From Barn to Skein: My First Steps in Processing Alpaca Fiber

It's really a goal of mine to process our alpaca fiber into yarn from start to finish. I have never done this before so I'll share each step as I go and learn.

Up to this point and still currently since I have a back log of alpaca fiber in my barn, I've been sending the fiber off to a mill for processing and it gets returned to me as yarn . Click here to visit my store

The first step (after shearing, of course, this year's shearing day can be found here ⇒ Shearing Day 2025) is washing.

From the last shipment of fiber, one of our animals' fiber couldn't be processed due to excessive vegetable matter. This means there was too much "stuff" in her fiber, whether it be straw, other earth materials, or animal materials. This would be the perfect fiber to use as I learned to clean it.

I bought some cheap mesh laundry bags

I found an unused plastic bin in my garage that would be the perfect size for hand washing.

I've seen some articles from people that use a laundry machine for this washing but I decided to hand wash.

We filled the bin outside with hose water and hand washed each bag of fiber. I put a few drops of Castille soap. We had to pour out the water after each one because it was so dirty. I had to keep in mind that the animals live outside all the time, in dirt, sand, grass, and all the elements.

I've had a trellis leaning up against my house for a long time, it belonged to the previous owners. I don't have any plants growing on it and I finally found a use for it .. Hanging the bags of alpaca fiber!

I wanted the fiber to be dried both by sunlight and air so hanging on the trellis allowed them to get the air circulation when it was propped against my house, rather than laying them flat on a surface.

I'm hoping these first bags are dry by this weekend because my mom and I are headed to a local yarn shop for the beginning stages of learning to spin fiber. Stay tuned.