Good morning, Steemians! As I mentioned in my introduction post, I'm a VR designer by day, but my hobby is raising alpacas and making my own yarn from their fleece. And I promised I'd write a post introducing my alpacas -- so today let's meet Silverton and Benz, two of the four alpacas in our herd, and show some examples of things I've made from their fleece.
Silverton is our oldest alpaca at 14 years old and is the de facto herd leader, even though one of our other alpacas (Cinnamon) seems to think he's the herd leader. Silverton is shy but friendly enough to eat minerals out of your hand. His fleece is a beautiful -- it's a heathered silvery gray with black tips, which makes it a joy to spin and blend with other fibers. Silverton's fleece is probably the fleece I use the most from the herd.
Here are a couple of yarns I've made with Silverton's fleece:
"Alpacas In The Mist": a 50/50 blend of Merino sheep wool that I dyed and then blended with Silverton's fleece.
"Blue Silverton": a 50/50 blend of Silverton's fleece with Merino wool that I dyed blue.
"Strawberry Grape Silverton": 50% alpaca from Silverton, 25% Merino wool, 25% silk. I dyed the Merino/silk fiber and then spunt it as a gradient yarn that goes from purple to red.
Benz is considered "The Cute One" in our herd. Looking a bit like a cow with his black and white coloring, Benz has huge, brown eyes and loves to get right up in front of you and stare at you with a look that says, "you wouldn't happen to have any treats in your pocket, would you?" He's the friendliest and easiest-going member of our herd -- we called him "our learning alpaca" because he was so patient with us as we learned to put halters on, trim toenails, and herd into trailers.
His black blanket (the part of the fleece that drapes over the back, which is considered the best fleece on an alpaca) is exceptionally soft, and it lends itself well to all kinds of uses in spinning yarn. I especially like it for blending yarn for socks, and I've recently started a sweater yarn project using his fleece.
"Grape Soda Benz": my Cozy Toes(tm) blend of sock yarn using Benz's alpaca blended with Blue-Faced Leicester wool and nylon that I dyed and spun.
"Old Benz and the Sea": another Cozy Toes (tm) blend, but this time I dyed the fiber in greens and blues before spinning it.
"Logan's Yarn": 100% alpaca from Benz. I dyed the white part of his fleece red, and then spun a red single and a black single, and then plied them together.
We have a small herd, just four alpacas, and next time I'll talk about the other two members of our herd, Cinnamon and Sarge. And you can always check out what I'm doing with their fleece in different ways: at my website or when I stream the process of making yarn live on Twitch.
