# Cleaning alpaca fleece



## farmmom (Jan 4, 2009)

I was given some alpaca fleece today and am wondering what the best way to clean it is. I'll be using it to felt soaps. This fleece is the seconds from the recent shearing.


----------



## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

It'll be dusty.

If you can put it in a net bag or some such thing and kind of whack it about a little you can probably bang a good bit of the dust out. (DRY of course!)

If you're using it for felting, you don't really need to wash it before you work with it because you'll essentially be washing it when you make felt, right?  So just whack the dust out, then pick out the VM and go ahead and felt.

If you were to spin it or something, you'd soak it in lukewarm water with maybe a little bit of shampoo or mild soap and let it sit, floating, for a good day or two so that the dust can settle out. Then lift the fleece out and let it sit somewhere to dry. Probably not necessary for felting though.


----------



## alpacaspinner (Feb 5, 2012)

I don't know about felting, but the alpaca fiber that I was given, and that I am learning to spin, is certainly dusty, with a fair bit of VM. I pick it apart to loosen it, and to get most of the VM out, before carding it. This picking/teasing apart seems to loosen up a lot of the dust as well. I spin after carding, and before washing, and that seems to work quite well. It just seems to me that washing the fiber first would be more of a pain.


----------



## dlskidmore (Apr 18, 2012)

I have a very dirty (lots of VM) fleece I'm working with now, and flicking does a great job of getting all those bits of straw out. If I had to individually pick out all those bits I'd give up in disgust and order a different fleece. There's a bit more waste wool with flicking, as the fibers have to be long enough to hold on to. Short fibers and VM are going into my dog bed stuffing pile.


----------



## chamoisee (May 15, 2005)

I just throw mine into mesh bags and put it in the washer with warm water on the soak/spin cycle. I generally repeat this 2-3 times. I remove big VM and clods of manure and mud, other than that, not much pre-wash processing.


----------



## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

My friend who raises alpacas never washes. She has a drum carder and cards the fleece. Each unit is carded a second time, sometimes a third. She then spins. After knitting, she washes is. There is no lanolin in alpaca fiber, so the fleece is otherwise clean.


----------



## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

It may not have lanolin, but they take dust baths.

If you spin it without washing first, that dust is trapped in the yarn. This is not a big deal on darker coloured fleeces, or if they aren't too dirty, but on a white fleece you'll never get it clean if the dirt is spun in (experience here).

Soaking it and drying it is really not a lot of effort and then you don't have filthy hands when you spin. I don't bother getting it perfectly clean, but a good soak makes a world of difference. It's so much nicer to work with after a quick bath!


----------



## Marchwind (May 10, 2002)

I will some times shake it out, maybe put in it a mesh bag and take it outside and shake the heck out of it to get dust out. I generally do not wash Alpaca first but I will wash the finished yarn after spinning and then again after knitting with it.


----------

