Adventures in Washing Alpaca Fiber

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of family and friends, I have accumulated a fair bit of alpaca fleece in a few different colors. The most recent addition was a 16” x 16” x 17” box from my Dad packed full of beautiful grey and black locks. It’s still sitting in the box too because it has a distinct aroma. Now that warmer temps are here to stay for a few more months, I’m ready to give washing and prepping alpaca fleece a try.

So far, the bulk of my fiber processing experience has been with wool and alpaca that’s already been washed and dyed. The lone exception was this alpaca handspun I made a few years ago. That yarn started as fiber that I turned into batts with a drum carder. But I didn’t wash the fiber before hand, because the general consensus from what I’d read was that you didn’t have too since alpaca don’t produce lanolin. Yeah…no. The finished yarn was wonderful but spinning it left dirt everywhere - my hands, the drum carder, my lap, kitchen table, etc. So all of this new stuff definitely needs a wash.

Before digging into that box and committing to a massive washing project, I’m starting small with 7 oz of cinnamon brown alpaca from a friend. It smells pretty clean, but there’s a lot of vegetable matter and my hands definitely feel a little grimy after digging around in the fiber. A lot of my researching and learning about how other people wash alpaca has shown me that there are a lot of different methods. What’s been the same is this:

• don’t agitate the water - let the fiber soak

• use warm to hot water

• gentle dish soap works really well

• mesh bags are a must

• if you’re going to use a machine machine, it has to be a top loader

So, keeping all that stuff in mind, here’s what my set up involves:

• A big flexible tub to soak and wash the fleece outside my washing machine is a front loader

• Mild dish soap - I’m using Mrs Meyers dish soap which is sulfate free

• Lots of mesh bags

• An old towel

• My patio table

One more important note before getting into the grit of it, I’m washing stuff outside because I don’t want to clean the tub more than I have too. Let’s get started.

The first step is shoving all the alpaca in bags. I ended up splitting the 7 oz into 2 bags so it’d have room to loose dirt. I also picked out a few bits of bigger veggie matter and removed any second cuts I happened to find.

Now for the tub. I filled it up with water from the hose which is definitely on the cooler side. To warm things up I used an electric kettle to boil some water. It didn’t get anywhere near as hot as I expected but it was warm. Then I added a few tablespoons of soap and smooshed the bags under the water until they stayed completely submerged.

This is what the water looked like after 20 minutes. I could not see the bottom of the tub even a little.

I pulled the bags, rolled them up to squeeze out some water, and emptied the tub. Then I refilled the tub with the same amount of hot and cold water for a rinse without soap. The bags went back in and I set another timer.

The bags sat in this water for closer to 30 minutes because I had other stuff to do. This time I could almost see the bottom of the tub.

Decided to do one more soak in soapy water. I didn’t have to add any hot water this time because the hose sat in the sun long enough to heat things up.

After another 30 minutes (took a lunch break), the water was clear and I could see the bottom. Plus, the water I squeezed out of the fiber was only slightly cloudy. Looked good enough to me so I gave them one last soak in plain water to rinse out the soap. After taking the bags out of the tub, I rolled them up in a towel and gave them a good squeeze.

Here’s what the still very wet alpaca looks like. The larger VM is still there and I’ll probably have to pick it out by hand, but the dust and dirt is gone. Yay! One step closer to spinning this up.

I left the fiber in the bags so it wouldn’t blow away while it dries on the patio table. I did arrange it into a more even layer so it would dry faster. The day’s weather was hot and arid, but it still took the rest of the night inside to dry.

What did I end up with after a morning’s worth of work and a day’s drying time? Much cleaner fiber. The larger bits of VM are still there, but the dust and grit are gone. Doesn’t feel like I stuck my hand in a bucket of dust after touching the stuff. The fiber isn’t felted and I was able to pull apart some of the locks to get a better look at what I have to work with.

It’s definitely going to be work getting the rest of the fiber to this point, but I’m looking forward to getting this on the drum carder.

On the whole, washing this batch of alpaca fiber went pretty well. There’s not much I’d do differently. Hotter water will probably be a requirement for dirtier fleece so I’ll add 2 kettles worth of hot water for the big batch. Gloves might also have to be a thing for the really dirty stuff. I also wish the bags I have were a bigger mesh to let larger chunks out, but these still work fine. There’s still a few more things I want to try before digging into that massive box - like picking out more of the veggie matter and sending this fiber through the drum carder - but that shouldn’t hold me up too long.

References

This video from Jillian Eve gave me a good idea of what needed to be picked out before stuffing the fiber into mesh bags for cleaning. Might help you too if you’re using a washing machine to wash the alpaca.

This video focuses on tumbling and hand washing alpaca. Really makes me wish I had a double basin utility sink.

A short and to the point list about how to wash alpaca.