Fiber Fun

I have to admit, preparing the alpaca's fiber like I do is not my favorite part of this whole process.

I love my alpacas. I love the time I spend outside with them. I love thinking about and planning breedings. I love having cria born and everything about living with alpacas.

Shearing isn't my favorite day of the year, but having that fiber is. The next step of preparing the fiber - skirting and flicking also isn't my favorite. But I love spinning it into yarn.

Spinning their fiber is increadible. Knitting with yarn I made from fiber off of our own alpacas in beyond anything I can describe.

I've been told that I must be a very patient person in order to do the fiber prep like I do. Well, it's not that I'm patient. I'm not. In fact it's the opposite, I can't wait for the fiber to go and come back from the mill, when I want to spin yarn, I want to spin it now.

So, I do this fiber prep.

I go in our basement and weight out fiber from which ever alpaca I choose. I tumble it in our fiber tumbler (an old dryer without heat).

Then I bring it upstairs in a bag. Here is a bag of fiber off of our girl, Twilight:



While it looks black, it is acutally a dark silver grey. While mostly black, there are glimmers of white giving it a grey look.

Here are some bundles of her fiber:



I take those bundles and flick them:



I end up with a cloud:



From the cloud, I can spin it into yarn. But usually it takes me most of a day's fiber time to flick it. Spinning will be the next days project.