Very exciting times, or maybe not to most, but I have finally received all my processed yarn back from the mill. Whilst I was away in January the mill was hard at work processing all the floof I deposited with them in November and it is quite amazing what I got back bearing in mind my car was stuffed to capacity with bags of floof the box I received back is approximately 40cm x 40cm x 30cm and contained 11 cones of yarn.
The general process appears to be:
Skirting – this is taking the raw fleece and removing the shorter & coarser fibres plus all the vegetation
Noodling – basically folding and rolling the fleece so all the fibres lay the same way ready for the next stage
Washing – say no more
Carding – basically the floof now goes through a machine that looks like a giant dog brush to separate the fibres, ensuring they lie parallel to one another & removing and remaining impurities
Gilling – which blends together the carded fibres with alternating directions to produce a long line of floof ready for spinning
Spinning – this takes the floof and twists the fibres together to form a consistent & continuous strand (this is the bit I am struggling with, my hand spinning attempts still look very rustic)
Plying – a strand of spun fibre now gets twisted together with another strand – this gives you 2 ply, more strands can be plied to give 3 ply etc.
And there you have it, every stage either photographed or filmed and the process all done by individual alpaca so I now have various different cones of yarn that I can identify by name. It turns out Cusco & Lucha and my best for floof with Coca & Imogen coming in next. Jester only produced 1 cone but has a really fine, extremely soft fibre and Polly and Reeya were slightly coarser and combined to produce a very pretty ginger Arun weight yarn. All in all weighing 8,735 grams, with John Lewis selling alpaca @ £9.75 per 50g I was quite amazed.
Imogen is currently being used to make a baby blanket, Jester is being turned into bedsocks and Cusco is being crocheted in a sleeveless jumper. The rest I need to work out what to do with.
Other than that the woollies are all fine, Inti is still a fabulous little chap and is starting to walk very nicely on the halter, although has to be in front of the handler, the second you overtake him he just puts the brakes on & refuses to take another step. He still enjoys his chest scratches and is very generous with his kisses. We have also been going through the process of getting him to eat his morning pellets, up until now he has been just on grass, having weaned himself from mum he really could do with the additional vitamins etc that the pellets provide as the grass is not at its best at the moment although he is a good little eater and is rarely seen without a grass hanging out of his mouth.
Coca is still a very attentive mum and if he is taken for a walk with Lucha for example, Coca is stand at the gate calling to him, although the odd thing is as soon as he is back in the field Coca just ignores him and off Inti goes to check on granny (Reeya) and these two still have mad moments starting with a gentle headbutt leading into running games. However, the time is coming when he will need to leave the girls, he is such a docile little thing I am feeling slightly anxious about the moment he is moved, Cusco can be a bit of a thug, but we will try and introduce them gently and take them for walks together first.
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