Vicuña fiber that is coming into the US typically has a staple length less than 1".

What you are seeing is 2/10 of an ounce of vicuña. This will be spun on a charka, which is particularly good for dealing with really short fibers.

This is the first vicuña yarn I made. Spun on a charka, plied on a light top whorl spindle. Not much yardage, but considering it costs around $300 oz you are not going to make a shawl out of it unless you have very deep pockets.

In contrast guanaco costs a paltry $30 oz.

This is a lighter colored dehaired guanaco, it also is a bit washed out by the flash and no matter how I adjusted it came out lighter than in real life. Its staple is longer, but more like somewhere between 1-2" long.

Here is some spindle spun guanaco in the darker color. It turned out to be the perfect travel project as I could take a few tufts of guanaco and spin for a long time while at a dog show.

Just to compare, here is a picture of the guanaco (about 1 ounce skein) next to the tiny sample of vicuña.

Now you get a better idea about how much is there of each.

The prep for both the vicuña and guanaco is simply spinning directly from the "cloud" of fiber, You could card either one or blend it with another fiber, but for these yarns I chose not to.

The paco-vicuña was a gift from Toni. Yes the fiber than has been on walkabout. I guess all I need to do to scare something out of hiding is blog about it being missing.

I washed it and then decided to both comb and card samples of it similar to what I have been doing with my wool fleeces.

The samples were carded with cotton carders so I created no additional neps other than what was already there.

Not the smoothest preparation and there is a small number of guard hairs scattered throughout. I didn't try to remove. If I was spinning for a project I certainly would try to remove them.

Here is the finished skein. Not terribly lumpy and bumpy, but hard to spin much thinner.

The combed fiber produced a lot of "waste". And at $25 to $30 oz for raw it can add up to a considerable amount of weight. The preparation was much smoother and since it had a staple length of between 2 and 3 inches it was not that hard to comb and pull off a bit of top.

The yarn spun was a bit finer, not a whole lot as I used the same spindle, a Bosworth Featherweight, to spin both samples. If I took more time I could have spun much finer.

I've been overwhelmed with visits and comments since Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka The Yarn Harlot posted about Sheepwreck in her blog. Thanks everyone for stopping by and visiting. And Steph thank YOU for coming to Madison.

Believe it or not, I originally planned to go to the Madison event. I live about 10 miles south of the Illinois/Wisconsin state line. It is quicker for me to drive US 12 to Madison, than to try and thread my way through Chicagoland traffic to get to Oak Lawn. I have traveled that route many times for flyball tournaments. And despite having grown up in Indianapolis, Madison feels more like home to me than the suburbs of Chicago. I think I just miss living in a college town.

Knitting "Camp" (actually it was officially a workshop) was very important to me. It was not sock knitting, but EPS (Elizabeth Percentage System). It was a safe camp for me to attend as it was a lot of stuff I knew already punctuated by things I didn't. It also met my long time yearning to go to one of Meg's camps. Will I go back? Perhaps one day, I have not decided yet. It is certainly worth it.

BTW, keep an eye on this link for some future news of the herding crew. Pictures will be updated on a periodic basis. (Yes they are Australian Shepherds not guinea pigs.)

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.