First of all, llama smells really good. Kind of like if a pine tree and a black jellybean had a baby. Second, that may have been too much fiber to try to process at once, but what the fuck. I’m learning.
Even after all the rinses, it was still dirty as fuck. I floundered around on the internet for hints and decided on hand picking it. This basically is where you take a little bit of fiber and pull and shake it apart until all the dirt falls out. It’s time consuming, but my fiber ended up as clean as anything I’ve bought. Even when I set the twist, which is a great time for the sin of failing to wash your fiber well beforehand to show itself, the water a little foggy, but not muddy.
The llama is weird to spin because it’s so soft. I was having a kind of sensory dissonance with it because my brain kept insisting the fiber was “muddy.” I think that’s because it feels so soft and slippery and cool?
It’s very grabby, so it drafts strangely. You have to pull firmly to get everything moving, but not so hard things pop loose. Imagine if you had two pieces of Velcro stuck together and you wanted the top piece to slide a centimeter to the right without coming off the bottom piece. You need firm, steady pressure, but not too much.
And I had all different kinds of fiber lengths, ranging from two to six inches, which was fun but also weird.
And it has a lot more of a halo (the bits of fiber that kind of stick out from the main thread) than I’m used to and I don’t know if that’s because of the picking or just a trait of the fiber or both. I’m going to have to crochet it up before I decide if the halo is scratchy or not, but at least when you touch the yarn, it’s very soft.
So, I’m hoping it’s more of an angora feel than a “the sweater you hated growing up” feel.
Tiny Cat Pants 