Alpaca Fleece – Dave the Alpaca Fleece
Meet Dave the Alpaca Fleece. Given to me by a friend who teaches textiles.
I have been waiting for some nice weather so I could wash and dry him ready to comb, then spin him.
First I prepared some gorilla tubs with warm water all about the same temperature.
I put a tiny amount of Power Scour in two of the tubs and added a little more water in them both to turn the Power Scour into bubbles.
Some of Dave was then placed in the first gorilla tub and left to soak. After leaving for about 15 minutes the dirty fleece sections were taken out of the first gorilla tub and added to the second one with Power Scour in it. More of Dave was then added to soak in the first gorilla tub.
After about 15 minutes the fleece was removed from the second tub and added to the third tub which only had clean warm water in it. The contents of the first tub was then placed into the second tub, then the third repeating what had happened to the first section. When the water in any tub became too dirty I replaced it with new warm water.
The contents in the third bucket once clean is taken out a small section at a time and spun with a second hand metal spin dryer.
Once spun the almost dry fleece is put to one side. Any excess water is captured in a washing up bowl. The waste water with and without the Power Scour was then added into my flower beds. The Power Scour is biodegradable and the dirty fleece water has some remains of urine and faeces so in my mind it enables me to use the water for cleaning the fleece and watering the plants. The plants get the added benefit of some fertiliser.
Finally Dave is put in sections into an Ikea washing net and put out to dry.
Every so often the fleece in each section of the net is turned to ensure all the fleece is dry.
As the alpaca fleece is not going to be dyed, once dried it is ready to go onto the next stage of the process which is combing or carding.
