starfallz | rolling up from under

More in the fiber animals education series...

Alpacas!

The local knitting group made a trip down to a local alpaca farm to see the new baby alpacas (crias) and

metachaos and I joined them.

The above is a rather timid mom and her month-old cria, Valentino.

There was another pen with two older crias (4 month-old Lucero and 5 month-old Relámpago) and their moms.

There were two other dams in the barn that we got to see. One of them, Cicely, kept making worried noises, as she'd rather be back with the other members of the herd.

We learned about the alpacas and got to touch them to see how fine or dense their coats were. After time in the barn, we went into the classroom in the house and had some lessons about the qualities of alpaca fleece and then general lessons about fiber and fiber arts. They broke out the drop spindles and gave us some alpaca fiber to play with.

Found out they have classifications for the specific alpaca colors. I really like the rose grey color we spun. The fiber was definitely slicker than the sheep wool I'd worked with, but wasn't the nightmare I thought it would be.

A spectacular sunset greeted us when we got home.

The woman teaching us about fiber was an awesome resource about fiber arts and history. She also would just drop spindle while completely involved in talking to us and after observing her do it, I was able to comfortably drop and spin. When I got home, I spun up the rest of the rolags of half blue faced leicester I had carded a few months ago and started on some more.