Friday, I met JoAnn of Fishwood Farms www.fishwoodfarm.com for lunch and she brought me a gift of beautiful alpaca seconds. The fiber pictured below is from Pintura one of their female alpaca's. Be sure to check out their web site for a sales list if you are in the market to purchase an alpaca, or alpaca products.
Not having any experience in washing raw alpaca, I did some reading on the net. What I found said to wash the fleece in cold water, no agitation, using gentle soap, and on a screen. I decided to be creative and used our fire pit screen to wash the fleece on. It's curved so the fleece stayed on it nicely even though it was a breezy day. The holes are larger than a screen that is used for windows, so any debris easily fell through but not so large that any fiber was lost through the holes.
- Lay fiber on top of screen, tips down, remove any vm before washing.
2. Using cold water from a hose and the shower setting on the sprayer, wet the fiber thoroughly
3. I then took Dawn Odor Reducing Liquid Soap (alpaca does not smell strongly like sheep's fleece, but it does have a light "farm" smell) poured about 1/8 cup in my hand and used the sprayer to evenly distribute the soap over the fleece. Both of my hands were busy doing this, so no picture.
4. Rinse the fleece thoroughly, turning over gently if necessary to ensure all the soap is removed.
The result is a nicely cleaned fleece that is ready to lay out to dry. I put this fleece on our deck in the sun to dry and gently fluffed the locks while it was drying.
Pintura is multicolored which is why there are some reddish brown areas in the fleece pictured.
2 comments:
So pretty! (And thanks for explaining how to wash the fleece). Pintura must be gorgeous.
A great tutorial, thanks..and it is lovely~I'm anonymous once again..seems this doesn't want to accept my id's argh~
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