Hasselbring's Harmony Ranch visit

Our spring break "stay-cation" wrapped up with a small road trip to Hasselbring's Harmony Ranch in Concordia, Missouri. It is a little over an hour away from our current home in Shawnee and Thursday was really the last of the nice weather. So it was perfect for a farm visit.

In my quest to learn about alpacas I discovered there are two types: huacaya and suri. On our previous visits to alpaca ranches we have seen huacaya like these.

huacaya alpaca at Knoblock's Prairie Ranch - look like fluffy teddy bears

 Hasselbring's Harmony Ranch has only suri alpacas. They have long flowing, lustrous fiber; not soft and springy like the huacaya. Here's a picture of a suri alpaca.

This is the best close-up I had. You can see the definition in the fleece - and how adorable these creatures are!

These were a few "boys" showing some color variety.

Patty Hasselbring showed Brent, Skylr and me a basket of some of the yarn they had processed from these alpacas. We were quite impressed with the softness!

Being a novice hand spinner, I was curious about how difficult this fiber would be to spin. So Patty sent me home with a gift of some fleece from the light fawn fellow in the back of the picture above.

Now you can see that "lustre" in the fiber. It is heavy, silky and shiny.

That smaller-than-a-loaf-of-bread size bunch of fiber weighs more than one of the large pillow-sized bags of fiber from Knoblock's Prairie Ranch. I have really enjoyed processing the raw fiber that I have from the huacayas - and still have a bunch of it. But this was so different! So I wanted to give it a try right away. Here's how it worked:

I fill the stationary comb 1/2 full with fiber and start combing until all fiber is on moving comb.
I can't believe how long it is!

Remove the short pieces left on the stationary comb and switch combs.
Then comb again until the fiber is all clean and on the moving comb.

Now I have a smooth silky (and did I mention how long it is) bunch of fiber.

Next I pull from the center to form this long soft rope. It is very light and must be handled gently.

I loosely roll it into a ball for easy handling. And I'm ready to spin! This was two combs of fiber.

And here is the single ply yard. It wasn't hard to spin at all. But it was definitely slick. It feels very soft. 

I will comb more today to add to this batch. The next step, since this is a single-ply, will be to set the twist by soaking the yarn.

I've been adding these first attempts at spinning to a crochet hat. Everything so far has been huacaya. So I'm excited to add this suri yarn next to the huacaya. That way we can really feel the difference.

What I think so far is that it's super-soft! I'll post again when we can compare the two types of fiber in my hat :-)

P.S. Thanks so much to the Hasselbrings for the introduction to this beautiful fiber!