The Alpaca / Merino Blend

I think I mentioned that I planned on blending the alpaca fiber with merino wool. I ordered some "medium" colored merino from The Woolery and it was amazingly on my door step in two days, the day after I had washed the alpaca fiber. Some of the fiber had dried, Paul was gone in Ohio, and so I began carding immediately. The timing couldn't have been more perfect! The merino was more brown and less grey than I had expected but I think the blended result is quite nice. I'll have to decide if I'm even going to overdye the finished yarn as planned since the natural color looks so great.

I hadn't blended fiber before but had read some about it in books and magazines. So I gave it a try using a bit of book technique and a bit of my own.

First, I took equal amounts of both fiber types and kept them in two piles. On the right hand side of the drum carder I loaded the Merino and on the left the alpaca.

When I took it off the carder, the batt had two stripes: the grey strip is alpaca the brown stripe is merino.

I folded the batt in half lengthwise so that the alpaca strip was laying on top of the merino strip. I then slowly carded the batt so that the two layers blended together. If it did not blend well enough the first time, I was going to run the batt through a second time, but one time produced a good enough blend for my liking.

Four finished batts teased into roving of 50/50 alpaca and merino.

It takes me quite awhile to do fiber prep work and between the scouring and carding I "watched" movies that Paul wouldn't enjoy: Bewitched and Persuasion. Then my love for Disney's song and dance cartoons kicked in and I watched Bambi, Little Mermaid, Robin Hood and Lady and the Tramp. When I'm busy carding I rarely look up at the movies but I really enjoy listening to them. I always like Musicals and movies with lots of dialogue when I'm crafting. The Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice is the absolute best-- my favorite all time movie for days when I want to sit and watch the whole thing or days when I just want something to listen to. Now that Paul's home, the carder and secret fiber stash are put away, the chick flicks are back on the shelf and the "multi-gender- friendly movies" (as my funny dear sister would say) are ready for playing.