Crafty Friday 5/6 - Alpaca Shearing

It's Friday!! I am so ready for the weekend!

Have you ever wondered how we get all that alpaca fiber that we use in yarns and spinning stuff?

This week was our fiber harvest aka alpaca shearing. Once every spring the alpacas get haircuts. They go from cute, fluffy looking creatures to tiny, skinny aliens. They just don't look the same without all that hair.


Now we don't give them their haircuts. We have an actual alpaca shearer (yes, it's his full time job) spend two days here removing alpaca hair from all the animals. As it gets cut off with what looks like a hair trimmer on steroids, the rest of us are bagging it up into large garbage bags to be sorted later.


One alpaca will normally give about 6 pounds of fiber for us to use. Now multiply that by 38 and what do you get? Yes, I have a whole lotta of fiber waiting for me.

And if that wasn't enough, our shearer was nice enough to bring me nearly 50 pounds of raw wool from their sheep. I've never worked with raw wool before and I'm excited to give it a try.

I think I have my work cut out for me, but I'm looking forward to making new creations from the fiber.

So what have you been up to this week?

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