On the recommendation of a friend, I set up a tour at SunCrest Orchard and Alpacas for us and our home school friends back in September. It was a great experience from alpaca to yarn. They process the fleeces right there (and hundreds that are shipped to them from all over the world. In addition to Alpaca (very decidedly different than llamas mind you) they had angora rabbits and below an angora goat (mohair for you knitters).
I was very impressed that this was a completely hands on family run farm, they let the kids pet everything and touch the fiber along every step of the processing. Below are the bags of fleece in waiting, the whole process was so interesting with some great machines.
After washing, they are spread out on racks to dry, if they are to be dyed, they do it during the washing.
After it's dried, they literally blow it into a small room, like a large closet to form what is called a cloud... Joachim is holding *a cloud*
They it's combed out and sorted into long and short fibers, then turned into roving "tubes" (my word) and then spun into yarn.
Each of the below spools is one fleece, I believe he said the large one was about 5 miles long!
I'm looking forward to going back so I can purchase some skeins for some winter knitting, it was so cool I don't know who enjoyed it more, us moms or the kids. Each child was given a little bag of cloud fleece to take home and we got lots of Waldorfian play out of ours, tossing it like a ball, spinning it with his fingers, wrapping it around his little plastic animals and so on.
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