#alpaca fiber

[ithilien-bjd]

Hey to all doll makers and customizers (and fiber artists too lol) - our two old alpacas just got sheared for the summer, so I have a bunch of brown fiber and a bunch of white fiber. Unprocessed/raw, with a shorter staple length than most suri (2-4 inches, theyre suri x huacaya crosses so have the silky straight fiber but not as long). I'll let you have as much as you want for the cost of shipping! Just trying to save attic space.

Here are two wigs I've made with them to give you an idea of color.

[almapark]

My day on the farm

[ancient-art-of-craft]

Yarn for Christmas?

An open PSA to anyone with crafting friends (and isn't really sure what they like):

DON'T BUY THEM YARN

Part of the hobby is the purchasing yarn, which some might argue buying yarn and using yarn are two different hobbies. "But OP," you might argue, "I just know they'll love the Red Heart Super Saver I got on sale at Joann's! One skein should be plenty, and they can make me a sweater!"

This is one of those rare cases where a gift card to their favorite yarn store is more personal. First off, nothing against Red Heart, but if they're a yarn snob, it's going to collect dust. If they're a project-oriented purchaser, it's going to collect dust. If they like to buy yarn, then it's just mean.

Also, NEVER imply that your crafting friend should make something for you. If they love you, they will. If they don't, then you're not close enough to be making expensive demands.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Four-Cornered Hats from Peru and Bolivia, c.600-800 CE: these colorful, finely-woven hats are at least 1,200 years old, and they were crafted from camelid fur

Above: four-cornered hats made by the Wari Empire of Peru (top) and the Tiwanaku culture of Bolivia (bottom) during the 7th-9th centuries CE

Often referred to as "four-cornered hats," caps of this style were widely produced by the ancient Wari and Tiwanaku cultures, located in what is now Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Finely woven, brightly colored hats, customarily featuring a square crown, four sides, and four pointed tips, are most frequently associated with two ancient cultures of the Andes: the Wari and the Tiwanaku. The Wari Empire dominated the south-central highlands and the west coastal regions of what is now Peru from 500–1000 A.D. The Tiwanaku occupied the altiplano (high plain) directly south of Wari-populated areas around the same time, including territory now part of the modern country of Bolivia.

Above: pair of four-cornered hats made by the Wari people of Peru, c.600-900 CE

Both cultures used the hair of local camelids (i.e. llamas, alpacas, or vicuñas) to produce their hats. The hair was harvested, crafted into yarn, and treated with colorful dyes, and the finished yarn was then woven and/or knotted into caps and other textiles. Four-cornered hats from both cultures were often decorated with similar stylistic elements, including geometric patterns (particularly diamonds, crosses, and stepped triangles) and depictions of zoomorphic figures such as birds, lizards, and llamas with wings.

Above: four-cornered hats made by the Tiwanaku people of Bolivia, c.600-900 CE

The two cultures used different techniques to construct/assemble their hats, however:

Although they shared certain technological traditions, such as complex tapestry weaving and knotting techniques, the Wari and the Tiwanaku utilized significantly different construction methods to create four-cornered hats. Wari artists typically fashioned the top and corner peaks as separate parts and later assembled them together. Tiwanaku artists generally knotted from the top down, starting with the top and four peaks, to create a single piece.

Above: a four-cornered hat from Bolivia or Peru, made by either the Tiwanaku or Wari culture, c.500-900 CE

There is evidence to suggest that four-cornered hats were often worn as part of daily life, as this publication explains:

Many have indelible marks of hard usage: wear along the edges and folds, a crusting of hair oil on the inside, remnants of broken chin ties, and ancient mends.

Above: a pair of hats made by the Wari culture of Peru, c.600-800 CE

Above: more hats from the Wari culture of Peru, c.700-900 CE, with colorful tassels decorating the four peaks of each cap

The oldest known/surviving examples of the Andean four-cornered hat date back to nearly 1,700 years ago. They began to appear along the northern coast of Chile at some point during the 4th century CE; these early hats had an elongated design with four short peaks, and they are typically associated with the Tiwanaku culture.

Above: this early example of a four-cornered hat was created by the Tiwanaku culture between 300-700 CE

Why indigenous artifacts should be returned to indigenous cultures.

Sources & More Info:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Four-Cornered Hats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12

Museum Publication: Andean Four-Cornered Hats (PDF available here)

Emory University: Four-Cornered Pile Hat

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Andean Textiles

[epsonprelude]

First try at hand dyeing. I was inspired after happening across a few folks online that used black beans to dye cotton and produced some incredible purples, blues and greens.

Merino/alpaca blend aran weight yarn. Used Alum as a mordent, and soaked the beans overnight. Got a little too excited and couldn't stand to wait the recommended 24hrs, so I put the beans in a bag and added them to the soak. That is likely why there are a few splotches of purple and the result is not exactly a solid color.

Top Left: After 10min

Top Right: The next day

Bottom Left: Hanked

Bottom Right: Caked

[we-re-always-alright]

slowly chugging away at this baby blanket, 8in down, 31 to go!!!!!

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Today's enrichment.

[gayestcowboy]

i’ve been knitting a sweater :3

[throughtrialbyfire]

developing possible headcanons about bosmer textiles/clothing and materials commonly used, trying to figure out what dyes they would have access to (if any), where they'd get some of the materials that don't come naturally from valenwood, maybe there is a little creature in my head that does not let me be normal ever

[ratbugs]

what do y’all think of these colors?

starting with a row(s) of these ants with the color work pattern i made, in the orange

i’m going to do the ants and the crabs with the orange 🍊 🐜 🦀

[ezekiellsplayground]

Some miscellaneous handspun skeins, completed either on spindles or my e-spinner (electric wheel). The alpaca & alpaca/polwarth skeins are destined to be entered into the Royal 2025 under the spindle spun & lace weight categories respectively. Some of the other skeins are destined as gifts to crafting family & friends.

Miwak was made by #wormsandbones, design by #mokobuns

[cjgladback]

I went to my first fiber festival this past weekend! Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival; if I'm still in this state come June next year, I'll probably be back and would love to meet anybody else there. Socializing/hanging out/talking to people without feeling like I was obstructing Real Customers was the one thing I missed, though I didn't really get to any of the free lectures so maybe that's where I could've met some people. Since it was an unknown situation with a lot of people and nearly an hour drive each way, I strategized to make sure I'd go:

First day, I signed up for a couple volunteer shifts. Absolutely a recommended strategy.

Got to be helpful!

They happened to have goodie bags, to help me justify the gas and time (I now have a nice tape measure to replace the one that's been vacationing with a missing sewing kit for a couple years and a lasercut wood two-inch gauge window that might help me with consistency versus my suboptimal practice of just trying to knit perfect squares when swatching in pattern)

I got to learn things about the layout and schedule I wouldn't know to ask when answering questions and acting as a gofer -- especially true working two different locations

And of course, some people were pretty much guaranteed to be happy to see me!

Second day, I signed up for a workshop in the morning so I'd be there and able to shop for anything I needed at the end. Ombre yarn dyeing was the class! It's acid dyes, something I'm several years off from wanting to get into enough to commit to dedicated cookware, full pots of dye powder, etc. The room with the workshop was a barn that had plenty of outlets--but they did not represent plenty of breakers. So there weren't quite enough functional heating elements for the class to have sufficiently cooked our yarn before leaving, and I did need to risk a giant stock pot at home for three batches of four jars, almost-simmering in a water bath for thirty minutes each, of the yarn that hadn't proven it was done (all but the two palest greens). I was a little worried the delay/drawn out heat situation would affect the results but if it did it wasn't much; I got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for with my two color gradient and the single is great too!

The single dye gradient is the color Moss, which did some interesting things with the red portion separating out once they were heated. Every skein has redder blotches, so I'm not bothered about any inconsistency -- if anything it'll help my finished product camouflage stains. Though it was definitely a surprise for me and the other Moss user in the class when our first yarn to have exhausted the dye was the complementary color to what it went in as.

The two color gradient used Rhodamine Red on one end, which was one end of one of our instructor's samples where she chose a cool-green for the other end to show how multi-component dyes mix less predictably than most paint. (It was kinda like shading with markers where you can still see washes of the pink and green in what you squint at and call a grey-brown.) The other end was Cantaloupe, which was one of the maybe three colors she didn't have a sample cut of yarn for. But she described it as the flesh of a perfect ripe cantaloupe and obviously I had to see that, and it sounded like it would be fairly guaranteed to combine nicely with the magenta while being just enough around a bend in the color wheel to be interesting--warm orange versus cool pink. As I said, it turned out pretty much exactly as I was picturing. Not anticipated was how much the jars looked like they were full of some delicious dragonfruit-mango beverage. Were I still a barista I'd be trying to recreate this for my shift drink.

Image descriptions under the cut.

[ID: Five images following fourteen small skeins of sock yarn dyed in individual glass jars, in two gradients. One gradient is six skeins from a medium forest green through a pale creamy pink, the other is eight skeins from a vibrant yellow orange through an even more vibrant magenta. The first photo is inside under fluorescent lights, showing the 32oz glass canning jars with metal lids and rings, full of dye and yarn on a table at the end of the class in which they were filled and heated for a short time.

The next two images are animated gifs. The first gif is two frames showing the finished dye jars sitting in grass, with their yarn and with it removed. The green gradient left only transparent blue color in its jars, and most of the pink to orange gradient's water looks more orange without its yarn, aside from the third and fourth jars from the orange end, which shade toward a neon lilac with the peachy pink yarn removed. The second gif is a view of the inside of the bright green wash bucket, with just the pink-orange yarn in it, then all of them mixed up, all as they were after a soak with the rust-brown water, in the first rinse, and that rinse water alone showing its transparent but still brown tint.

The last two photos show the gradients lined up along a weathered wooden bench on the side of a deck. The first photo has the wet piles of yarn bundled in front of each of their respective jars with remaining dye. The final photo has the clean, dry yarn wound into center-pull balls and still vibrant in the direct sunlight. End ID]

[avaylee]

Update... and a question.

Finally making time to get through Cloudy Rainbow. The alpaca is so very soft and the silk... is slick as snot. I forget that I am not well practiced and that silk is a level up. There will be slubs! There will also be chain plying, so it will balance out (I hope).

Finished up thr yellow, which means I'm halfway through. Woo!

Onto the question...

I've been listening to Depeche Mode while spinning this particular set of rolags. The underlying beat is somehow perfect for my treadle. I've listened to other things at other times, but kind of consistently come back to Depeche Mode for spinning projects.

To the spinners... what's on your playlist? Does it satisfy a beat need, or strictly music for music's sake?

[thalialaforet]

Knitted this balaclava last year with an incredible alpaca yarn and it turned out "meh" because I didn't have the proper knitting skills yet to be worthy of the almighty alpaca yarn :/

But hey, at least it keeps my head warm so I guess it's still a win

[weavingforlooms]

Next color!!!!! This one’s actually my handspun which i am incredibly excited to be using in a project. however I am now very paranoid about the amount that’s been used so far… I think I’m gonna have to spin up some more!!!

[we-re-always-alright]

that is the absolute LAST time I make a baby blanket in fingering weight

LETS FUCKING GO.