3.09.2012

guanaco challenge

the other day i decided to give myself a handspun challenge; finely spin up guanaco, wild cousin of the llama. last year i got ahold of .5 oz of rich copper guanaco fiber. from my reading the deep color leads me to believe they came from an older animal; which you could never tell as the fibers are incredible soft and feel like the finest cashmere.


it wasn't necessary to card the fiber, just spin off of a fluffy handful. it was very easy to get a smooth and even strand. because of the inherent structure of the fiber it is very warm and i had to squash my desire to make a fluffy, slubby yarn, as it would have done a disservice to the fibers' nature. apparently, the warmer the fiber, the finer it needs to be spun; qiviut, bison, cashmere, vicuna, and guanaco falling into this category. as these fibers are also a bit pricey, you could spin a lot of yardage keeping this in mind. the half ounce spun up to about 172 yards which i then plied together, giving me 86 yds two-ply laceweight yarn. i haven't a clue as to what i'll make with it, so for now it stays in my spinning basket along with the bison and qiviut i'd already spun up.


2 comments:

  1. love the slight variation in colour, it looks so soft and squishy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. thank you! i hadn't noticed the slight color when it was unspun, but once it was going on the spindle, you could see the lighter and deeper colors. i'm really fond of all the camelids, they're all so very soft!

    ReplyDelete