There is Alpaca... and then there is Alpaca...

A friend bought quite a decent sized bag of fibre a couple of years ago even though she doesn't spin but she knew someone who did, who had lots of experience and could spin the fibres she had bought without a problem.  Which is all good.   

Fast forward two years.  To last weekend to be precise.  And the entire bag of fibre plus one skein of yarn that has been spun by the experienced spinner from said bag of fibre, arrived at my house, borne proudly by my lovely friend who said "There you go, spin that up for me, it will be good practice for you".  And just like that, I gained a commission to spin yarn that was no fatter than double knitting and ideally lace or sock weight.  Some of the fibres seemed "advanced spinning" and were a daunting prospect to say the least.  However, not one to back down from a challenge, I've started with the dyed alpaca fibre.  Alpaca fibre and I have an uneasy relationship.  I made the scratchiest yarn imaginable from a bag of alpaca fibre.  However, there were two types of alpaca fibre in the bag, and one was the same as the disaster skein I made, and the other was much softer so I guess that there is alpaca and alpaca.  Unfortunately, the dyed alpaca was the same texture and type of fibre as the disaster skein.     

It t was a mixed colour bag and some of the fibre had already been spun by the experienced spinner.  According to my spinning class, you can tame long staple fibres by spinning from the fold and in the process incorporate air to make the yarn fluffier, so that is what I did with this one  in the hope it would produce a softer and more wearable yarn.  I think it did work to tame the fibre a little bit and the diameter is close to what was requested.   However, those pesky scratchy bits were not completely tamed and I think that it wasn't what my friend had hoped for.  However, I am reasonably sure that in this case it was the fibre and not the spinner that was at fault

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I handled the colours in the same way as in my colour experiment post, dividing the colours into two piles the same weight, different colours in each pile, and spun the colours in random order.  As the fibres were mostly dark browns and greys with only a small amount of fawn and dark teal, the resulting yarn is a bit dark for some people's tastes I would imagine, but I think it came out reasonably interesting looking bearing in mind the constraints of the fibre quantity and colour distribution.  The new owner said she liked the way I had handled the colours and it was an interesting look, and seemed to think she could make something from it, just not something that would go next to the face or neck.  Which is fair enough as it really was quite prickly as I think you can see from this, not very good close up of the yarn.