Vicuña, Guanaco, and Paco-Vicuña

Photo by Gato andino.

Vicuña, the very word evokes images of exotic luxury. Fleet footed, endangered, poached for their cinnamon colored fiber the vicuña has been a symbol of the spirit of the Andes. Perseverance in the face of adversity. Since the vicuña is no longer endangered in all parts of its current range, roundups called chacus are held to shear the vicuñas. This serves as a source of income for local community development as well as to discourage poaching of these animals. This diminutive animal only stands about 3 foot at the shoulder and is dual coated with a coarser outer coat and superfine undercoat.

Now that vicuña is now considered threatened in some locations rather than endangered the Convention On International Trade In Endangered Species Of Wild Fauna And Flora (CITES ) allows the sale of vicuña fiber and items made with vicuña from specific localities. Each item sold should include a CITES certificate stating origin. The fiber is very fine 6-10 microns. In comparison qiviut is 11-13 microns and angora rabbit is 13 microns.

All of the above micron counts come from the British Wool Board.

Photo by static-photo.

Guanaco is to the llama what vicuña is to the alpaca. Unlike its cousin, the guanaco is an threatened rather than an endangered species, and even locally abundant in Tierra Del Fuego. But because its numbers are not as low, guanacos are not protected like the vicuña is.

Photo by crookrw.

Yeah, they can be a pest to ranchers. Fences are no barrier to them and the ranchers view them as carrying disease and compete with the sheep and cattle for precious resources.

Like the vicuña, guanacos are double coated. The dehaired undercoat ranges from 14-18 microns and has a length of 1.5″ to 2″. There are some domestic herds of guanacos and much of the fiber available to handspinners are from them. Obviously these farms have very tall fences. The guanaco is smaller than its domesticated brother, the llama, standing at about 4 feet tall a the shoulder. It also does not have the special history of use in Peru that the vicuña has. In fact, Andezoo, who makes stuffed toys of all four South American camelids, portrays Ayak Guanaco as grumpy, tough as nails character.

Photo by mimsical.

Paco-vicuñas are alpacas with vicuña-like traits. Some breeders in the United States have taken vicuñas and bred them to alpaca or vicuña-like alpacas. Farms are breeding for the coat traits of the vicuña while (hopefully) keeping the advantageous traits of the alpaca. Since the alpaca is believed to be a domesticated vicuña subspecies, there should not be any changes as was seen in tame silver foxes that ruined the coats for use by furriers. It is possible to concentrate the vicuña characteristics by careful line breeding.

A handful of farms in the United states are breeding these animals. Some farms admit that some of these animals are crossbreeds, others are more evasive about the origin of their animals. Fiber for handspinning is available through many of these.

In November of 2007 there was a statement issued by all the Andean countries with populations of vicuñas condemning the creation of of paco-vicuñas and that paco-vicuñas should be treated like vicuñas, not domesticated alpacas (Hoffman, Eric “The Comeback Camelid.” Wild Fibers.vol 5, issue 1, pgs 46-56). Because of this it will be interesting to see what happens to the development of herds in the USA. I did notice that Northwest Alpacas no longer has a link to their “Vicuña Collection”. I did still find a dead link to it from this page.

Next we will look at samples of each…which gives me an excuse to go to The Fold.

Oh My Aching Legs….

This past weekend I went geocaching with a bunch of other woman from the Geocachers of Northeastern Illinois (GONIL).  Nine of us started out at one of the forest preserves (aka county park) south of Chicago and spent the next 9.5 hours looking for geocaches in the woods.

We laughed, we cried, many enjoyed being free from their spouses, dogs, and children.  We slid, we fell, we crawled (well, at least I did)  and most discovered areas they had never been to before.  Most of us were wet, muddy and very very tired by the end.

This is actually prime time for geocaching in Illinois…before the ticks and mosquitoes hatch!  The lack of insects more than make up for the lack of green.  

 Well, two weeks ago you this was a hopping place.  Don’t know what that is…let’s look at it from a different angle. 

 

Oh boy…imagine your child sledding down this hill.  See the people on the stairs?  Offhand I don’t know what the elevation difference is, but it is higher than my earthcache on Harts Hill.   But two weeks ago we still had a significant amount of snow. 

Winter is losing its grip.  Meteorologically spring has arrived, calendar-wise we still have a few days before the vernal equinox aka first day of spring.  And I am looking forward to it as I am sick and tired of the snow.

Finnish Landrace-Versatility is the Name of the Game

Hey, I found the other mitten!

Other than the fact I keep snagging them with my keys, they have stood up the test of time. These are knitted from a Finn/Lincoln in a modified Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern.

Now to the fiber.

Here is a lock of the purebred Finnish Landrace. See the well defined crimp. It was listed by the seller as an uncoated fleece, but not as a lambs fleece so I don’t know if the tip is just from being exposed or not.

This is the combed fiber. I used two row Viking style combs to comb this.

And here is the fiber spun up.

This is the carded fiber. I should have picked this more to get rid of more of the vegetable matter (vm). Not that you can see it, but I sure can.

Here is the spun yarn.

In addition, I managed to find some commercially processed Finn. The fiber in this prep has very little crimp compared to the hand processed fiber.

It was very easy to over spin the fiber when spun directly from the roving.

Overall, I preferred the hand processed fiber, but the commercial roving was no slouch. There is not a huge difference in the yarn between the combed and carded finn. Either way you are going to be pleased. I would not recommend this for baby clothes, nor would I recommend this for rugs. If you have sensitive skin you may not want a pair of finn socks, but a color patterned or cabled sweater would benefit from finns properties.

I’m very pleased overall. I’ve shied awy from finn in the past but I don’t think I will in the future.

It’s spring shearing season and I’m trying hard not to go nuts buying fleeces. Its very hard believe me. But I’ve managed to acquire a couple fleeces of one of my favorite breeds plus I’m working on more of the primitive and down breeds so there is plenty of wool to review in the future.

I just need more time in the day!

When I started spinning…

Oh my, Abby, you do know how to hit the nail on the head about the early days of spinning.  Thus was the world that was right before I learned to spin.  By the time 1985 rolled around.  SpinOff had expanded from an annual to quarterly, Knitters magazine had published it’s second issue, and I had learned to knit. 

In that fateful second issue was an article called “The Handspinners Choice” by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  Now I had read Foxfire 2 in high school so I was familiar that spinning was done in the rural south in the recent past but I had no idea that others still make their own yarn because they chose to, not for survival or at places like Conner Prairie Farm where they reenact the past.

 Being a poor undergraduate and happily living on campus of a large university I pursued the resources available making numerous phone calls until I got the information about a local spinners guild and paid for a lesson that included hand cards, crappy unwashed wool, and THE SPINDLE.

It weighs somewhere between 3 and 4 oz and I spun that awful wool and then corriedale on that spindle.  The university had Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot in their collection, Spin Span Spun, and Allen Fannin’s book as well as a few others about weaving with short sections about spinning.  My first spinning book I actually owned was the slender Fleece In My Hands.  I really honestly believed I could make my own yarn cheaper than buying it at the yarn shop….um…yeah…right….. 

A couple years later I received my 19″ Reeves Saxony wheel when I graduated with my bachelors.  I put down the spindle and didn’t look back…for a long time.  But of course in 1987 that was expected.  The spindle was to find out if you liked it or not and then you graduated to a wheel.  End of story.

 But it wasn’t.

Fast forward to the mid 90’s, somehow I got a top whorl spindle spindle.  I have a suspicion Susan had something to with it as during that time I had moved back to the Midwest and I was like a kid in a candy store in her shop.  What really meshed things with me and the top whorl spindle was me going back to graduate school.  Yes, I know what does -that- have to do with spinning.  Well, the quickest way for me to drive from my house to graduate school went right by The Fold.  Being in school and  having a career in which I earned $8K a year, I didn’t exactly spend a lot of money there then, but I’ve made up for it since!  At that time she was a dealer for Hatchtown Farm Spindles and having been raised by a carpenter I knew good wood when I saw it.  Soon I was the owner of several finely turned spindles and I was spinning my way through graduate school.  I found I could actually enjoy spinning on the top whorl.  It felt more stable and in control.

On a whim I taught Jer to spin.  Well, I didn’t really teach him, I gave him about 30 seconds of instruction and walked away.  Ahem, not only is he a better spindle spinner than I, but he also has a spindle named after him.

 Now I am coming full circle back to learning to spin again on low whorl spindles.  My Turkish spindle in all of its fine wood sits languishing.  I have a couple bolivian pushka.

This one is in my bag right now.  The whorl is crooked and I need to fix that so it spins better.  Plus I have a low whorl in the file drawer behind me, waiting for me to forget my knitting projects I take to work every day.  THE SPINDLE will be brought out and shown at Abby’s workshop on spindles in Michigan.  And perhaps I’ll even ply with it.  But I think I’ll replace the acrylic leader.

In the rest of my life.  Danny is burning up the agility ring.  Despite my handling he’s managed to earn two more titles in CPE agility and is more than 1/2 way to his level 4 Standard title.  In fact we are in level 5 now for everything but Snooker and Standard.

It’s hard to believe he will be 9 in May. 

 Roo is also having a good time, we are doing some agility, but he is more confident in obedience and rally.  He still needs one more leg for his APDT RL3 title.  Luke is now on the hunt for his ONYX title in flyball.  I’m still hoping he earns it before I have to retire him.  He is still running 5.2-5.4 seconds which is great for a 9 year old sheltie.  Daisy is slowly working on her rally titles, she had a setback late last year, but seems to be recovering from that nicely.  And Adam?  Well, we will see.  He’s been a visitor at Danny’s agility class and I think he will go with me to Danny’s next agility trial.    I have many hopes for Adam but its all on his time when he is ready.

Hopefully I can get everything together and tell you about the finn I’ve been spinning next time.  But until then I have yarn to spin, geocaches to find, and dogs to train.