House is going again, which is good because I have many fleeces

[unicornduke]

The house has been jump started. The seller finally offered us 5k this morning, after all weekend of back and forth between the real estate agents and whoever. I had to go look at my stressed post from friday to see what I had even written. I was stressed all weekend. But we're moving along again. The appraisal from the bank has been ordered, which should only take a week, then we need to get home insurance. At that point, the closing can move up (I think???) if we so choose, there's some waiting times and things like that but I'm unconcerned. I offered to fix the stairs of the house the first weekend in may even though we won't have closed by then as a hopefully nice gesture to the seller. The stairs need to be fixed before we move in (because piano and five people going in and out with belongings seems...fraught) so I figured maybe it would help her. I dunno.

Thank you for all the well wishes on the last post, it was nice

On Saturday, I met up with dragonlady7 and we went on a grand fleecy adventure. My boss finally put me in contact with a friend of his who had rescue alpacas and we met up. She had 12 or 13 fleeces, none of spectacularly great quality but okay and some bits that weren't much good for anything. I paid what I thought was a fair if low price for all of the fleeces and she just threw in the extra bits for fun. It was so many fleeces that it filled the bed of my truck with the cover on. I told her to see if she could pool her fleeces with some of the other alpaca farms in the area and maybe they could give her some advice on shearing and all that.

Then we went to a nearby farm that had Cotswold sheep. I wanted Cotswold fleece because it's a lovely longwool that I really enjoyed spinning last time I spun it. After some dithering, I finally approached the shepherd and asked if she had any Cotswold fleeces. And she said, oh I've got a sheep right there and my husband can do that sheep as the next shearing demo. Okay! So I got the world's freshest fleece and it is a Cotswold-Dorset cross and springy and beautifully crimpy. I'm still gathering supplies for washing the sheep but I'm getting there. And I got a full Cotswold sheep fleece off another shepherd there who wasn't planning to do anything with the fleece so I gave her a bit of money too.

Then we went back to B's sister's farm and wandered around and chatted a bit and finally I went home.

I spent yesterday and today working on washing some of the extra bits because I figured it wouldn't matter if I fucked them up. So far, putting fleece into tub and spraying the bejesus out of it with the hose seems to work pretty well. Well, spray, let soak for 24 hours, dump, spray plus soap for 2 hours, then rinse and soak again with no soap. It's pretty clean so far, although there are brown bits. It's white so I can perfect my cleaning methods before moving to the brown or black fleeces. The thing with alpaca is that they are just dirty. So dirty. They love dust baths and just are dirt dirt.

I need to buy some more supplies (hardware cloth to make inner things for tubs so I can lift it out and the water will drain, one of those hanging laundry things, more tubs) and get washing fleeces because there's a lot of them and I want to get spinning all sorts of things.

Comments

[which_chick]

I'm so excited for crafting and fleece processing and all sorts of things like that! The Cotswold sounds lovely. I'm not a huge alpaca fan because it always seems a bit... limp? to me. Here's hoping the house proceeds apace in a reasonable way.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, alpaca can be rather lifeless sometimes. It has amazing drape but you can't use it for things that need to keep their integrity. I made a beautiful round blanket out of alpaca once and it's amazingly warm and heavy, but it does deform the shape and pattern like it's melting almost. I'm going to make a post about all the fleeces with lots of pictures soon (I hope)

[graydon]

You have just explained to me the reason for alpaca-hemp blends existing.

Which is appreciated, because I had no idea why anyone would do that.

[unicornduke]

Ha, yeah. Alpaca is frequently blended with other fibers to give it integrity because it will just mush out of place. Worse with knitting, my blanket is crocheted so it does a little better but not much better. It's slippery smooth but has no crimp so there's no spring and it doesn't hold it's shape, so you can't block it like sheep projects to make them hold their shape.

[graydon]

Yay for forward progress on the house!

Washing fleece is a job. The semi-trad version is counterflow (clean water going one way, fleece going the other) between cauldrons, and I would have said that was way too much work but if you've got a pickup load of alpaca a length of trough on a minimal slant might be worth it.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, the fleece stuff is going to be interesting. Thankfully I should be able to start batching things well enough once I get my setup figured out. I've been having fun with the hose and the tubs and just got a big thing of hardware cloth to make drying racks and lifting things out of water tubs. I'm working on a few different ways to minimize the danger of the edges of the hardware cloth (wood for the drying racks and possibly rolling and crimping it down for the stuff going in the water but not sure on that yet).

And there will be some dirt that won't come out until I spin it and can really wash it hard since it's okay if it felts some as yarn. But it seems pretty clean from my soak, soap, soak.

[ranunculus]

I so wish I wasn't allergic to lanolin. I would SO want to spin and weave. Sigh. Enjoy.

Do NOT work on stairs unless you get all sorts of things in writing AND insurance. What happens if the sale doesn't actually go through... Patience. Sorry.

[unicornduke]

I mean, alpaca and llama doesn't have any lanolin that I know of.....

Yeah, I told my realtor it would be at least the first week of May before I could work on the stairs and we will have some of the stuff in writing at that point. I may be able to delay enough that the insurance is set up and we have a final closing date.

[ranunculus]

Well - that was a rabbit hole! So llamas and alpacas do produce lanolin, just less than sheep do. One kind of alpaca definitely produces lanolin, but there is some question whether huacaya alpacas produce lanolin or not, some say they do, some not. If they do it is a small amount. I'd be willing to at least craft with huacaya wool if it were cleaned well. Cleaning and spinning, not so much. There is nothing like breaking out in a red rash to discourage a project!

[unicornduke]

Oh interesting! I can definitely understand why you wouldn't want to risk it, allergies are no joke! Now if you want to get into flax spinning and weaving, it's very fun but also a ton of work, which you may or may not want in your hobbies haha

But otherwise, angora rabbit, cashmere and yak appear to be lanolin free. Possibly mohair since the cashmere is free of it too. Although you'd know better if goats made you break out.

Lots of possibility :)

[oracne]

Good luck on the house!

Also, I am fascinated to hear about the fleeces.

[unicornduke]

Thanks! I'll try and make a big post about the fleeces, it's very cool and I want to take some comparison pictures of locks and things.