Fiber Frolic Spring 2017

 

Lynda and I went on tour for the Rites of Spring 2017 Fox Valley Fiber Frolic last wkd.

We started with Lindago Alpaca Farm, not far from Lynda's house.  Lindago has a large needle punch felting machine, and they will allow people to rent time on it for $20 / hour.  Lynda is looking forward to working with this machine.  She and Linda from Lindago may be offering some needle punch felting classes in the near future ...

At Lindago, I got a very reasonably-priced 1/2-batt of black alpaca fiber mixed with sheep's wool.  She said it was 2nd rate, and that was why it was so cheap.  In my mind, it's soft, already carded, clean, and suitable for my purposes.  I'm still looking for something to mix with the very fine Maggie Newfie fur and Keba fur so I can spin it.  This looks to be about the right color black.

I also got this lovely pair of fingerless gloves made by "Elizabeth" at Classic Alpaca, though Fair Trade.

Then we trekked out to Sabamba Alpaca Farm with B&B.  Lynda wanted another grey fleece from Abraham.  I am so enjoying spinning the alpaca roving I got there last fall, that I wanted more ...  No roving this time, but I did get a nice creamy soft fleece from "Zak."  The nice thing about the alpaca fleeces is that I don't have to wash them, like sheep fleeces (unless they are really dirty).  Alpaca fleeces don't have the lanolin / sunt (sheep sweat) that the sheep fleeces have.

Mrs. Sabamba had a bag of a prize-winning fleece there with the scorecard from the last competition.  Very impressive.  She explained to us about the crimp.  Their fleeces tend to have a longer staple length, and if the crimp goes the whole length of the lock, you know it was a happy alpaca.  If they lose the crimp at any stage, you can tell that they were stressed in some way.  Very interesting.

Just like big dogs ... sort of.