to do today, I decided to do some fiber as well. Back when I introduced this blog, I mentioned the Puppies in the Wool Room Blend that I was working on and this thread carried through several posts. In addition, I mentioned another blend that would result from the same incident. This second blend was to be black suri and gray huacaya.
Today I started working on this second blend and I think I'm going to call it the Naughty Puppies blend -- but I'm not sure I'm going to make a blend.
I started by skirting the black baby suri prior to washing. This suri was left on the animal well over a year. The North American show system demands that suri alpacas have long fiber in fancy locks, so the fiber is often left unshorn into the alpaca's second year -- by which point the tips are felted and the locks are semi-permanent and the fiber is had to work with. If a suri is a potential high-value alpaca, then it is left in show fleece through the hot summer to improve it's sales price. If alpacas are ever to be an important fiber producing animal in North America, AOBA and the North American alpaca industry absolutely need to better align the show system with the needs of animal health and fiber processors -- but I'll tilt at that windmill a different day.
As I was saying, I started by skirting the black baby suri alpaca and found that it was already at the point of starting to felt. I was quite concerned that washing it further would cause additional felting and make it extremely difficult to work with the fiber. The fleece is too dirty to work unwashed. I don't expect my customers to be nearly as willing to spin unwashed alpaca as I am, and if I'm not willing to work it unwashed, it is totally unreasonable to expect my customers to do so. Therein lies the problem. The fiber must be washed, but washing it runs the risk of creating felt.
I decided to card the fiber first. Sometimes this helps. Sometimes carded fiber is more vulnerable to felting. In this particular case, I thought carding prior to washing likely to produce the best results. I carded the black suri and it didn't card well or easily. I put it through the carder 2-3 times and it looks much better. The batts are somewhat lofty and there are fewer fibers tied together in tight clumps and locks.
As I write this the fiber is soaking in the first bath of hot, sudsy, water. That water is black and it stinks. Some odor -- reminiscent of wet dog -- is normal when washing alpaca fleece. This much odor is unusual. I'm wondering if an extra soak will be required for this fiber to come clean.
The plan at this point is to finish washing the black baby suri, then wash the gray huacaya and allow both fleeces to dry. From that point, I will decide if I want to proceed with the blend.
We originally decided on the blend when we thought there were so many stray light fibers polluting the black suri that it would be undesirable to spin the fiber as black. After carding the fiber, I'm not so sure the stray light fibers are a problem. Yes, they are present and yes they would have to be plucked during spinning. I'm not convinced there are so many fibers as to create a real problem. I want to look at the fleece after it's been washed and put through the drum carder one more time before I make that decision.
If I do decide to blend the fibers, I will card each color until it's ready to spin, then I will layer black suri into the gray huacaya to create streaks of black within the gray. Because the two colors have different textures, there are two issues to take into consideration while carding. The first is integrating color and the second is consistent texture. My vision is of streaks of black in a basically gray roving. If I card to texture uniformity, the black suri will simply darken the gray huacaya and I'll have what appears to be a very dark gray fleece. That's not what I'm looking for, so I might end up with some texture non-uniformity. I'm not quite sure how that would spin up. It ought to be an interesting blend and I'm looking forward to it.
Today I started working on this second blend and I think I'm going to call it the Naughty Puppies blend -- but I'm not sure I'm going to make a blend.
I started by skirting the black baby suri prior to washing. This suri was left on the animal well over a year. The North American show system demands that suri alpacas have long fiber in fancy locks, so the fiber is often left unshorn into the alpaca's second year -- by which point the tips are felted and the locks are semi-permanent and the fiber is had to work with. If a suri is a potential high-value alpaca, then it is left in show fleece through the hot summer to improve it's sales price. If alpacas are ever to be an important fiber producing animal in North America, AOBA and the North American alpaca industry absolutely need to better align the show system with the needs of animal health and fiber processors -- but I'll tilt at that windmill a different day.
As I was saying, I started by skirting the black baby suri alpaca and found that it was already at the point of starting to felt. I was quite concerned that washing it further would cause additional felting and make it extremely difficult to work with the fiber. The fleece is too dirty to work unwashed. I don't expect my customers to be nearly as willing to spin unwashed alpaca as I am, and if I'm not willing to work it unwashed, it is totally unreasonable to expect my customers to do so. Therein lies the problem. The fiber must be washed, but washing it runs the risk of creating felt.
I decided to card the fiber first. Sometimes this helps. Sometimes carded fiber is more vulnerable to felting. In this particular case, I thought carding prior to washing likely to produce the best results. I carded the black suri and it didn't card well or easily. I put it through the carder 2-3 times and it looks much better. The batts are somewhat lofty and there are fewer fibers tied together in tight clumps and locks.
As I write this the fiber is soaking in the first bath of hot, sudsy, water. That water is black and it stinks. Some odor -- reminiscent of wet dog -- is normal when washing alpaca fleece. This much odor is unusual. I'm wondering if an extra soak will be required for this fiber to come clean.
The plan at this point is to finish washing the black baby suri, then wash the gray huacaya and allow both fleeces to dry. From that point, I will decide if I want to proceed with the blend.
We originally decided on the blend when we thought there were so many stray light fibers polluting the black suri that it would be undesirable to spin the fiber as black. After carding the fiber, I'm not so sure the stray light fibers are a problem. Yes, they are present and yes they would have to be plucked during spinning. I'm not convinced there are so many fibers as to create a real problem. I want to look at the fleece after it's been washed and put through the drum carder one more time before I make that decision.
If I do decide to blend the fibers, I will card each color until it's ready to spin, then I will layer black suri into the gray huacaya to create streaks of black within the gray. Because the two colors have different textures, there are two issues to take into consideration while carding. The first is integrating color and the second is consistent texture. My vision is of streaks of black in a basically gray roving. If I card to texture uniformity, the black suri will simply darken the gray huacaya and I'll have what appears to be a very dark gray fleece. That's not what I'm looking for, so I might end up with some texture non-uniformity. I'm not quite sure how that would spin up. It ought to be an interesting blend and I'm looking forward to it.
posted by Upper Alpacas | 6:49 PM
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