I'm often asked 'What do you do with alpaca fleece?' There are a myriad of things that could be done with it. For me in particular I've entered some into competitions and I have a closet full of fleece waiting to be sorted and put towards various end products. I thought I would try something a little different with some of my fleece.
One of my alpacas, Autumm, has very pretty colored fleece. When it comes off of her it's in various shades of brown. However, because Autumm is older, her fleece is coarse and short. It's too short to be spun into yarn or used to make rugs. But it is still good for felting and can even be used as stuffing or quilt batting.
So I took Autumm's coarse, short fleece and rinsed it to get as much of the dirt out as possible. This was a little daunting to me because if you agitate the fleece it turns into felt. I've posted it for sale on my Alpacanation site, Craiglist, Missouri Wools Yahoo Group, and Local Harvest. I would have done eBay but to be honest, the fees aren't worth it in this case as I don't expect to make a fortune off this left over fleece. I just want to get the most out of every bit of fiber I can and get the fleece out my closet - Shearing Day 2009 is in April and I'll have 6 more fleeces!
Will it sell? I don't know. But at least I'm trying something a little different to see if I get different results.
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