I blended Donnabella and Aimee’s fleece! The color difference is greater between the fawn and dark brown, and it didn’t take much brown to make a significant difference in the blend color.
Fawn and brown alpaca fleece loaded on a carder
After blending, I color sorted the rolags before spinning.
Color sorted alpaca rolags
I am finding differences in fiber in the fleeces. I’m not sure if I selected raw fiber from different parts of each blanket (the fiber sheared from the back of the alpaca), or if there are differences in fiber diameter between animals (which makes sense), or both. I am pleased that I am learning and noticing the differences!
The rolags of alpaca wool I am carding are so light and fluffy, I don’t want to pack down the fibers by storing them until everything is carded. So I decided to spin as I go.
This is as much as I could pack on my spindle!
It is a nice pairing of tasks: card a box full of rolags, spin said rolags, repeat. When my spindle was just as full as I could get it, I did wind the yarn on my niddy noddy, rinsed it, and let it dry. Even though I washed the raw fleece, it still had some water resistance. The dried yarn is balanced and more consistent in thickness than my last spindle full.
Cake of single ply 100% un-dyed alpaca
The color shift from Sugar Plum’s fleece to Donnabella’s came out nicely!
Feeling a little silly. My spoiled pup has been itchy for awhile. I’ve tried skin sprays, ordered some probiotics, took all the artificially dyed treats away… what? I didn’t? Turns out our go to treat has red 40 in it. How did that miss the purge? We were buying it by the jar full. I must have assumed I read the ingredients label long ago. Nope. Sugar and red 40. All righty then, out they go. But the jars are so useful… I’ll make new labels with vinyl! (Told you this stuff is addicting.)
Filling the indents in the jars to make a smoother surface
I washed out the jars and soaked off as much of the old label as I could. There were still sticky bits, so I decided to recover the whole middle in white vinyl. The indents in the sides of the jar made the vinyl pucker, so I filled them in with silicone caulk, smoothed it, and let it set. The vinyl went on better, but not as perfectly as it does on hard surfaces (the plastic jars have some flex).
New dog treat jar label
I designed some new labels in Adobe Illustrator and cut them with my Cricut. The first design (above) was not an easy weed, and the tiny toe nail marks were too small to deal with! The second design (below) was very easy to weed, but larger than the white. Oops. I didn’t measure twice, cut once. But it does look like a little tiny dog ink stepped all over the jar, so I am going with it.
Paw print text designApplied labelEscaped paw prints
It was an interesting experiment, and I have useable, non-sticky treat jars for the new, natural dog treats. The dog is spoilt.
I think I mentioned that I purchased three different colors of alpaca wool? Now comes the fun part (who am I kidding it has all been fun): blending! I used my fine carders to blend portions of Sugar Plum’s (white) and Donabella’s (fawn) fleece to make intermediate colors. The idea is to get a gradual change from one color to the next.
Natural alpaca fleece colors before blendingColor graded rolags
The color change is subtle; Donnabella’s fleece is only slightly darker than Sugar Plum’s, but there is a difference. Next I’ll try blending Donnabella’s with Aimee’s (dark brown).
The alpaca fleece is dry and I am starting to card and spin it! My plan was to card it all, grade it by color, then spin, but my rolags (the rolls of carded fiber) are so fluffy that I don’t have room to store them like I did with the merino wool rolags. So I decided to spin as I go. If it were possible to spin clouds, I think this is how it would feel. The soft alpaca rolags are light and airy but are spinning up easily. I’m using my homemade top whorl spindle and planning for spinning everything as Z spun singles (as opposed to the opposite direction referred to as S). What am I planning for the finished yarn? A hat of course. I’ve read that alpaca doesn’t have the same elasticity as wool, so I think testing it on an item I am very comfortable making is a good start.
Critters and Craft 