Alpaca and silk blend yarn, 15-16 WPI, 27g, 93 yards.

Last weekend I played with the new drum carder a bit.

Back in the summer we purchased a bit of white alpaca from a member of our spinning guild. We’ve washed about half of it already in small mesh laundry bags, getting maybe 50 – 60 grams per bag.

When we got it we noticed that the tips were pretty muddy and glued together. We hoped that this would come out in the wash.

One bag of washed alpaca, with a couple washed locks beside it.

Most of that did. There are still some tips that are stuck together. The other surprise we had was a lot of veg matter that we didn’t see when we got the fleece. It looks like some of what we thought was just muddy tips turned out to be the veg.

I’ve always had a hard time with washing alpaca and this time was no different. The fibre gets matted down a lot and the butt ends almost felt.

Since doing this batch I’ve learned from a place that processes alpacas that it’s better to really open up and fluff your fibre before you wash it. That will help with the matting and butt ends sticking together.
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I drum carded about one and a half bags of the alpaca. I teased open sections of the fibre and added them in a handful at a time. I carded the fibre four times to get it fairly open and consistent. I’m really pleased at how fluffy the batt is!

Carded alpaca fibre

If you look closely you can see there is still some veg mater in the batt. A lot of it came out in the carding. There are also clumps of fibre where the carder wasn’t able to open up the butt ends of the fibre.

The batt in the picture is half the fibre I carded.

I took the other half, split it into thirds and carded each third with some bombyx silk I had dyed up last year. The blend was probably 50/50 alpaca and silk. I put each group through the carder four times to get it blended nicely. I also removed the clumped fibre as I found it.

I then spun it up on my lendrum and chain plyed it to get a 3-ply yarn. The final yarn was 15-16 WPI, 27g, 93 yards. I’m quite pleased with the final yarn. This was fairly easy spinning. A lot of the remaining veg fell out during the spinning. Any veg or neps that were in the yarn I removed as I was spinning.

Detail of alpaca and silk blend yarn

I’m going to knit this up into a small lace sample and see what it is like. I think this kind of yarn would make a great shawl and there is plenty of white alpaca still.