Suri vs Huacaya alpaca fiber
Once you get into spinning your own fiber, you find yourself faced with a lot of questions you never considered before. One of these is the question of the difference between Suri and Huacaya alpaca fiber. In commercial yarns they usually just call it "alpaca," but for the handspinning market the two kinds of fibers are typically sold separately. But which one should you choose?
Suri and Huacaya are two different types of alpaca. In North America, the Huacaya alpaca is much more common, with only about 20% of the North American alpaca population being made up of Suri alpaca.
The Huacaya alpaca has a fleece which is compact, dense, and often very highly crimped. It is much more like a sheep's wool, and if you are uncertain about making the leap, then you may find Huacaya fleece to be a more familiar fiber to spin with.
By contrast, Suri alpacas have a long, silky coat that falls in loose ringlets about the size of a pencil. Their coat has a beautiful sheen, which is no doubt why the fleece of Suri alpacas were traditionally reserved for royalty. It can be more of a challenge to spin, because the Suri fibers lack crimp or scales and can be very slick to work with.
Both types of alpaca fiber can lack resiliency and have a tendency to sag out of shape, which is why it is often mixed with wool to give the resulting yarn a little more memory and spring. This is also why many alpaca yarns are in the fine to fingering range, suitable for lightweight lace shawls and such. The lighter the finished work, the less likely it is to sag. Also, since alpaca fiber is such a good insulator, larger garments made of alpaca tend to be quite warm even compared to wool.
If you happen to get raw alpaca fleece, you are in luck: unlike sheep, alpacas do not produce lanolin. This makes it much easier to clean their raw fleece, which will not be nearly as dirty. In fact, in many cases you can basically start spinning the fiber right off the animal.
Image courtesy Flickr/GraphicReality