Anyhow, I've got the comments up and a big thank you Cledry,
Littlecritterkeeper and Julie
At the moment I'm working my way through 8 sacks of alpaca fleece. This year's shearing was a nightmare and now I'm having to deal with the results of frantic, stressed shearing. This means, bundles of fibre poorly sorted, loads of second cuts and they are sticking because of the excess of oil I used on the clippers. I am not stressing over it this year though. Now I don't feel I have to save every last scrap of fibre, I ditch anything heavily contamintated. I pull out what I can while pre-picking, before washing, I find using a flick carder helps break up any mud sticking the tips together. For the remaining bits of hay, seeds, dried up beetles, 99.9% of it drops out during sorting and carding, and while spinning you can pick the last out. All of the leg fibre, and rougher bits I reserve for felting. Felting what I don't know, but Cledry is an inspiration! The second cuts are more of a problem this year, and those that I haven't been able to pick off, I've just left very tiny lumps which again, disappear into the yarn and it just looks 'ethnic'.
Diane has been looking for a carder - that can be difficult. I ended up buying an Ashford because I couldn't get one second-hand that wasn't nearly 90% of the price of a new one. It had the 'fine' cloth, - actually not that fine. It was okay for fleece with a medium staple, but the 'licker-in' drum would get loads wound around it and I'd have to stop and pull it off regularly. And it couldn't cope with alpaca, even more wound onto the first drum and it didn't do a very good job at all. I search several fibrery forums and there was nothing but praise for the Strauch, so I got one. My only regret is not being able to afford one with a motor, I can only dream of a Pat Green!
The results
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