Alpaca World Magazine Spring 2005 - Classical MileEnd Alpacas

People have been spinning for
thousands of years, not just for
two millennia (‘consider the lilies
of the fi eld: they toil not, neither
do they spin’), but from well before
that. The ancient Egyptians used a drop
spindle to spin, and some people still
fi nd this a convenient method of carrying
on their spinning wherever they are.
Things have moved on, however. There
has been, over the centuries, an enormous
range of inventions and variations on
the spinning wheel that we all know
and love. We tend to think of this as a
woman’s activity (remember Sleeping
Beauty?), and I like to think that James
Hargreaves came in one day from his
work as a carpenter, looked at his wife
sitting spinning and thought, ‘I can get you
working more productively than that!’. So
he put his engineering skills to work on the
project resulting in his ‘Spinning Jenny’.
Convention, however, claims that his
daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over
the family spinning wheel, which continued
to revolve, and gave him the idea of driving
eight spindles from the one wheel.
percentage returned as balls of wool for
your own use, or for sale. But if you have
dearly-loved alpacas in your fi eld, and
would like to preserve the integrity of their
fl eeces, there are two options. You can
wash the fl eece, tease it open, pick out
all the bits of vegetation, card it, spin it
and ply it yourself – or fi nd someone to
do it for you. If not doing it yourself then
you need a willing hand-spinner – or a
Mini-Mill.
As a cottage industry, the output of a
Mini-Mill is obviously limited. The washing
system can wash 24kg of fl eece in an
eight hour day, but drying time (and
space) is a real limitation. The next stage
is to open the locks of the fl eece, and two
treatments are added during this process:
an anti-static fl uid and a cohesive agent.
These help the fi bre to hold together and
not to stick to the machines as it moves
through them.
The opened fl eece is then hand-fed
into the fi bre separator, or ‘de-hairer’ as
it is commonly known. This is a Mini-Mills
invention which gets rid of most of the
dirt, vegetation, short ‘second cuts’ and
Advertising Feature
Elaine and Wendy’s big new venture
I was fi rst introduced to alpacas several years ago at the Henley show, and
instantly fell in love with them. As soon as was possible I managed to gather a
small herd of alpacas, and was delighted after the fi rst shearing to receive their
fl eece. My fi ve beautiful boys had dutifully provided a daunting quantity of fi bre.
I realised if I wanted to create something from them however I would
fi rst have to learn how to spin. After individual tuition with Sue Macniven,
to eventually drape a wonderfully warm shawl round my shoulders from
Paddington was a joy. I have since been spinning successfully for several years,
concentrating on working with alpaca fl eece only.
Wendy, a friend who has a long time interest in arts and crafts, joined me
and together we have been knitting and crocheting items such as scarves and
wraps using 100% hand spun alpaca fi bre. Recently we branched into weaving,
producing cushions, small throws and tote bags. It has thrilled us both to fi nd
that the people who now possess these items are extremely attached to them,
especially when they know the alpaca donor!
It was this that convinced us to embark on HAND SPUN FOR YOU, our new
venture this year. We now offer a service to alpaca owners to have the fl eece
from a favourite alpaca, whether a family pet or a prizewinner, hand spun and
crafted into something to treasure. The photographs show a few of the items
we have made recently. This includes a wrap crochet from the fl eece of Val
Ridgeway’s Chocolate Chip, an unusual soft fl eece that resulted in beautiful
natural variations of colour.
Every fl eece has its own qualities and due to the handcrafted nature of these
items, each one is unique, and if anyone is interested HAND SPUN FOR YOU will
be happy to discuss his or her individual requirements.
That was in about 1760. Two hundred
and forty years later, we have the fi rst
half-dozen Mini-Mills in the UK with
– guess what? An eight spindle spinner!
But of course, technology has moved on
a lot in the meantime. Spinning with a
Mini-Mill is still a ‘cottage industry’, but
the suite of machinery available now
enables much faster and more consistent
processing from fl eece to yarn. Celia’s
friends from the local Guild of Weavers,
Spinners and Dyers are amazed at the
ease and speed with which the same
operations they perform can be carried
out by our Mill.
Large bulk processors will merge your
fl eeces with many others of a similar
colour to make a ‘run’ of a size suffi cient
to be worth starting up their huge historic
machinery. This is great if you can form
a group or join a co-operative to have
your fl eece processed, and have your
coarser guard hairs from a fl eece. Put
very simply, hairs which are too short are
not transferred between rollers but drop
down through them, and heavy coarse
hairs, vegetation and dirt are thrown
out by centrifugal force. The speed of
the machine is variable, to control the
‘decision point’ of what size/weight of
fi bre is kept and what is rejected. This
operation gets rid of the ‘itchy-scratchy’
fi bres that are present – to varying
degrees – in all alpaca. Even vicuña has
them, and in Peru women sit round tables
sorting the fl eeces by hand to pick out
these hairs.
The output from the de-hairer is a
part-carded ‘net’ which is collected and
hand-fed into the carder (from which
the de-hairer was designed), where it is
combed out and the fi bres aligned. This
is another decision point. Do you want to
make felt, or yarn? The ‘net’ of
Alpaca World Magazine Spring 2005 | 39