Alpaca processing

With the wedding weaving now out of the way I have been able to return to processing the two alpaca fleeces.

The first step was to split the fleeces in some basic color grouping - white, tan and mixed (darker).  There was over a pound of each.  Then to get rid of the dust I loaded about half of each pile into a home made container - four window screens taped with duct tape with a block on the top!

 With the petrol leaf blower and about a minute of blowing I was able to get rid of about 80% or more of the dust in the fleece.

The, with the weather being very pleasant I set up shop on the front porch and using the box picker went through the 'blown' fleece - breaking up the locks as I went.  Next step, also on the porch, was to run them through the carder and remove the carded fiber as roving, using a diz.

The process eventually gave me enough roving to spin 7 x 2 oz skeins of two ply which took about a week (spinning for about 4 hours a day).

The first lot was the mixed (dark) wool. I have now moved on to the white wool and will tackle the tan last as it is likely be be slower as I can already see it has a lot of second cuts and short locks.

Current skeins