Alpacas And Beautiful Clothing And Toys Made From The Wool

Caring for alpacas can be a very fascinating hobby

, and the alpaca's production of beautifully soft wool is way more than a trivial extra. Some people operate alpaca farms as fibre and livestock businesses, but many enthusiasts now have alpacas in modest numbers as a hobby. An important aspect of that pastime is use of the fibre soon after the yearly shearing to create woollen garments.

Alpacas were kept for hundreds, quite possibly thousands, of years by the Inca people of Peru and neighbouring countries, high up in the Andes of South America. Whereas llamas (a somewhat similar "camelid" animal) were kept as beasts of burden alpacas have been valued more especially for the fleece. This was usually woven to create beautifully soft clothes which even though light in weight was almost surisingly warm. Indeed, alpaca garments were so greatly valued as to be allowed only to royalty and top officials.

In the 19th century the benefits of alpaca were re-discovered, to a great extent due to the initiative of Titus Salt, an English textile entrepreneur who in his Yorkshire mill discovered a method of weaving the wool to give a very high quality cloth. These days alpaca is back in style.

Cloth woven from alpaca fibre has several advantages above that manufactured from sheep wool. The insulating properties are down to air-filled cavities in the fibres, which also lessen its weight. Again, in an alpaca fleece there's an absence of lanolin. People who are allergic to lanolin cannot generally wear woollen clothing, but alpaca changes that and allows them to wear wool without the discomfort. Yet another comfort-enhancer is the absence of hard scaly material from the surface of the alpaca wool such as is common in sheep wools.

As with from sheep, the procedure followed from freshly-sheared fleece to a garment ready to put on is a very long one. Carding, spinning and weaving (or knitting) are the important stages. Some enthusiasts like to look after the whole activity on their own from start to finish. Other people take their fleeces to specialists who then return the wool ready for use.

The selection of natural colours is surprisingly great, spanning white to black through a number of shades of grey, and from pale off-whites to rich browns. You can find also variations in texture, the wool of huacaya and suri alpacas being quite different from each other, the first being short and crimpy and the latter long and loose.

Knitting with alpaca wool is increasingly popular. Alpaca apparel ranges from jackets and capes to alpaca socks and scarves. And not only clothing is popular but also soft toys, in particular teddy bears a lot of of which are made as collectibles rather than as children's bears. Alpaca knitwear is often given as a gift. Numerous other crafts including felting also use alpaca wool.

As the alpaca wool industries mature, increasing consideration will need to be given to standards and attaining constant quality. Breeding programmes, nutrition, animal health, shearing and spinning will all be essential elements in this developmental work. The objective of such quality endeavours must be to ensure that the acceptance of alpaca as the ultimate in luxury wools is maintained and enhanced.

by: David Murray

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