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Alpaca fleece comes in 22 natural shades from White through various shades of of fawn and brown to a jet black. A baby Alpaca will keep the same colour fleece right through to adulthood, but its wool is much finer and so highly prized.
The Alpaca is sheared once a year (usually in the Spring) to prevent the animals from getting too hot in the Summer months and yield approximately 3 to 5 kgs per fleece. Once the Alpaca has been sheared the breeders have the choice of selling to commercial processors or having the fleece processed through a mini-mill into yarn.
The Mini Mill
A mini-mill is a small-scale textile mill which processes the raw fleece into high quality yarn / wool and turns the coarser (lower quality fibres) into felt. Following is brief rundown of the mini-mill process.
Fibre Separation
The fibre separator sorts the hair by thickness. This is an important process because the finer the fibre the more valuable it is. This process separates the coarser hair (which will probably end up as felt) from the downy undercoat which will be turned into yarn (and later into cloth or garments).
Picking
Shearing and washing of the Alpaca fleece can lead to matting of the fibres. The picking machine separates useable fibres and can also be used to blend different shades into a new shade if required.
Carding
The carder separates every fibre individually from every other fibre and more importantly, delivers the fibres to the out-feed in a consistent manner (creating the linear density or weight per unit length desired). The output of the carder can either be of a fine web of fibre which accumulates in the form of a Batt, or more usually it is processed immediately into a Roving (ready for Spinning).
Drawframe
Successive passes over the drawframe, reprocesses each Roving with another to further improve its evenness and to fine tune its linear density which in turn improves the parallelization of the fibres (basically what this means is that you get a finer, higher quality product).
Spinning
Spinning is the part of the process which probably adds the most value (of the milling process) to the original raw product. This is the process that produces the wool / yarn. As most of the yarn produced is usually 2-ply or 4-ply, the spinning operation consists of two parts. The first spins the yarn and the second twists the ply.
Skeining / Winding
Once the yarn is spun it needs to be removed from the large bobbins on which it is made, into smaller (more useable formats). This is where the skeinwinder creates the desired quantities. At the Alpaca Wool Company we generally sell 100g balls, Skeins and 1kg cones.
Felting
The felting process generally takes the coarser, lower quality product from the rest of the process and converts it to felt for various craft activities. This is done by creating a very high density of fibre entanglement. This is achieved by a vigorous mechanical action in a damp environment.
The Finished Products
At the Alpaca Wool Company we not only sell the processed fleece out as yarn / wool but we also specially commission the production of handknitted garments such as sweaters, gloves, hats and scarves etc. We also sell felt in sheets and can provide Rovings for hand spinners.
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