FIBER ARTS WITH SUMMER GIRLSummer Girl has one of the best fleeces on our farm for fiber arts. She is very dense.
Summer Girl got her name because she was born on a day that was 101 degrees. Needless to say it was HOT! Even though she started nursing well within the time frame that a cria should, she became a little dehydrated. We timed our alpaca breedings so no one would be born during the hottest part of the summer after that. Her and Pokey (our two white alpacas) produce the most fiber of all the alpacas on our farm. Her white can be easily dyed to allow us any color we need to make our crafts. She is not as crimpy as some of the other alpacas or as fine but her fleece works fantastic for needle felting. We use her a lot for general 3 D character creation. We like the finer fiber for the faces of our characters because the finished project has a great skin look to it. Summers' fiber is great for making bodies, clothes, and other parts of our characters because it felts quicker. We will combine it with our fine fawn colors to make them felt faster and get a nice skin tone. We like it for other fiber arts projects, too. We have used her fiber to spin yarn and wet felt. We've crocheted hats and other garments from her fiber and she is still softer than merino wool. She probably would not win first place in a fiber competition but she has turned out to be our most useful fleece. Crimp is important in a show. Crimp seems to correlate with finess. On our farm this does seem to be true. The alpacas with more crimp per inch do have finer fleeces. You might like to choose your crimpy fleece to spin yarns and your less crimpy fiber for wet and needle felting projects. Like we said above, your less crimpy fiber is still going to make some really nice yarn. We love Summer Girl for our fiber arts projects. Good thing she is a fantastic fiber producer. Hope we helped you learn a little bit more about alpacas and their fiber by introducing Summer Girl to you.
Return from fiber arts to alpaca photos.
|
