Baby Alpaca and Barbara Gray Stamping

I had an enjoyable morning today watching the very talented Barbara Gray making beautiful cards with her Clarity Stamps on Create and Craft while I picked through the baby alpaca fleece that came from Willowmead Alpacas last May.

The baby alpaca is a beautiful fleece, so soft and with a rich brown, almost black colour lightly tipped with copper.   Sadly, it is absolutely full of moss and grass!!!   Apparently the Alpacas love to roll around on the ground – in their native climate this would be to give themselves a dust-bath – but here in green & grassy Suffolk they gather moss instead of dust.   In this case, a Rolling Alpaca DOES gather moss I guess, unlike the proverbial stone!   I’m certain they have a lovely time, but it means that as the fleece attracts the moss at the tips of the staple I have to cut out these out, and in doing this, I loose the lovely light coppery colours, which is a shame.

I have already spun a number of yarns from this fleece and still have a large amount of it left.  I have begun to card and spin the prepared fleece into a fine yarn similar to the cream alpaca; my intention is to create a skein of plain brown/black and then maybe a partner yarn with mint green – a mint chocolate mix and then maybe even a chocolate orange mix