Preparing my Alpaca fleece has a number of stages to go through. The first thing I need to do is get as much of the vegetable matter out of it and as I was starting with my older girl, I also needed to pull out some of the guard hairs. Mr Rob built a net insert into my table with chicken wire so that the debris falls straight through.
Next step is to wash the fleece. On the plus side there is no lanolin in Alpaca fiber but my team really likes to roll in the good old Georgia red clay. So multiple washing in medium hot water with a touch of Dawn interspersed with rinsing in clean medium hot water. In the last rinse i put a little white vinegar. I use a salad spinner to get the excess water out.
Then I lay it out on drying tables so that it can dry out without any need for extra heat.
Next steps will be the picking and carding — but that will be another post