Description of This Product:

You are buying: One complete blanket area cut, shorn from one animal, 5.0 LB. OF GRADE 5 (Intermediate) FIBER. 

- Fleece#: 43732

- Fiber type: Peruvian Huacaya Alpaca

- Source: Amazing Grace Ranch, Elizabeth, CO

- Shear Area: Blanket

- Fiber Grade: 5 (Est. 32 micron - intermediate)

- Staple Length: 5"

- Color (natural, nearest standard approximation): Medium Silver Gray (401MSG) transitioning to Light Brown tips (209LB). Many tips reach only medium brown.

- Animal Name: Duchess

- AOA Reg#: Unknown

- Animal Gender: Female

- Animal Birth Date: Unknown

- Shear Date: 6/9/2016

- Product Weight: 5.0 lbs

- Contaminants: Somewhat frequent flecks of loose vegetation.

There is soft fiber present in this fleece, but thick guard hairs are widespread. This fleece is therefore estimated at grade 5 by appearance and feel, rather than being measured in a sampling.

While the stated weight is determined after removal of the more obvious deposits of coarse edge fiber, some coarse fiber may be present in the purchased package and may slightly reduce the net fiber weight.

The images show this blanket fleece lying open, and also after it has been rolled into a plastic sheet. This fleece was originally pushed into a bag, but it was opened as gently as possible and then rolled into plastic to minimize jumbling of the fiber and keep skirting as easy as possible. 

For the purchaser, the important first task is to skirt the fleece, which is to pluck out coarse fibers, mainly those at the edges of the blanket and sometimes some offending guard hairs, purifying to a suitable degree the finest and softest fiber of the blanket, best for making jackets, sweaters, shawls, mittens, and other garments. This fleece requires much skirting if a soft result is desired, as the price is intended to reflect.

This fiber has been:

- Lightly skirted to remove the most evident coarse edge fibers.

This fiber needs yet to be, at purchaser's discretion:

- Carefully skirted to remove, to the extent feasible, remaining coarse edge hairs, coarse guard hairs, off-colored hairs, and large contaminant particles

- Washed in warm water and detergent, with only moderate agitation, in a tub (no clogging drain pipes with fiber!) to remove most oils and fine dirt particles

- Spread out to fully dry

- Combed or carded as desired to remove tangles, most neps (fiber clumps), noils (very short fibers), and remaining debris. Isolation of longer fibers is preparation for more of a firm, worsted style of yarn spinning. Greater retention of neps and noils, or spinning directly after shearing, "in the grease", where the yarn is washed after spinning is complete, is a woolen style of yarn spinning.

Uses: Alpaca fiber can be:

- Carded in various ways, to make rolags (fiber rolled up like a snail and then pulled at the end for spinning), or to make a soft clump of fluff that can be fed directly to a spinning wheel, etc.

- Drawn as clumps of quite clean, combed fiber into sliver (long, loose, parallel-oriented fiber), and fed to a drum carder to form batts, from which roving (strings of parallel fiber in a consistent thickness, ready for spinning) can be drawn through a diz (a small disk or plate with a hole in it, to help make the roving a consistent thickness)

- Drawn immediately through a diz into roving for woolen or semi-worsted spinning

- Fed to hand carders, mixed together, and drawn unto roving through a diz from the carders

- Drawn by a person with the right, delicate touch into quite usable roving directly from clumps of combed fiber

- Further combed and drawn into long fiber top for smooth worsted yarn or thread

- Processed with other fibers

- Made into a very strong felt

- Used as cushion stuffing, padding, and insulation (usually coarse grades of fiber)

- Made available for birds to use in nests (in lengths that are not a tangling hazard)

- Used in other desired ways

General information on the qualities, use, and processing of alpaca fiber:

Fleece Areas: 

- Blanket (back from lower neck to tail): Best quality. Some animals have coarser guard hairs in the tips than others, and fiber diameter and qualities can vary by genetics, animal age, food, and annual environmental conditions. Gender does not substantially affect quality.

- Neck and Belly: 2nd quality, somewhat coarser. Neck fiber is longer than belly fiber.

- Legs and tail: 3rd quality, coarsest, and rather short

Fiber diameter grades:

- Grade 0, Royal Alpaca - under 18 microns, softest and rarest alpaca fiber, useful for clothing contacting tender skin 

- Grade 1, Ultra Fine/Baby - under 20 microns, useful for clothing contacting tender skin

- Grade 2, Super Fine - under 23 microns, useful for clothing contacting tender skin

- Grade 3, Fine - under 26 microns, nicely soft, but somewhat better for sweaters, soft ponchos, soft blankets 

- Grade 4, Medium, under 29 microns, soft, but better for coats, hats, socks, scarves, gloves, blankets, other outerwear

- Grade 5, Intermediate, under 32 microns, upholstery, rugs, baskets, jacket batting, tough fabrics 

- Grade 6, Robust, under 35 microns, upholstery, rugs, baskets, jacket batting, cushion stuffing, tough fabrics, rope, leashes 

- Grade 7, Coarse, over 35 microns, upholstery, rugs, baskets, cushion stuffing, tough fabrics, rope, leashes

Fiber over 30 microns in diameter is regarded as feeling scratchy against tender skin, and this increases as the quantity of such fibers in the batch increases.

Staple Length:

In general, short fiber (around 2-4 inches) yields fluffier (warmer) but weaker yarn. Yarn from long fiber (around 4-7 inches) can be quite fluffy if loosely spun, or dense if more tightly spun, but with fewer tips exposed, this yarn is smoother and stronger. Longer strands also make stronger, smoother thread.

Fiber less than 2" can be used to make felt, but is not a normal choice for making yarn, unless it is a minor inclusion in a batch of longer fiber.

Woolen and worsted: In making yarn, basic English types are "woolen" and "worsted", originally based on spinning wool but now applied to various types of fiber. In most basic description, woolen spinning uses fiber that is often simply carded, is not necessarily made parallel in alignment, and may contain substantial neps (small clumps) and noils (very short fiber lengths). This produces a weaker but fluffier yarn. Worsted, meanwhile, uses fiber that is combed to pull out noils, neps, and contaminants, leaving longer fibers in a parallel alignment. These longer, parallel fibers move intact through the spinning process to yield smoother, firmer, and stronger worsted yarn. Handcrafted yarns commonly fall somewhere between these polar extremes, with a worsted purist diligently removing virtually all neps and noils, often even keeping the tips and the cut ends of the fiber in a uniform orientation, and following through with a strictly defined spinning procedure.