Skirting

March 6, 2017 By Sandra Liggett Leave a Comment

And the Oscar for Best Fiber Goes To ….

Running an alpaca ranch and an entrepreneurial enterprise without a road map can be daunting. But, there are times when I have flashes of understanding why I do what I do. I had such an experience recently while skirting the remainder of our 2016 clip.

As I have written before, skirting is not my favorite activity. Skirting is the process of preparing the fiber for milling by removing vegetation, shaking out dirt and discarding fibers that are of inconsistent length, color or texture. Typically about 1/4 to 1/3 of the alpaca blanket (the prime fibers that cover the alpacas back and sides) end up discarded. The rest is now ready to go to the mill to be processed into batts that we will use in our felting. This process usually takes about 30 minutes per blanket. It is dark and lonely work. Often hard to find anyone to help me. Oh Lee, where are you?

While it is not my favorite process, I find the color, touch and handle of the fibers exciting. It’s why we are in this business, for love of the fleece. Today, accompanied by our barn cats Scampy and Pretty Boy, and with frequent visits from Atticus and members of the alpaca herd, I happily dug into the bags of raw and dusty fibers with my usual excitement. We have some fibers that are really fine, shiny and long. My exuberance over the fiber of two particular alpacas caused me to even shout out loud. WOW! If there were oscars for best fibers, these two boys would tie for first place.

Woodstock, our young dark brown alpaca who was mauled by a predator about this time last year, takes the Oscar this year for best fiber. I wish you could touch this great fiber through your computer. It has an incredible sheen, a rich dark brown, and crimp you can see from several feet away. That’s what I am holding in my hand.

Danito, another young male alpaca who is named after Danita our wonderful ranch hand (but that’s another story), has fabulously shiny, white crimpy fiber that is uniform in length, strong, and soft, soft, soft.

These fibers are going to be made into special items. Mmmm, jackets, coats, shawls? Which ever they deserve to be labeled with the animal’s names and pictures. Which ever garments are chosen, they will be special. Thank you Danito and Woodstock.

May 2, 2016 By Sandra Liggett Leave a Comment

Love Hate Relationship with Skirting

One of our least favorite — hence most avoided — part of the fiber processes is skirting. This is where we take the fiber shorn from our alpacas, lay it out on a mesh table and pick through it by hand. The hand-picking process removes vegetation, matted or soiled fibers, second cuts (short small pieces of fiber left when the shearer went back over an area a second time), and inconsistent fibers. This step is done by me and Lee in our barn, (most friends avoid our phone calls if they know we are skirting), before we send the fibers to the mill to be washed and processed.

Why do we hate it so much? It is a tedious process, requiring concentration and focus. We have to stand at the skirting table for hours. Our finger tips get sore from the dirt and dust in the fiber. You get dirty. Real dirty. And bored. We are constantly shooing the cats off the fiber.

We have a handbuilt skirting table that a favorite Houstonian built for us several years ago. It is constructed from chicken wire and 2 x 4s, measures 3′ x 6′ and rests on saw horses. We lay out the blanket (the fleece from the alpacas’s torso minus the underbelly fibers) with the cut side up. Our larger alpacas’ blankets will fill the entire table. We then move around the table, handling every part of the blanket, pulling off nonconforming fibers. Every alpaca blanket, even from the best of animals, will have areas of the blanket that need to be removed before milling.

And the “love” part of it? We get to touch and feel our harvested fibers, oohing and aahing over the colors, the brightness, the waves of crimp and best of all that wonderful alpaca softness. We analyze each animal’s fiber and note changes. Some alpacas maintain their fine soft lustrous fiber longer than others. The handling of Jazzman‘s fibers (the first alpaca born at our ranch) is still soft, shiny and consistent eight year’s later. It is still a breeze and a delight to skirt.

Several of our older females show their aging by the addition of white and grey fibers throughout their fleece. Salt and pepper, just like me. All of the alpacas develop coarse fibers called guard hair as they age. When they are young, guard hair tends to cluster in areas like their chests. Some guard hair areas must be pulled out and thrown away. Others are worth working through, pulling out the coarser fibers. Our grey fibers require the most work because they have longer dark fibers, similar to guard hairs, which need to be pulled out if the fiber is to be used for clothing worn next to the skin.

Skirting is particularly important to our Whispirit line because the quality of skirting impacts the feel of our garments. Fleece that contains inconsistent lengths, second cuts, and variations in the diameter of the individual fibers can feel coarse even when most of the fibers are incredibly soft. Our garments have that wonderful alpaca softness due to our skirting and practices of constancy of grade because we take special care with our skirting. Like the old saying “garbage in, garbage out.”

Skirting is the most important step to turning out quality fabric, yet we put it off. We have half of last year’s clip in our storage area in the barn (cat secure). Immediately after last year’s shearing we skirted all of our white and black fiber, as we find these are the most popular colors currently in our fabric making. With sheering just a week away, we look anxiously at the bags of grays, browns and fawns.

Okay bucko, it’s up to the barn to make room for this year’s clip. (Yes, yes, you can LISTEN to the Red Sox game.)

Anyone want to learn to skirt?

Til next time. Sandy

December 15, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Saki, Cisco and their Collaborative “Brown and White Chocolate” Fabric

“How do you make that?” asked the excited purchaser of the lovely Kasode jacket you see pictured. It’s a frequent question.

Laurie Schatzberg said, “Thanks for a fantastic afternoon of shopping, and communing with you all … And those wonderful dogs and alpacas! I’ll be back for sure!” Doesn’t she look great?

First, of course, one white and one brown alpaca had to be sheared. In this case, rich white fleece from Saki and the rich chocolate brown from Cisco. Both are lovely accoyo alpacas.

Second, as with all raw fiber, we skirt it here at the ranch and then ship it to one of the several fiber mills we use. In this case, and because we want a blended fiber and they have proven their creative talent in the past, we ship to Evergreen Fiber Mill, Woodinville, WA, where the all white and all brown fibers are combined into lovely, striated, batts.

Those batts are then returned to us and we needle felt them to a silk scrim. We really enjoy the results of blending these two rich colors together while maintaining the uniqueness of each. As a result of the richness we couldn’t help but call it “Brown and White Chocolate.”

As the Kasode is one of our regular designs, we delivered the fabric to Heather Briggs who did the expert sewing. Sandy then added the beautiful stenciling via materials she obtained this summer at Diane Ericson’s Design Outside the Line retreat in Taos, NM, and ….. Voila!

Another admirer of this jacket has placed an order and that one is just about finished. Happily Saki and Cisco produced enough fleece for several jackets. But not an unlimited supply and the animals won’t be sheared again until May. We already have another jacket in the making so go to the Whispirit Shop and order your own! Special orders are no more expensive. Or order this sweet bag made from the same fabric. We can also make this fabric by the yard for you.

Thanks Saki and Cisco!

July 28, 2015 By Lee 2 Comments

The Alpaca Batt Channel

So I imagine you have been waiting to hear what happens next after Sandy is done skirting… Once we have separated good from unusable fleece (at least for our purposes), we bag, box and ship the fleece to one of the mills we use for processing. Because we require the processing to be done in particular ways necessary to make the drapy smooth felt in our garments, only a handful of the mills that process alpaca fibers are able to perform our work.

Processing for us means the mill washes, dries and then cards the alpaca fiber to remove coarser fibers and get the fleece fibers all running in the same direction. We have learned that 100% alpaca is not best for our garments and accessories, so the mills blend 25% merino with 75% alpaca during the carding process. What comes off of the carding machine is called a batt. Our batts are extremely thin, usually under 3 ounces; reminds me of a spider web it is so light. For us, the milling process stops there and the batts are returned. Pictured to the left is a gorgeous batt made for us by Evergreen Fleece Processing.

From the batts we design our fabrics. Depending on what we are going to make, the batts of fiber are placed on top of a scrim or stabilizer of different grades of silk, cotton or burlap. We have named each of our fabrics: Silpaca, Silcotton. Also at this point we add whatever accents Sandy’s design calls for.

All the fiber, accents and stabilizer are now run through the FeltLOOM. The intended use of the fabric and the feel and effect we are trying to create will dictate how many times we run the fabric through the loom. Typically this takes 12 or more runs through the machine.

And then, as they say in France, “voila!” Our fabric is ready. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you can buy this fabric and others in the Whispirit shop. Right now we are offering our hand-dyed and felted Raspberry Silpaca at a special price.

Have a great week…………. Lee

July 20, 2015 By Lee Leave a Comment

Dog Days of Summer

Thank you. We are humbled and flattered by the increasing numbers reading our blog and appreciate those of you sending us questions. We are passionate about our alpaca, their fleece and our fabrics. So don’t hesitate sending your inquires, we love to answer them.

Last week several of you wanted to know if things are slow on the ranch during the dog days of summer. There is NEVER a dull moment around the ranch. Seems like there is always a “wheel” falling off or an exciting project (like our new website), looking for time.

Spring always means shearing. We’ve always sheared the herd, including all the dogs, in the middle of May. But, not the cats. Definitely NOT the cats.

WIN_20150720_121257 — Sandy at the skirting table

Our dark and lonely work really begins once the shearers and volunteers leave. “Bringing in the harvest” means long hours of skirting. This is the first step in processing the fiber and the only part of the milling process we do here on the ranch. Skirting is not the most enjoyable step in the process. You stand at a wire mesh table, lay out the raw fleece and go over each section removing vegetation, coarse or short fibers and “stuff.” It’s dirty, time consuming and boring. But, has to be done before sending the year’s harvest off to the mill.

It is truly a family affair as alpacas and llamas peek in, Atticus sits under the skirting table as sentry, and the cats – gosh our barn is full of cats – love to roll in fiber.

Our spring and early summer production switches from warmer coats, jackets, hats and vests to our summer-weight vests, shawls and scarves. Sandy loves this part of the production because she dyes all the fabric. Sandy loves dying the fabrics. Most summer days our kitchen is hot and steamy from the dye pot.

For those of you sitting in air-conditioned offices, or enjoying the summer breezes at the Santa Fe Opera or any of the multitude of festivals around New Mexico, you may enjoy the Spring Fling Vest. No summer ensemble should be considered complete without a silky alpaca wrap like our Endearing Shawl to catch that delightful breeze.

See what I mean about Sandy loving the dying?

Until next week……. keep enjoying your summer. Can you believe it is half gone?

Lee