I am at the very beginning of a backstrap project.  I do not know yet what the final project will be, but I am spinning alpaca to make something after I finish the cotton practice bands we started in class.  I am almost finished spinning the light brown.  Then I have cream, fawn and dark brown to go.  I may dye some of the fawn and/or cream with natural dyes.  I am spinning (and will ply) with a very tight twist.  The yarn in the samples Abby showed us was so tightly spun it kinked up if it wasn't under strong tension.

Comments

bolivian warmi

Hi Kath,

Welcome back.Your new project plan sounds great. I imagine the cream will contrast nicely with the dark brown for your patterns. I have only knitted with handspun alpaca-never woven with it. Looking forward to seeing what you make.

Laell (not verified)

Hi Kath,

I cannot wait to see how your weaving comes out using the high twist yarn you are spinning.  I was really amazed at the samples Abby brought to the class.  I expected a tightly spun yarn, but not so tight it kinked back on itself.  One certainly couldn't discern that from the woven samples she shared with the class.

Ezara

Caroline (not verified)

hi Kath, I too will be very interested in seeing how tight a twist is necessary. Was the yarn Abby used single ply or 2 ply? How many WPI?  I am about to start spinning my stash of alpaca on an electric wheel, and since I will never have the opportunity to take one of Abby's classes, unless she does a world tour, any info you can pass on will be gratefully received.

kathkol (not verified)

 The yarns we talked about were all 2-ply.  I assumed that was what they used for everything, but I could be mistaken.  The WPI varied with the project - very fine for some delicate bands to much more substantial for wider pieces.  Ezara, do you remember more about that?  Keep asking the questions, Caroline.  I will do the best I can and I hope Ezara will help too.  Of course, you have to understand that, according to Andean culture, we have the skills of 5 to 8-year-olds :)

bolivian warmi

Hi Caroline,

I spin llama for weaving the way I was taught here in Bolivia nd Peru. It is just something you get to FEEL. The yarn kinks back on it self. All I can say is that it is OVER spun but not so hard as to become harsh. Llama is rather harsh anyway but alpaca is not. I have never seen anyone here weave with singles.

When I take my llama warp off the pegs and lay it on the floor it kinks up immediately like it has a life of its own! Have you ever worked with Navajo warp?-it's similar.

The good thing is that this kind of overspun yarn is very ''forgiving'' in that once woven in a warp faced textile it looks wonderfully even-although YOU know that it wasn't evenly spun. I will try to take some pictures and post here.

Laverne

Caroline (not verified)

Up til now I have spun for knitting, so the yarns have been soft and very low twist. As I understand it, I'm looking to create a yarn that has more twist than a commercial warp yarn, so this is a totally different style of spinning, The 5-8 year old  skill level might be a bit ambitious! I thought that using an electric wheel would give a reasonably consistent twist  while my hand muscles and brain get used to spinning and recognizing a different style of yarn.

Rachel Brown recommends re-spinning commercial yarn for navajo weaving, but as I have never come across an alpaca warp yarn I have only a vague idea of what I am aiming for. I have Llama fibre as well, and presume that this may be a bit hairy and coarser than the alpaca - I culled all the harsher, coarser Alpaca fibres from of my stash last year - would  this be more suitable? I shall just have to sample and see what happens.

Is it better to use Huacaya rather than Suri? Its the easier yarn to get hold of, but I may have a chance to buy some tomorrow as I'm off to an alpaca "do". Most of the Alpaca fleece around is short, probably due to the growing conditions, or else the greed of sellers to try and get 2 shearings a year out of them. As I also have an upright charkha, I can cope with shorter fibres, but they are not so good for warp yarn I suspect.

A lot of questions, but there is no one local to me to ask. I have no doubt I will come up with more before we are done!

kathkol (not verified)

 I remember Abby talking about re-spinning commercial yarn for backstrap weaving too.  Must be the same idea.

I really don't have definitive answers to  your other questions, just opinions.  My gut reaction is that hairy yarn would be difficult to work with because the heddles would get stuck.  We had quite a bit of pilling around the heddles from the commercial cotton yarn we used in class.  Abby said that would not be such a problem with properly spun yarn.  Personally, I like huacaya better than suri because it is easier for me to get a soft yarn.

Tell us about your alpaca "do."  I l-o-v-e alpaca; the animal and its fleece!

 

kathkol (not verified)

 I just got the new issue of Handwoven magazine.  Nancy McRay, a Michigan shop owner, has an article in it about a really sharp vest she made out of narrow strips of weaving.  The widest was 7" wide. She made it on a rigid heddle loom, but maybe I could do something like that on my backstrap loom with the alpaca I am spinning.  I would want to make at least some of the strips more ethnic looking, but the idea of narrow strips to make an article of clothing appeals to me.  Thinking . . . .

bolivian warmi

Caroline, I think you should spin up and ply a small quantity of your alpaca and then warp up a narrow warp-faced band and try it out. Then you can see how it performs and go adjusting from there. Bear in mind that weavers here put a lot of tension on the loom and beat HARD. The quality of the weave is based on how firm the textile is especially for the women's belts. You may find that you don't need to be as hard on the yarn as that.

The meshing of the fibers will make opening the sheds tedious but not impossible and it is worth the effort. You just don't want to have warps constantly breaking.It would be a shame to unnecessarily spin your lovely alpaca very hard.

Caroline (not verified)

Good morning everyone! My alpaca "do" was quite an eye-opener, and I learned a bit too. First of all, this show was for the commercial alpaca breeders, and the fleece and beasts were being judged with an eye out for the overseas luxury yarn market, not the local hand-spinner market. I was very surprised as the fleeces in the main were short, dirty and full of VM, and as a hand-spinner I would not have given much of it house room.

The prize-winning fleece were judged that because of their micron count, and a few other things that we are not so concerned with, as we tend to let our fingers do the judging. The length and VM don't matter to a scour that will take out all the characteristics of the fibres that we value as hand-spinners, so it really is a different standard, and a hand-spinner buying a good commercial fleece is likely to be disappointed and feel cheated.

I had some alpaca that I had bought at a craft fair on saturday, that I was spindle spinning, and several of the breeders came over to see what I was doing. All felt the fibre, and just couldn't believe how soft it was, or how clean or how long!  It was like a different fibre! Yet mine had also come straight off a beast, just as theirs had, though I suspect the owner had taken a blow dryer to her animal before shearing! There was no comparison.

I have heard rumours that some commercial breeders get 2 shearings a year from their animals. Its probably true as they would shear for the important shows during the season, independently of the sheep shearing cycle. It would certainly explain the length of many of the clips. And why I ruthlessly culled the short fibres from my stash last year!