Skirting

I love putting each alpaca's blanket of fiber on the skirting table.  This is where you can really see and feel it.

For skirting I lay out the whole blanket, but then work on a small section of the blanket at a time:

I look it over for big pieces of debris (especially poo and burrs, no one wants that in their fiber!).  I pull the section up and shake it:

Then I flip it over and shake it the other way.  Shaking drops out some of the debris, it also will shake out most of the second cuts.  Second cuts happen when the shearer goes over a spot more than once resulting in shorter pieces that usually are too short for processing.  In my hand here is a regular nice bundle of fiber, and the smaller second cut:

You can also see a bigger piece of hay there, I pull that out.

Once I get the second cuts and the big debris piece out, I put the fiber into a bag.  I weigh the bag:

I have been making either 3 ounce bags or 4 ounce bags, depending on the fiber.  Typically I use two bags to make a skein of yarn (1 bag for each strand of a two ply yarn). This makes it handy to spin up either a 6 ounce skein or an 8 ounce skein.

In case you are wondering, the pictures above feature two different alpaca blankets.  The rose grey is off of our girl, Rose.  The fading fawn if off of our girl, Tehya.