Yay! I'm a Llama Again!

Last spring I was waiting in the dentist office when a woman who was also waiting suddenly said to me, “You're Stephanie Van Orman, aren't you?” I smiled and said I was. She said she recognized me from church and asked me about the thing I was crocheting (I'm almost done the thing now and I'll write another post about it). She then asked me if I liked crocheting and for some reason I answered her question oddly. I said, “I like fibre.” She then told me she had a hobby farm with 17 llamas and alpacas, with no where for the fleeces to go. At that exact moment, her name was called and she disappeared into the back.

I was stunned. Try to envision me: eyes wide, pink cheeked, mouth slightly open—stunned. I had just met someone who didn't know what to do with a fleece. I have NEVER met someone who didn't know what to do with a fleece. Everyone I know wants one, sacrifices ridiculous time/money/effort to acquire wool from natural fibres. The only fleece I have ever seen for sale was up for $150. I had always thought my dream of spinning yarn on a real spinning wheel something I would never experience. Because, if you've ever priced out that hobby, you'll go back to Walmart and buy something from the end of the aisle.

As I sat there in the dentist office, I decided I could not let this chance pass me by. I wanted to make yarn and if she was just going to get rid of them, then she could give them to me. So, I grabbed her and told her of my plan for her property. She said okay.

After the shearing, I went and took pictures of the llamas and alpacas. I ended up taking every fleece they had, because I thought I could at least get these things distributed to the spinning and weaving guild.

But let's talk about what you do with an alpaca fleece.

It's horrible.

Cleaning an alpaca fleece will take days. And I'm not talking about cleaning the whole thing. I'm talking about cleaning one mesh garment bag full of fleece. One. Only one. Just one. And then you'll need to pick through the fibre and remove all the grass, dirt, poop, and any piece of fibre that isn't of a certain length. You need the long ones.

It's like being handed thousands—literally thousands—of detached My Little Pony tails and being told you have to comb the grass out of all of them.

I am not joking.

The only happy part is that alpaca fleece feels nothing like Barbie hair (it looks like it though). It smells nice and feels even better. The whole process is utterly gruelling, but one of the ladies at the guild showed me what it would look like as yarn when she span a bit of it. It looked like the best yarn I've ever seen.

So, I'm doing this.