Squee!

That’s just a gorgous picture of Grumpy.

So Soft – Just Don’t Pet Him!

 

Look at that face! Isn’t he the cutest darn thing?

He hates being petted, which is just TOO bad because he’s SO SOFT! Last winter I’d corner him in the stall and pet his neck and he’d scream “Ewwww!” and stamp his little bitty feet. I’d laugh at him. “Too bad, Grumpy. Get over it! You’re just SO soft!”

I’ve spent most of the afternoon on the back porch, playing with Grumpy’s fleece. I’ve picked it. Carded it. Spun it and plied it.

It’s just so soft!

I don’t know what I’m going to make with it. It’s very fine and a soft creamy white.

Look, you can just grab a handful and spin it just as fine as froghair, with a drop spindle. My wheel makes it into yarn so fast, the stuff just flies onto the bobbins. The yarn I plied an hour ago needs to be measured and weighed so I know about where I’m at with it.

I’ve discovered how to wash it – just soak it in water for a week. Change the water every day. Use soap and hot water the first day, leave it in the sun the rest of the week. This is a very slow process, but the fleece is just as soft and clean as it can be…after a week. If I go any faster, I get FELT. You can’t agitate this stuff. Even spinning it in the washer felts it.

Now the sad part is that Grumpy appears to have the coarsest hair of the three alpacas. But his is the longest, and the cleanest. I bag it up an ounce per bag – soak it and forget it.

I’ve got more fleece from Atlanta, but I haven’t tried to wash it up yet. I’ve washed one ounce of black llama and an ounce of mouse-colored llama.

Last weekend we went to Wampum Stompup farm. I saw the most beatiful alpacas. Fawns, red-browns and blacks that had some really dreamy looking fleece. There was one red-brown that I’d really like to buy. If he were fixed, which he isn’t.

She breeds her males. I just want geldings. No females, no babies – though her babies are adorable. They are just so hard to keep up. She’s got to deworm hers every 10 days because of some weird worm that comes from the deer.

I deworm mine twice a year. The chickens have developed a taste for Alpaca Poop that defies logic. They like it more than they like horse manure.

Well, the tractor repairman is here, gotta go!

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Had to make the picture bigger so you can get the full squee from that cute little face.

Grumpy’s Fleece II

This matted mess is what I started with. Very discouraging to have the fleece turn into these nast matts. However, all is not lost.

This is a fleece picking machine. A small one that is very powerful. See those razor sharp nails? They pick apart the fleece. What you get is in the next photo.

Soft and fluffy again. The fleece just needs carded and spun. Or dyed, carded and spun.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, right? In this case the word is “HOT” a thousand times. LOL

Even the flowers are wilted in the heat, drip irrigation can’t keep up with the heat. Might have to turn it to the highest setting.

Grumpy’s Fleece

So I made the skirting table out of bird netting and PVC pipe. It’s a nice, large surface, and half the fleece fit on it. I shook a lot of dirt out of the fleece before I washed a small part of it.

Three changes of water with soap, two rinses and a stint in the spin cycle later. Well, it was okay, fairly clean, and of course, matted.

I ran it through the picker and got a soft cloud of lovely fluff. I carded some of it.

Tomorrow I start spinning this fluff into yarn.

There will be pictures, I promise.

Got Fleece? Oh Yes!

Half of Grumpy’s fleece.

The deed is done for the year. I have 4 bags of fleece, my back is completely trashed, but I couldn’t be happier with the yield.

I was really worried about Grumpy. I knew the weather was going to get hot and I knew he was carrying 3 inches of fleece all over his body. I also knew he wasn’t going to go down quietly. Poor little guy had been handled very little until he came here. So he’s little more than a wild animal.

The photo above is half of Grumpy’s fleece.

I had to make up a skirting table in a hurry. I had originally thought to use something else, something removable, but it was too much work. This way we used plastic pipe and bird netting I already had. It’s worked perfectly, so far. The fleece is a bit damp, so it’s going to sit outside for the night. By afternoon it should be ready to re-bag or wash.

Likely I’ll wash a big batch of it. I’ve got a serious itch to get my hands on this stuff. I want to dye it in deep moody blues and mix in lots of pretty sparkle. I’m thinking sweater, or large shawl.

 

A lock of hair, staple length appears to be at least 3 inches. Yowza!

I don’t know micron counts. But I know soft – this is really soft. Filthy dusty, but really soft. I left it outside to air, and the gentle breeze and a bit of shaking has taken the second cuts and a bunch of dust out.

After I dye half of it in blues, I’ll dye a bunch of greens, mix the green with some chestnut for a woodsy color of yarn. Then, I don’t know. Maybe card up a bunch to spin…into art yarn?

I’ve seen Sheri’s photos of her goats, so I’m leaning towards getting some mohair locks. I think alpaca and mohair is going to make a crazy soft yarn. Something a knitter would flip over.

PigPen and Grumpy

 

The guys aren’t happy. There’s been a lot of fighting, with PigPen instigating it. That dark patch on Grumpy is a long scratch with a nasty looking bruise under it.

 

The Next Step – A Picker

Lil Dynamo – lives up to it’s name.

I’ve got several llama fleeces, and the problem with llamas are they are dirt bathers.

After a few hours with an unwashed llama fleece, I wake up that night with my sinuses completely closed up.

That’s a LOT of dirt.

So washing a llama fleece takes many, many washings. Each one has the potential to matt the fleece a little bit more.

So the other day, I really blew it and matted a white llama fleece. It was just a mess. Not felted, because I could pull it apart, but the fiber was in knots. I went to Etsy to price pickers and found this little oak picker that is small enough to fit under the bed.

I put a fist full of matted llama in. It took a couple of passes to get the mats out, and with it came handfuls of dirt. But the fiber is a lovely fluffy mass now. Not a matted mess. (Big sigh of relief!)

I think carding is now possible.

The New Guys – Photos

I’ve been busy, and haven’t posted pictures of the new Alpacas.

As you can see, they were sheared in late summer or fall. There’s not so much fleece on them. There are a lot of burrs, too. As usual, they aren’t the kind of guys to stand still to be groomed.

But I WILL work on that. I prefer my ‘llamas’ as well mannered as my horses. This is going to take a LOT of treats.

Also, I’ve got to get them off the expensive Senior Feed that goes to the old horses.

Got to cut corners where I can.

Alpaca in Trouble?

The boys in their stall.

Yesterday I got a little worried when Bashful didn’t eat his grain, for the second day in a row. I’m still getting used to ‘the llamas’ (yes they are alpacas, but for some reason we always call them llamas.) I contacted SELR (Llama Rescue) for advice.

Bless Debbie for getting right back to me. She told me what to look for and recommended a shot of antibotics in case it was a respertory infection and deworming.

This morning, I offered him some grain, which he nibbled. But he went to the hay bag with real enthusiasm when I put a section of alphalfa hay in it. Bingo! I also watched as he drank deeply.

I checked his eyelids and gums for color. The color was a nice deep pink. His breathing sounded fine. There was a bit of discharge from one eye, but not enough to call unusual.

Just to make sure, I gave him the antibotics. I had a hard time finding skin under all that hair, but I figured it out. Then I let them go outside for a few hours of grazing.

He came in with an appitite! Shoved his little nose into the hay bag and vanished up to his little ears! He still didn’t touch the grain. So, just to be on the safe side, I dewormed both of them.

Grumpy gave me a fight, of course, but it seemed more of a token protest compared to the first time I worked with him. That was a rodeo, let me tell you! He makes a lot of noise, but doesn’t spit on me. It took three tries to get the medicine in his mouth, but I got it done.

I used the least amount of force to get the job done, just like I do with the horses. When a critter doesn’t fight me, I take all the pressure off immediatly as a reward. It works much better than you’d think it would.

I’m going to keep an eye on Bashful. When I left the barn he’d shoved his head back into the hay bag and only his ears were showing. When he came out to breath, he had a mouthful and seemed happy.

I’ll check on him again tomorrow and see how he’s doing, of course.

Alpacas – Quick Update

I’ve been working with the alpacas twice a day – by taking them out and bringing them inside at night.

The poor little guys aren’t used to being handled, so this was a major project. At first I had limited progress, there was a lot of chasing and Grumpy did a lot of spitting when caught.

The change was very gradual – almost too subtle to mention, so I didn’t.

But yesterday had a ‘shining moment’ that needs to be recognised. While we were cornering the alpacas, I was able to easily hook Bashful’s halter. Grumpy was cussing at my husband

But when hubby reached out his hand to catch Grumpy’s halter, the alpaca pressed his neck into hubby’s hand.

The look on hubby’s face was priceless!

I’m used to dealing with these guys, and it really is great to see them try to figure out what we want them to do. Once we had the routine down, they’ve done small things to cooperate. They run into the catch area, it looks accidental. I always fuss and try to give them treats to let them know this is what I want.

It’s sad, in a way, to see just how badly they distrust humans. It’s plain no one has taken any time to tame them. Now, even the slightest sign of socialization is lavishly praised and rewarded. The upside is how Grumpy watches me with his ears up, curious about me. When I get too close, I get grunts and other grumpy noises, but the ears aren’t flat back, just turned back.

Even Bashful is trying to cooperate – he holds still, making anxious noises, but if I’m very gentle when I touch him, I get ears up, not back.

If I didn’t know ‘horsespeak’ like a second language, I would miss all these tiny changes.

Now, if I could just get the horses to lighten up so I can turn the alpacas out with the horses…maybe next month?

Cottage Industry – Fiber Anyone?

I’ve been browsing Etsy.com and ebay.com, looking at fiber offerings.

This is quite a cottage industry – isn’t it? I’ve seen hundreds of offers from dozens of vendors. That’s a whole lot more than I thought I’d find.

The prices are pretty high, which is good for the vendors. I don’t know all the places to look for fiber/fleece/wool, but I’m learning a lot from just bouncing around the interwebz. I’m very, very glad that I was able to get Tonka and Sabre – because I’m really into alpaca fiber.

I bought a Kitten carding machine from Fancy Kitty of Missouri. They have a terrific sale going on, 5% off orders that ship in the next few days. Mine shipped today, I should see it next week. Not in time to get all the Christmas gifts out, but I’ll have it for the other bags of fiber.

I’m going to NEED it for all that fiber. There are still 5 bags I haven’t touched, and half a crate each of black, appalousa and chocolate, plus a bag of washed Jacob. That’s a heck of a lot of fiber to card by hand.

The appalousa, even after a good washing, is still dirty. I’m puzzled, because I’m not sure how much this affects my ability to spin it. If I don’t put a LOT of twist in this fiber, it falls apart.

The black needs even more twist!

It’s a challenge, a challenge to my short spinning experience.