Alpaca

My use  of alpaca to date has been as a yarn for texture.  I like to do this as it takes up natural dyes slightly differently than wool adding both texture and shades simultaneously.  You can see this in the madder dyed piece below , where the alpaca yarn  is at the top and slightly lighter than the surrounding wool    I  was therefore interested to see how the fibre itself felted during a day this week at Artybird in Carnforth.   The fibre I had to felt was one year old alpaca , the youngest and softest . It has less scales and less crimp than wool fibre.  Perhaps it would be very hard to felt.      With four thin layers laid out I just used my normal techniques and only cold water and found I could easily and quickly make a small sample.  I had embellished the piece with…