The Alpaca Blogger

Is Sewing Up So Yesterday?

Kate Perez — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:35:14 GMT

From time to time I am guilty of busting on other alpaca breeders for selling products about which they know little or nothing as in,

Customer: "How much of this alpaca yarn do I need to knit a sweater?"

Alpaca Breeder: "I don't know."

So I am embarrassed to admit that I, myself, had a pattern for a 50% alpaca / 50% Merino wool cardigan for sale in my booth at MD Sheep & Wool Festival 2007 that turned out to be a less than thrilling pattern. Since this pattern and yarn, inexplicably, did not sell, I ended up knitting it myself. Boo hoo! O how I HATE to "have to" use yarn myself when I can't sell it! - kind of what it would be like for my son, Nick, to own a candy store and "have to" eat the candy that didn't sell.

The yarn, Turquoise Classic Elite "Zoom" is great, but I foolishly thought that a pattern that was written specifically for this yarn and, by an expert!, would somehow be better than offering the yarn for sale with a simpler pattern. Most of these commercial cardigan patterns require the knitter to knit a separate piece for the back, left front, right front, neck band and each arm. That's a lot of sewing up! Being a knit-in-the-round kind of sweater knitter, I never realized until I knit this other pattern that I HATED IT! The size was not right, the directions turned out to be practically un-decipherable and then I was going to have to sew all of these pieces together?!! I don't think so!

I knit all of this cardigan save one sleeve and then tore it out, scandalizing my knitting club. Although, I like to think that there may have been some grudging admiration mixed in there as well. You're not a real knitter until you've decided to just frog it. (ripit, ripit) Three weeks later, some of them are still shaking their heads in amazement and repeating, "I can't believe you ripped out a sweater that was practically done." But, who really wants a sweater that they hate? Not me.

I am a big believer in paying for patterns that are good, but I am finding that more and more of the patterns I really like are things that I found free on the Internet. That's bad news for pattern creators and sellers. Some of them are going to have to work a little harder to make a product that people will happiliy pay for. Here's some advice to you, lady who wrote the pattern for the discarded sweater that I am now calling, "the dis-cardigan:"

Instructions like "reverse all shaping for other side" and "decrease 1 every 4 rows for 7 then every 6 rows for 8 while at the same time k2tog every 2 rows for 10" did not make me happy that I paid $5 for your pattern! You really can't write this out line by line?, or at least indicate which one is for the neck shaping and which is for the underarm shaping? Yeah, I KNOW that it becomes obvious as you're doing it but still, people like a little more information about what's going on. Plus, the dicardigan was going to be 2 sizes too large anyway and, YES!, I did knit the swatch to check my gauge!

So I switched to a pattern called, Top Down Raglan Cardi version 2.0 from the blog, Cosmic Pluto Knits! You can find it here:

http://www.cosmicpluto.com/blog/?page_id=397

YOu knit the neck, back, shoulders, left front and right front in one piece, save the sleeve stitches on holders and boogie on down to the hem. Couldn't be simpler, she has added extra shaping for those who want it AND........ it requires no sewing up! Thanks Cosmic Pluto - You Rock!

alpaca wool blend cardigan

Now that ingenious knitters have figured out how to knit socks on one circular needle, hats and entire sweaters in the round on 2 circulars and cardigans top down in once piece, is there any reason at all to keep making patterns for socks with seams in them and cardigans with 6 pieces that need to be sewn together? Besides keeping the sewing machine people in business I mean? Is "sewing up" so yesterday? If you have some strong opinion on this, pls. let me know.

Meanwhile, back at the Mount Airy Alpaca Company, we are getting ready for the big move to Florida! No more live alpacas, no more deer in the corn field, no more snow! This is going to take some getting used to.

This is the time of year when I'd normally be watching alpaca babies being born and having the thrill of seeing the cria dashing around the fields around my barn. I do miss it but, when you live on a farm, there are always nice animal babies around, you just have to look a little harder.

We see deer practically every day in the spring and summer but I like to stalk them frequently with my camera anyway. It makes for good photography practice. This shot wasn't particulary good but, when I looked at it more closely, I was surprised to see the size of this doe's udder!

bagged up doe

Sure enough, it was only a week later that I got my first glimpse of her twins. They walked right by my office window and across the front lawn. One ran when I pointed the camera, but the other one just looked calmly back at me over its shoulder.

cute baby deer

Recently, I noticed deer hoof prints near the mineral feeders that we have scattered along the sides of our barn. We think of the deer as shy and kind of dumb, but at least one of them figured out that these red containers had some residue in them of the mineral powder that we used to feed to our alpacas. So they have been licking the containers. Pretty smart.

deer hoof prints

alpaca mineral dish

In addition to the thrill of baby deer on the lawn, I like to be super nosy with all of my neighbors, and, basically, just demand to see any baby creatures that they have born on their farms. So, I invited myself over to one neighbor's place last week to see their brand new donkey baby.

baby donkey

So cute! Her name is Mae and here she is with her mama, "Daisy":

mom and baby donkey

Meanwhile, another neighbor has a very pregnant Icelandic horse that I'm keeping a close eye on. Don't call this cutie a pony! That makes Icelandic owners mad because they are small horses - thank you very much.

bred Icelandic horse

I have never seen an Icelandic horse baby and who knows if I'll get this chance again! I helped this same neighbor to move her horses a couple of weeks ago and, since one was shedding, I did what any psycho hand spinner would do. I tugged out a few handfuls and quickly stuffed it in my pocket.

2 Icelandic horses

Don't let anyone tell you that the fiber art thing is not an addiction or at least a nasty compulsion. I have heard of spinners spinning dryer lint (I don't recommend this - It's highly flammable), road kill and even milk weed. The Icelandic horse fur sample was not as soft as I'd hoped. Even washed and fluffed up, it's pretty coarse, so I won't be sneaking over to the neighbor's place with comb and a pillow case after all. That's probably a good thing.

Icelandic horse fur

Also last week, there was a dead groundhog in our paddock. That happens more often than you might think around here but this time I happened to witness an epic struggle on the part of several turkey vultures, a young hawk and a crow, all of whom wanted that same dead ground hog for their dinner. The turkey vultures won, of course. They are quite large and pretty tenacious when it comes to getting what they want. It's hard not to think of them as ugly but they do a useful service in cleaning up dead animals that would otherwise be pretty stinky so we have to appreciate them if not admire them.

turkey vulture gliding

I'm always amazed at how many people think that hawks and vultures look alike when they are flying because they really don't. Besides the two-toned look to the underside of the vulture, there is the gliding way in which they fly. They can go a long time without flapping their wings. The vultures circle a lot and catch updrafts and other air currents while the hawks flap their wings every couple of seconds and, when the hawks do glide, they do it in a faster, more direct way.

flying red tailed hawk

When they are perched, the vulture has a head so ugly that it's hard not to feel sorry for them.

turkey vulture perched

When I bug them by stalking them for a photo, they will calmly fly off. The hawk, on the other hand sometimes gets mad and screams at me.

screaming hawk

And the crow? They look pretty perched on a tree in the bright sun, slightly ominous when perched in the dark or near dark, and just plain weird when they are flying:

flying crow silhouette

So, I will miss the animals that I have around me here in Maryland but I look forward to discovering some new photographic subjects in Florida.

We will continue selling our alpaca care DVD.

We may do some lecturing, fleece judging and/or get a vendor booth at a few alpaca shows in Florida.

I will be working as a website consultant for 2 alpaca-related charities.

Of course, I'll be on the lookout for some knitting and spinning buddies.

The other big question in my mind is what will become of our beloved alpaca farm? Some of the people looking at it have been horse farmers and some have been sheep farmers but, so far, no alpaca farmers. Some have not been farmers at all.

I still have hope that our farm will continue to be a farm with happy animals and happy children growing on it, but we'll have to trust that the people who are meant to own it will buy it. And, even if they don't plan to have a farm now, that doesn't mean that they won't wake up one day and realize that they were meant to be farmers. We did.

random dragonfly near our pond

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008 Sunday

Kate Perez — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:48:09 GMT

So, OK I have already posted (maybe) too many photos of the Sheep to Shawl competition which does, technically, happen on the Sunday of the MD Sheep & Wool Festival but I thought that event merited its own entry. Since I've had a booth at the Festival in previous years, I have not gotten to watch the entire event before.

Maybe you don't agree that it warrants all that obsessive interest but, to people like me, who like to grow the fleeces, shear the fleeces, card or comb the fleeces, spin the fleeces into yarn and then make the garments ourselves, there is so much meaning in the wholeness of that creative process. It's not the same when you buy the yarn!

Polartec and combed cotton are OK, but does each plastic bottle or scratchy plant pod have a name and a beautiful face like our sheep, alpacas, bunnies and goats? Nah. We take care of each other. We feed them, they clothe us. Oops! I'm gushing again.

So AFTER the Sheep to Shawl on Sunday, I got to see something ELSE at the Festival that I have always missed, the Working Sheep Dog Demo !!! It was thrilling. The sheep were so prim in their manner that I couldn't help imagining them with fancy, church lady hats and white gloves on.

The sheep dogs, though, were wolfy and super-smart.

The dogs raced around so fast that I could barely get the camera to focus on them and, just as quickly, they'd stop for a moment and crouch menacingly at the sheep who got the message all right! They didn't like that crouch one bit.

Whatever cues were given by the actual humans were not obvious to me at all but the dogs read them loud and clear, herding the sheep around obstacles, into pens and finally, into the waiting trailer. The rest of the crowd seemed to love it as well. People were mesmerized.

I managed to get a quick walk through the main barn with my family, looking at the vendor booths but it was my daughter, Cassandra, who found something she just couldn't live without. While Nick and I waited to hand out the ribbons and trophies to our Sheep Poster Contest winners,

Cassandra, ever the teenage princess, used her cellphone to photograph herself wearing her new Lord of the Rings-style cape so she could send the picture to her friends' cellphones.

The poster kids were excited with their winnings. This one turned out to be the daughter of my next-door neighbor from 11th & 12th grade. She got $3 and 2 ribbons. Not bad for a 5 year old!

We share our space with the, aforementioned Skein and Garment Competition, Sheep Photo Competition and Fine Arts Competition and all weekend long I had been admiring the banjo playing sheep that had won best children's entry in the Fine Arts Competition

So, when the creator himself showed up, I asked him to pose for a photo, which he cheerfully did. What a talented kid.

Speaking of good kids, I found out on Mother's Day that my nice boy Nick, had bought me a super-cool pair of deliberately mis-matched socks at the Festival as my Mother's Day present. Good boy! If you're wondering whose booth he got them in, it was Delly's Delights.

Nick admitted to me that another member of the Festival Committee gave him the idea by showing him her socks. Yet another perk of hanging out with the Sheep & Wool Festival Committee gang, personal Mother's Day shopping assistance for your kids!

Seriously though, as much as I love the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, I love the committee members even more. It's very hard to move and leave them behind. It's far too mushy to say to their faces, but I will say it here. You have all been so special and precious to me. Thank you for making me part of your family.

Random sampling of committee members I happened to photograph at Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008.

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008 - Sheep to Shawl Competition

Kate Perez — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:55:27 GMT

Now that I have a nice digital camera, I fear that I may be going a little crazy with the photo-taking but, who doesn't think that the Sheep to Shawl Contest at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival is the coolest thing ever? It's hard to not want to post a bazillion photos of it because every part of it is so amazing!

It starts with the shearing of the sheep, to get the fleeces that the Sheep to Shawl teams will use in making their shawls.

Unfortunately, I got to the Festival too late to photograph the shearing at 8 a.m. I took the photo above at Sheep to Shawl 2007.

Each Sheep to Shawl team gets their own fleece to work with:

The teams have to then card the fleece, spin the fleece into yarn and weave the fleece into shawls. The looms are already warped but that's the extent of the preparation. The teams competing this year were:

Fiber Friends
3 Wheels Shy of a Loom
Chesapeake Spinners & Weavers
Mount Vernon�s Tidewater Treadlers
Butler County Pedalers
Waterford Weaver�s Guild
The Wool Fools
Springwater Fiber Workshop

Here, Wini Labrecque (alpaca fleece judge extraordinaire and, owner of Starweaver Farm) in Pennsylvania, cards while other members of the Butler County Pedalers spin.

Here a member of the team from Mount Vernon, the Tidewater Treadlers, winding a bobbin for the weaver while her teammate cards:

Fiber Friends (the eventual winners) had matching chef's outfits and the cute gimmick of using a Mixer to wind their bobbins in keeping with the cooking motif:

How adorable are the outfits of the Mount Vernon ladies? I want one to wear next time I do a spinning demo!:

The weaver from Springwater Fiber Workshop in Alexandria got going almost right away.

Gotta give it to the 3 Wheels Shy of a Loom team, they don't take themselves TOO seriously. It takes a real man to hand spin AND wear bunny ears! Where'd they find this guy?

The Waterford Weavers Guild also had beautiful costumes and I loved their gray fleece!

The Chesapeake Spinners & Weavers team wore beachy outfits and created an, appropriately-beachy, seafoam/sand colored shawl.

The spinning got pretty serious as the teams tried to get their shawls done as quickly as possible:

The Wool Fools worked away:

And so did the Butler County Treadlers but Wini found time to politely answer the questions of many of the onlookers. People LOVE this event and kids seem to be fascinated by it too.

A FEW HOURS LATER, IT'S TIME FOR THE PUSH TO GET THE SHAWL FINISHED, CUT FROM LOOM,

Rush it to the table to be examined:

Clip any loose threads:

Make one final examination:

Then rush out behind the Fair Office, where Mr. Sheep to Shawl himself, Ed Hyland, waits with the hot water still, to wash the shawl.

The crowd was delighted by the happy, shawl-wringing-dance done by the team from Springwater Fiber Workshop:

The Waterford Weavers pat their shawl dry:

Then, a break for judging. The teams get a well-deserved rest before the announcement of the winners and the annual auctioning off of the shawls to the public.

Close up of the winning shawl:

photo of winning shawl - Sheep to Shawl Contest - Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008

If you, also, think this contest is one of the seven wonders of the Fiber Universe, you can see live footage of Sheep to Shawl 2007 on Let's Knit2gether's Video podcast, which I found here:

Video of Sheep to Shawl 2007

For information about the entry rules and judging criteria, go here:

Sheep to Shawl Contest at MD Sheep & Wool Festival

Next entry, Sunday at the Festival starring.....Working Sheep Dogs!

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008 - Saturday

Kate Perez — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:57:22 GMT

Saturday at MD Sheep & Wool Festival 2008 and the crowds were HUGE!!! The weather was also, pretty near perfect.

I dragged my son Nick through the Sheep Breeds Display barn like I do EVERY SINGLE YEAR (as he is quick to point out!) But I don't care, I never get tired of sheep, big sheep, little sheep, white sheep, black sheep, brown sheep, gray sheep, horned sheep I love them all and, also as usual, I took a picture of every single breed that I could get a shot of. I wish I could post them ALL here but, accepting that others may not be quite as obsessed with sheep as I am, I have chosen just a few:

Who doesn't love Jacob sheep with their crazy horns and multi-colored coats?

A lot of people don't seem to realize that Shetland sheep are not boring little, white blobs but actually pretty funky looking. And they are little when compared to the meat breeds.

Horned Dorsets are super cute! I wanted to steal these two.

Hey, Clun Forest, Ewe are adorable! And, since you have 2 lambs,
can I please have 1 ? PLEASE!!!!

Nick pretended he was soooo bored with all the sheep admiration but then I turned around and caught him petting a Blue Faced Leicester.

Of course, I did also visit with alpacas, bunnies, angora goats and llamas. This little alpaca from DAFI alpacas was adored by many little girls (and some big girls!) over the course of the Festival.

And, here is a cute little goat that might look nice in MY backyard in Florida

When I was finished adoring all of the sheep, I cruised through the skein and garment competition to see how the judging had gone. This year there was so much amazing felting!

Then, since I had no booth this year, I got to visit the booths of my
friends! I was both admiring and jealous of Greg Thorne's hand spun
yarns complete with adorable photos of the spinner himself. He blamed
his wife for the genius idea of including these photo labels.

Greg was nice enough to do a spinning demo for me a couple of years
ago when I was running the fiber arts tent at the Great Frederick Fair
and I still use him as an example when guys claim that hand spinning is a woman's thing. I hope he sold LOTS of skeins.

I went into Jane's Thistledown Alpacas booth to catch up with Jane and ran into my favorite alpaca fleece judge, Wini Labrecque. Jane was selling tons of alpaca and angora yarns, and products including 1 pair of alpaca socks that I bought for my sister.

Left to right, Jane, Jane's daughter, Wini Labrecque

Got around to Michelle Reilly's booth, Tripel R Farm in time to get a
photo of Carol Kopp (with a name like Kop, how could she NOT be a hand spinner?!) working there and admire Michelle's beautiful Kromski spinning wheels.

I told myself very sternly that I was not allowed to try out any spinning wheels at the Festival, since I finally own only one wheel (down from a high of 6.) But I may have glanced at just a couple with a look of pure wheel lust in my eye.

My husband was naive enough to point out the Golding wheel (above) to me! He actually thought I had never noticed this hand-carved wheel before, much less tried it out on several occasions. Men are so cute!

Speaking of spinning. I used to run the Jr. Handspinner's Contest at the Festival but this year I was promoted to judge while my friend Toni took over as boss lady. She did a great job and so did the kids.

Here's the gang who ran the JR. hand spinners contest this year. In front is Roseann, the Uber Knitter, who's blog is linked from this one above at right under "Roseann's Amazing Knitting Blog." The two on the left in row two of this photo are SuellaC & Tonilee - those are their ravelry.com names.

I always visit the T-shirt booth even though I do not really NEED
more Festival Gear. It's amazing how many famous fiber arts authors
you run into there, including the one in this photo, the Anarchist
Knitter herself, Anna Zilboorg.

I took class with her at the Festival a few years ago and she found
me to be unbearably dumb about understanding her techniques, but I still had fun and think she's a genius.

However, If I had read her "Knitting for Anarchists" book BEFORE the Festival, I may not have signed up for her class. It's all about not needing instructions to knit. I'm not an anarchist, I'm a computer programmer. We LOVE instructions!

Sometimes the outfits you see at the Festival are as interesting as the exhibits themselves. I saw a lot of political T-shirts and buttons this year including this one which I'm not even sure I get:

But I like this outfit a lot better including the accessory sheep.

The last thing I did before leaving was check out this year's showcase event, run by the Society for Creative Anachronism. These people did a stupendous job and were demo-ing all kinds of fascinating fiber crafts from a warp weighted loom with rocks as weights to this one, which I am embarrassed to say I did not figure out the name of. Is it nallbinding? What ever it is, it's to-die-for beautiful!

Next blog entry --- Sheep to Shawl & Working Sheep dogs!

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2008 - Friday

Kate Perez — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:31:43 GMT

pretty Coopworth ewe & lambs

Friday is the day when we take the entries for the MD Sheep & Wool Festival. I was taking entries for the Sheep Poster Contest in the Bingo Hall where they also take entries for the Skein & Garment Contest, Sheep Photo Contest and Fine Arts contest.

I have to admit to feeling a little bitter this year because I went begging all over my own neighborhood as well as the Internet for kids to enter the poster contest and still got only 5! Look at these ribbons and trophies!!! I want one myself they are so cute.

Skein & Garment has no such problem. Every knitter, spinner, felter and weaver in the entire world wants to win there because they are the Mecca of the fiber arts world. So I was like the wallflower, loser who get excited every time a new exhibitor strolled in - hoping, hoping that they wanted to enter MY contest only to have them say, "Is this where I enter the SKEIN AND GARMENT contest?" Their voices would tremble with reverence when they said it. And I would say, "THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TROPHIES!!!" No, of course, I only thought that.

Aside from the constant rejection, I was pretty bored so I amused myself by taking photos of the skein and garment entries and photographing their judges, even though it got on their nerves.

Of course all of their entries are amazingly perfect but this one really touched me:

I also bugged the Fine Arts workers. If I could have stolen one of their entries, it would have been this one:

Whoever you are painter person - Your painting is To Die For!

Finally, my poster-taking duty was over so I cruised the fairgrounds checking up on the other activities. Down the hill in the main exhibition hall, my friends at Sheep Fleece Show and Sale were working their butts off. They took 596 fleece entries!!! and later I found out that, on Sunday, they sold over 300 fleeces in 3 hours! Are you listening alpaca people? Now THAT'S a fleece show and sale! This is my old pal, Phil Shane.

Meanwhile, my husband Tom, Mr.-Large-And-In-Charge of Grounds, was really working hard:

Ok, I shouldn't begrudge him his fun because gave me a ride to the vendor dinner in the show ring. Since we gave up our booth this year, we did not have to do the dreaded booth set up - Yay! We met up with friends, listened to good music and rested up for dun dun duh (suspenseful music here) ..... SATURDAY at the Festival......

(see next entry)

Alpaca Sock Experiment

Kate Perez — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:39:16 GMT

At least one person e-mailed me to ask about the outcome of my alpaca yarn experiment where I planned to knit and wear socks made from, commercial alpaca yarn, my alpaca fleece sent to a fiber mill for processing into yarn, and my alpaca fleece hand spun into yarn. I expected that the commercially produced yarn from Peru would not have enough bounce to fit really well and that was, in fact, the case. Here's something dreadful that I didn't expect:

Big hole in a sock worn for only 1 winter!!!!:scaredface:

This really upset me since alpaca yarn is supposed to wear a lot BETTER than many wools and acrylics! Since these socks are nice and warm and it was a lot of work to knit them, I thought about mending the hole but then I took a close look at the back of the heel !

Egads! Not much point in mending that sock after all. Grrrrrr! This makes me mad. But what about the "matching" sock knit from a different skein of the same brand of Peruvian yarn?

No sign of any hole in this sock. Not surprising if you realize that, in big processing mills, they basically throw all of the fleeces of similar color and fineness together for processing into yarn. The problem with that is that similar color and fineness doesn't equal similar strength or crimp. One of these skeins of yarn turned out to be way better than the other but they looked identical when I bought them. Here's the back of the heel of that second skein:

No problem on that heel. So now I have one good, 100% alpaca sock that is not worn out, and one that is not worth fixing. Is this good for the alpaca fleece and product business? Not really.

Meanwhile, the mis-matched pair of socks that I made on purpose are wearing just fine even though I have worn them as much or more than the socks from the Peruvian yarn. In the photo below, you can tell which sock was sent out to a mill because the ankle of that sock (at top of photo) is a little loose despite the ribbing:

Mill spun alpaca yarn tends to have less elasticity because the mills process it worsted, i.e. comb it rather than card it. But, although the hand spun sock in the photo above is tighter in the ankle, it's also fuzzier. So, more woolen processing leads to tighter fit but also fuzzier look. Fuzzy doesn't bother me as long as it doesn't wear out quickly but it wouldn't be good on a more dressy garment. Here are the toe regions of the same two socks where the difference in fuzziness is also obvious:

What does all this mean? It means that, if alpaca fleece producers don't do a better job of excluding fleeces that are weak and brittle from being made into yarn, we won't have the kind of high quality products that people want. Luckily, it's possible to send fleeces to smaller mills that will give you back yarn from only your own, carefully chosen fleeces. Make sure your fleeces are strong and don't use a processor who's equipment or chemicals weakens them.

But, it isn't just yarn that I'm talking about. I have many pairs of 100% socks bought from Peruvian and North American companies and these have a lot of quality control issues too. Here's a pair that was included in a shipment of socks that I bought from a Peruvian importer:

These are sewn with a big seam going up the side and in no way resemble the actual shape of any person's foot and leg! They aren't even both the same size! They're not really wearable but come in handy when people go on and on about how the Peruvian products are cheaper. Here's a pair of imported Peruvian socks that I bought at an alpaca show:

I wore these a couple of times and loved how warm they were (they are two-sided and reversible!) but they shrunk and partially felted when carefully washed in cold water, and they wore out at the top of the calf where there isn't even any friction from the wearer! Clearly the yarn used to knit these was weak in that spot. There's no visible wear on the heel or toe of these socks and that's where we'd expect to see it so it's not what manufacturers call "normal wear and tear."

So do I hate all commercially bought alpaca socks? No. I have a pair of Red Maple alpaca socks that I wore all through the last two winters and I loved the way they fit. Now if the person who designs these could maybe reinforce the heel and toe, they'd be perfect! After all, they do cost upwards of $18 a pair! I liked them enough to buy them again though.

Just in case you think that, as a hand spinner, I'm too picky about all commercial yarn, here is my current knitting project, a cardigan made from Classic Elite's Zoom 50% alpaca/ 50% sheep wool yarn:

I'm loving this yarn! Great color, great bounce and memory, and it's obvious that the yarn is really strong. Too bad it's far too large in diameter to use for socks!

If you have 100% alpaca socks that you have knit from a commercial yarn and found them to wear and fit really well, I'd love to hear about it. Pls. e-mail me: info@mountairyalpacas.com.

or, tell me about it in person at the MD Sheep & Wool Festival! I'll be at the spin-in and the meet ups for the ravelry online knitting community. Here's the web page of the MD Sheep & Wool Festival containing the ravelry meeting info:

ravelry meetups at MD Sheep & Wool Festival

My ravelry screen name is: alpacagal

Happy Easter

Kate Perez — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:10:20 GMT

If you wondered how the baby booties mentioned in my last post came out, now you know! Not perfect but not too bad I like to think. Pretty tough knitting as far as all the tiny pieces and all of the sewing up but worth the result. These were from one of the patterns in Debbie Bliss's book, "Nursery Knits." I took a couple of liberties with colors and yarns but otherwise followed the pattern and, for once, I had no trouble figuring out what the instructions meant. She's terse but clear.

Here is the side view so you can see the bunnies' tails. Hand spun alpaca yarn, of course!

Silk Skeins / Mallard Breeding???!

Kate Perez — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:26:49 GMT

I hate that I have been too busy to blog but there it is. I have suffered through a mini tornado with subsequent loss of power for days, the altering of a formal dress for my daughter, the annual re-building of the Maryland Sheep and Wool Website and numerous other traumas and I have been spinning and knitting but haven't been able to photograph it or blather on and on about it. Some people might think that that's a good thing. Okay - more like a lot of people!

Here's my crazy husband helping to fix a neighbor's barn roof after our exciting, mini-tornado.

The good news is that I have finished updating the MD Sheep & Wool Festival's website for 2008 so anyone who's interested can go there and see what classes will be offered, what the T-shirt design will look like, who the vendors will be, etc. For the first time in many years, I will not be a vendor but I will be there taking classes and helping to run the Jr. Handspinner's contest as always. If you end up in the Mitred Square Engineering class, please say Hi, I'll be in there too.

Click link below for the website:

MD Sheep & Wool Festival Website

I actually met the new guy who will be taking over as webmaster for the sheep and wool festival when I move this summer and he seems very nice but I feel miserable to be leaving the Festival Committee after this year's Festival. Wahhhhhhhhh! :sadface;

They are my friends and I will miss them all very much. Also, they are super useful for free knitting advice and they give me a free Festival T-shirt every year. I may have to kill the new guy - nothing personal.

Meanwhile, I did finish using up my stash of exotic fibers (mentioned in the previous post.)

Pictured above are the Ingeo skein, plyed with a Suri Alpaca / Cotton blend (top in photo.) I love the way this came out! Skein of Merino wool, remnants of two alpaca singles plied together and a skein of Tussah silk plied with soy silk. The soy was wonderful and soft to spin, the Tussah was harder but the sniny color is soooooo beautiful! Merino is always a joy to spin and the Suri blend was pretty easy to spin too.

Not pictured is a skein of 100% Suri that was given to me by another alpaca breeder. It spun up like hairy barbed wire so I threw it out. Not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth but some fleeces are just not worth sending out to be processed.

Here's what it looked like in the roving though. This was my first clue that this one might not be worth spinning - look how much guard hair:

Now if I could only knit all of these skeins into something and see how they feel and act.... but, I am stuck trying to finish Debbie Bliss, bunny-eared baby booties for a baby shower present instead. If you have never seen Debbie Bliss's baby patterns for knitters, they are pretty much the cutest thing in the entire Universe. I'll have to take a photo - if I ever finish them.

I get a lot of weird e-mails pretty much constantly but the latest was from a guy who wanted to know if I could sell him a female Mallard duck!!!! I have a photo of a pair of Mallards somewhere here on this blog where I sometimes put photos of cute animals that show up at my farm and I guess this guy found me on Google and thought I sold Mallard ducks. Isn't it Illegal to sell wild animals? And, how do you deliver them, in the duck trailer? People, try to read the web pages you find BEFORE you hit that e-mail link.

If you have read this far without dying of boredom, here is the part that will finish you off. I have to BRAG, BRAG, BRAG about getting an article of mine published in International Camelid Quarterly's March 2008 edition. Of course it is an article that will tick off the "I'm an alpaca BREEDER - who can bother with fleece?" alpaca people. Can't give up my reputation as most hated alpaca person on the East Coast without a fight. Article is called, "Coming out of the Cottage" (as in that slightly condescending phrase, "cottage industry.") If you're too cheap to buy the magazine, I have a copy on my website but, really, you should subscribe to Camelid Quarterly if you're into alpacas - it's a very good magazine.

PS. If you think I'd complain about altering a formal dress for my daughter but spare her the indignity of being plastered on my blog, of course, you'd be wrong. Look how pretty she is!

The more I spin exotic fibers the more I love my alpaca!

Kate Perez — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:00:52 GMT

Icicles hanging outside my front door

Aren't icicles so cute when they are plastic with little lights inside? Not so cute when they're real though.

Now that the years of having my own farm and hand spinning studio are coming to an end and we will be moving, I have been making a valiant effort to do what we fiber addicts call "de-stash". Regular people call this using up the stuff you already have before you buy more but that makes it sound a little too easy in my opinion. It's more like fiber de-tox for hardcore addicts. Is there a 12 step program for this?

I have now spun up my collection of bamboo roving, silk caps (bombyx mori) Blue Faced Leicester sheep (BLF) roving, Merino sheep roving, Yak top and Ingeo (chemically extracted from corn) top.

I still have quite a few more bags of rovings and tops to work my way through but I'm slowly converting them all into yarn. If you're thinking, "Well, then you'll just have to de-stash on all those handspun yarns.".... don't think that thought hasn't occurred to me. I know!

I already blogged about how much I hated spinning the bamboo HERE.

The Blue Faced Leicester and Merino were both quite pleasant to spin but I liked the BLF better because it had a longer staple length. Here is the BLF skein:

hand spun Blue Faced Leicester yarn

So pretty! I really want some more of this!
(When I am done de-stashing of course!):winkyface;

I found the silk caps pretty hard to draft but I love the color so I would buy silk to spin again.
(When I am done de-stashing of course!):winkyface;

Since I paid $5.25 per oz. for the Yak top, I thought it would be very good quality but now I am not sure. It was neither as fine as I thought it would be nor was it smooth like top usually is. Despite saying, "top" on the label, I am thinking is seems more like roving. In other words, it seems carded not combed. Yak is supposedly much finer than alpaca on average but this Yak certainly doesn't feel finer. That coupled with the super short staple length, about 3/4 of 1 inch, made it difficult and unpleasant to spin.

Now I am knitting it into a hat requested by my son, Nick, and it is not fun to knit either! It's kind of heavy and dead on the needles and does not slide easily. And it has a slightly unpleasant smell even after having been washed. All in all, I'll take alpaca over this stuff any day!

hand spun Yak yarn

Maybe if I had a photo and a name to go with this particular Yak, I'd feel a little better about it. Since I'm used to knowing the animal my hand spun yarns come from, I find it's not as much fun without that personal (animal?) connection.

Ingeo? Also expensive, also a nightmare to spin! Why does anyone buy this stuff? The ingeo would not draft well. It's got no give at all and it doesn't slide easily through the fingers. It tends to break off in little tails here and there. Very annoying! Here is is on the bobbin:

hand spun Ingeo yarn

Ingeo is supposed to wick moisture really well and also be "antibacterial" but is THAT really a big consideration in clothing? maybe if you live in the jungle or something.

I am deeply un-concerned about antibacterial qualities of clothing right now. Here's where I am living right now, snowy, icy Maryland:

ice covered branches outside my window

Today is day two of a winter storm. First is snowed huge, fat flakes and many birds and squirrels camped out on the trees near our 3 bird feeders waiting for a turn at the food.

puffed up dove waits to eat

Squirrel uses tail as snow shelter

Then we got freezing rain that covered everything outside with 1/2 inch of ice and split my favorite Mimosa tree by a third.

my favorite Mimosa tree split by ice
:sadface;

The kids out of school again and driving is really not a good idea so what else is there BUT fiber fun?

I spent most of the day plying singles into 2 ply yarn, winding skeins from my bobbins, winding balls from various skeins to start knitting with and knitting up swatches to pick a needle size for my next project, a turquoise alpaca/wool blend cardigan.

Meanwhile, I got alpaca baby photos
this week from Other Kate (McKelvie) showing the crias born to 3 of my old girls, Latte and Primrose and Morgan, this past Autumn. A little late on those photos Other Kate, but I will forgive you because the babies are soooooo cute. Thanks!

Morgan's daughter, Caramel

Primrose & Latte's boys, Precipice & Cadillac

Good job girls! Mommy's very proud of you.

stay tuned for the next blog: alpaca sock experiment....(insert suspensful organ music here)

PS. any OTHER alpaca breeders want to complain to KnitPicks about this chart in their current issue? They hear it from me all the time.

knit picks chart
Yellow highlight and red text are mine of course.

PS> SORRY IF ANY OF YOU ARE GETTING PINGED BY TONS OF UPDATES ON HERE - THE HOST'S BLOGGING SOFTWARE IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY!

Alpaca Yarn - Review of "Discovering Alpaca"

Kate Perez — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:04:20 GMT

My friend, Roseann, was kind enough to mail me her copy (not a photocopy!) of the magazine Interweave Knits - Winter 2007 issue�s article, �Discovering Alpaca, Your Guide to Choosing, Using, and Enjoying Yarn� by Clara Parkes.

Roseann, also known as the Uber Knitter (see link to her amazing knitting blog above at right.) wanted to get my reaction to this article since we two have discussed the spinning and preparing of alpaca fiber as well as knitting with alpaca yarns many times. In fact, Roseann�s blog currently shows a photo of her beautiful, cabled alpaca hat, handspun and knit from the fleece of my former alpaca herdsire, Valentino.

Link to Roseann�s Valentino-fleece cabled hat

Alpaca Cabled Hat

That Roseann! We love her but what a showoff - the hat is perfect!

Since my long-winded reponse to the above-mentioned article may be too much for some readers, my main points are:

1. Huacaya and Suri alpaca fleeces and yarns are very different and should be discussed separately. For superior luster, drape and brilliant color, choose Suri alpaca. For wool-like qualities, choose Huacaya alpaca.

2. Different brands of alpaca yarns have greatly differing qualities and should be discussed individually.

3. There is so much misinformation available regarding alpacas and their fleeces and yarns that it is best to ignore any out of date sources of information and concentrate only on the more current scientific information.

For those stalwarts who want to know more, here is the entire review:

I was overjoyed to see Clara Parkes, who happens to be the author of, �The Knitter�s Book of Yarn,� rightly points out that,

��many of these, docile, quiet animals ended up in places like petting zoos, where the onslaught of eager, outgoing children sometimes prompted the animals to defend themselves by spitting. This earned alpacas a bad and unjustified reputation as ill-tempered beasts. But spend a quiet day with the animals on their own turf, and you�ll quickly fall in love.�

What a perfect way to describe the situation when would be alpaca lovers try to interact with alpacas out in public and then feel disappointed that alpacas are not as �friendly� as they would like them to be! That paragraph alone makes the entire article worth reading in my opinion.

photo of my son and Chloe happily spending time together during halter training at home on our farm

However, I was dismayed to find some of the information offered in the article to be misleading at best. The author states that llamas and alpacas, �descended originally from the Camelid family.� It would be more correct to say that alpacas and llamas ARE members of the Camelid family.

In discussing the smooth coated Suri and the crimpier Huacaya varieties* of alpaca, the author states that, �Both animals grow coarse �beard� hairs, which must be removed, and the the soft wool-like hair used in yarns and fabrics.�

Oops! I had to read the above paragraph several times before I accepted the fact that Ms. Parkes is describing both Suri and Huacaya fleeces as �wool-like.� The two coats are completely different in type and, to lump them together in the minds of spinners and knitters will lead to a lot of disappointment! Suri is very similar to high quality, single coated llama fleece or kid mohair, and is suitable for worsted-type garments only. It is not �wool-like� in the slightest.

my daughter poses with our Suri alpaca, Comet. Comet had 1 almost year of fleece growth in this photo.

my baby alpaca, Pinka with her dam, Dancer � both Huacayas The dam has about 6 months of fleece growth in this photo while cria has about 3 months.

And what's up with the author�s reference to �beard� hairs??! Alpacas have been bred for thousands of years to be single coated animals in the blanket portion of their fleeces and fiber-quality alpacas should have a very negligible amount of guard hair in their blankets. Certainly there should not be enough guard hair there to require the spinner to remove them by hand!

photo of my hands holding open Pendragon�s fleece. Note lack of "beard" hairs!

Some older, or poorly bred alpacas may have quite a bit of guard hair and these fleeces should never be sold as �alpaca fleece� or spun up into �alpaca� yarn. They would not meet the standards of the buyers of alpaca fleece and yarn and can only hurt the market for alpaca products. The Peruvians sometimes label these fleeces, �llama� when they are sold but they also sacrifice many of their older alpacas for food. They do not sell these inferior fleeces as �alpaca� and breeders in the U.S. should not be selling these either.

To misunderstand that alpacas are a single coated fiber animal, misses the entire point of their use and popularity!

close up of unadulterated alpaca fleece from my farm with one guard hair circled in red.

I wondered about the source of the author�s phrase �beard hair� instead of the term, guard hair, which is almost universally used by all alpaca and llama breeders worldwide. So, playing Kate Perez, intrepid Google Detective!, I searched Google on the term and found 2 main references to beard hair along with the word alpaca.

The first came from the book, �The Microscopy of Technical Products� published in 1907 by Thomas Franz Hanausek and translated by Andrew Lincoln Winton. On page 139 under the heading:

�Alpaca, Vicuna, Llama, Huanaco.�

Mr. Hanausek states:

�Four species of goat like animals belonging to the camel family yield hair of industrial importance. Two of these, the alpaca goat (Auchenia Paco) and the llama, (A. Lama) are domesticated, while the other two, the vicu�a (A. Vicunna) and the huanaco (A Huanaco) occur only wild.�

Note: emphasis on the words �alpaca goat� is mine. The author goes on to say,

Huanaco and vicu�a wool are now seldom found on the European or American market�The commercial products contain both beard hairs and wool hairs.�

I dare to hope that this book was NOT the source of the Ms. Parke�s use of the term �beard hairs� but it was the number one Google result on the day that I searched. In addition to using the word �goat� in reference to the alpaca, the genus names for all 4 animals used by the author are either incorrect or, at least, out of date.

The current genus names are: llama, (lama glama), alpaca (vicugna pacos), guanaco (lama guanicoe) and vicu�a (vicugna, vicugna.) The genus name of the alpaca was changed from (lama pacos) to the current genus name in 2001 as more evidence came to light that the alpaca was descended from the superfine vicu�a rather than the llama as previously thought.

Google result of seach for terms, �beard hair alpaca�

Another highly ranked Google result shown above has the term �beard hair� appearing in, �A Bestiary of Useful Fibers� by Peter Warshall, (Whole Earth Summer 1997 ) in which, Mr. Warshall states,

�The two popular cameloid wools from South America: Alpaca is high-grade � softer, finer, stronger and more lustrous than sheep wool. Alpacas coevolved with high Andes grasses, limiting globalization compared to sheep. Their slippery fibers resist dying and weaving. They can be sheared only once every two years. But, alpaca fleece contains no waste wool ("kemp") as do other wool providers. The llama is larger (sometimes twice the weight). A multi-purpose cameloid, locals love them as pack animals with the perk of harvesting a coarser, weaker wool with lots of kemp. Not a high Andes specialist, llamas have begun to spread to the mountains of the United States.�

The mistakes in the above paragraph are far less defensible than those of the 1907 technical tome because alpacas were first imported to the U.S. in 1984 and, by 1997, the printing date of the article mentioned above, there were many alpacas living in many different climates in the United States.

Mr. Warshall�s ideas about �slippery fibers� may be the result of his thinking that Suri was the main type of alpaca and his idea that either variety of alpaca has a fleece that resists dyeing is especially preposterous, but far worse is his pronouncement that alpacas can only be shorn once every two years!

It isn�t my intention to look up and argue with each and every one of the innumerable books and articles that contain misinformation about alpacas and their fleece, only to illustrate the dangers of writing any modern book or article about alpaca fleece and yarn without checking into the up-to-date sources of information and eschewing those that are too old and incorrect to be useful. It may be that neither of these was the source of Ms. Parke�s term �beard hairs.� Unfortunately she does not offer any sources for her information on the nature of alpaca fleeces.

Moving on from the beard hair issue, Ms. Parkes also claims that, �Alpaca fibers are longer than fine sheep wools, ranging in length from 4 � to 11 inches (11.5-28cm) or longer depending on how frequently they�ve been shorn.�

It�s hard to argue with that statement because it seems to be describing only the length of Peruvian fleeces and the shearing intervals used in Peru. However, even the most inexperienced alpaca breeder will tell you that the length of Suri fleeces differ greatly from those of Huacayas, as do the ability of each type of alpaca to go unshorn in warmer weather.

Because the Suri fleece is not as insulating as that of the Huacaya, Suris can tolerate going unshorn for longer periods. For this reason, any statement of normal fleece lengths or shearing intervals regarding alpacas should specify which type of alpaca is being referred to. In the U.S., all Huacaya alpacas should be shorn every year to avoid potentially deadly heat stroke caused by an alpaca trying to survive the summer unshorn.

Here are two more of her statements that made me wish that Ms. Parkes had made more of an effort to differentiate between Huacaya and Suri type fleeces,

�Alpaca has a smooth, dense, and lustrous hand, absorbing dye readily and reflecting it back with brilliance and luster.�

�For this same reason, any kind of ribbing in pure alpaca will be decorative only-the yarn won�t reliably keep your fabric snug.�

The words �brilliance� and �luster� are usually associated with the much smoother, shinier Suri-type alpaca fleece while the ability of the alpaca fleece to produce a snugly-fitting ribbed edge would be possible in a Huacaya-type fleece only. At least Ms. Parkes correctly asserts that alpaca fiber accepts dye well.

Having claimed that using ribbing in alpaca yarns will not produce the desired snugness, she then goes on to review specific brands of alpaca yarn and says of one in particular, �the inelastic drape of most alpaca yarns make them a poor choice for cabled or textured patterns, but this yarn (Blue Sky Alpacas Royal) would be a standout in an Aran sweater.�

Could that be because the creators of Blue Sky Alpacas Royal yarn have made some effort to use crimpy Huacaya alpaca fleeces when producing their popular alpaca yarn? I couldn�t tell from their website. I could, however, find the following photo and description here: http://www.blueskyalpacas.com/news_deta ... news_ID=54

� Knot Hat, A Blue Sky pattern as advertised in Vogue Knitting Fall 2007. Designed by Bobbi IntVeld. Shown in Blue Sky Royal, #708 Seaglass.�

Note the use of ribbing which seems functional rather than merely decorative on the tightly-fitting hat above.

I, myself, have spun up, and knit with, many, many alpaca fleeces, of both the Suri and Huacaya variety and found that the garments that I spun and knit from Huacaya fleeces have kept their shapes quite well through several years of wear and repeated washings.

The mittens pictured below, for example, have been worn by me almost every day throughout two winters while doing horse barn chores and still fit the same way they did when I first put them on. In order to remove horsey smell and hay coverage, they have been washed many times and, while they no longer look perfect, they have completely resisted pilling and stretching.

Not as cute as Roseann's hat, but warmer than any mittens or gloves I have ever owned!

My final complaint has to do with Ms. Parke�s assertion that the word �royal� in one alpaca yarn�s name is, �code for royal baby alpaca.� The last thing any of us needs is more confusion about the terminology used to express alpaca fiber diameter!

Marketing hype aside, both �baby alpaca� and the much newer term, �royal� refer to the micron count of the alpaca fiber in question. Fiber of �baby alpaca� grade often comes from adult alpacas and royal can come from adults as well. Many of the Peruvian alpaca producers also routinely label coarser alpaca fleeces, �llama.� When discussing grades of alpaca fibers and yarns, it�s best to stick to the micron designations and their grade names and leave specific animals and their ages out of it. Here is an example of the type of alpaca fiber grade chart I wish the author had used:

Royal<20

Baby 20.0-22.9

Superfine 23.0-25.9

Medium 26.0-28.9

Course 29.0-35.0

Strong >35.0

(Chart taken from Candian Camelid Fibre Cooperative)

Even then, it pays to remember that longer staple lengths=less ends in the finished yarn so a longer fleece with a slightly higher micron count can feel better against the skin than a shorter fleece with a lower micron count.

To her credit, Ms. Parkes states in her final paragraph, �No matter what the label says, remember yarns can still vary dramatically in softness and quality of presentation, even within the same fiber grade. Ideally, you want to touch the yarn for yourself to determine if it�s the right material for your intended project. �

I couldn�t agree more.:happyface;

*Though many alpaca breeders and enthusiasts refer to Suri and Huacaya alpacas as separate �breeds,� many genetic experts have pointed out that they are more correctly classified as two varieties of the same breed in the same way that some dog breeds have members with either curly or smooth coats.

PS. Yes! I am on Ravelry.comcodename: "alpacagal."