Meet My Alpacas, Part II: Cinnamon and Sarge
In my (last post)[https://steemit.com/alpacas/@hellchick/meet-my-alpacas] I introduced two of my four alpacas, Silverton and Benz. We have a small herd of four, so today I’d like to introduce you to the other two, Cinnamon and Sarge, and tell you a little about the yarns I’ve made from their fleece.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is feisty. His name comes from the cinnamon-colored patches of color on his nose and tail — everywhere else, his fleece is white. He’s the wiliest of all of our alpacas — when it comes time for shearing or toenail-trimming (in another post I’ll talk about how we do those), he starts humming up a storm. Alpacas hum, and each alpaca hums for different reasons. For Cinnamon, the reason is usually because he’s annoyed that we’re about to put a halter on him.
Because his fleece is white, I tend to do a lot of dyeing with the yarns I make from his fiber. Here are a couple of yarns that I’ve made.
”Fiery Cinnamon”: 25% Merino, 25% silk, 50% alpaca.
”Blue Cinnamon”: 100% Alpaca from Cinnamon, dyed blue.
“Royal Silverton”: contained both Silverton and Cinnamon fleece.
Sarge
Sarge is the newest member of our herd, and also the youngest at just two years old. We added him to the herd when our oldest alpaca, Indie, passed away last year. I knew I wanted to have a brown alpaca in the herd, and his fleece is a beautiful red-brown. It’s also the softest fleece in our herd.
Because Sarge is so young, he acclimated to the herd in no time, and he has a sweet and friendly personality — he especially loves our toddler and runs up to the fence every time he sees him.
I’m working on spinning up his fleece into some beautiful yarn — here’s some of what I’ve made.
”Sarge Polwarth”: 70% Alpaca from Sarge, 30% Polwarth sheep wool.
”Sarge Merino Silk”: 1-ounce batts ready to spin of Sarge’s fleece combined with Merino and silk.
Next Time: Shearing
A lot of people ask me what shearing an alpaca is like — next time, we’ll talk about what’s involved and how we do it.