Recently I've been feeling more antsy than usual to get my raw fiber in a place where I can spin it and make it into the things I've dreamed of it being. I contacted one of my local yarn stores about their drum carder rental and decided to set out on what I hoped would be a relatively quick trip of processing all 30 POUNDS (yes I weighed it) of my alpaca stash.

The owner and employees of Black Sheep were more than gracious in letting me pack my heaps of alpaca into their back room and gear up to start running it through, and I immediately started noticing problems.

It had nothing to do with equipment I was using or the quality of help I was provided (the people at Black Sheep did all that they could and gave me some spectacular advice in the end). The problem was that I assumed that, like how I assumed a mill worked, the drum carder would be a good quick fix to hours and days of hand carding all of this.

While the motorized drum carder does do a good job of turning raw fiber into bats, it can only do so much about the clumped in plant matter. It was catchy enough to get caught in the fiber, the likelihood of it continuing to catch is pretty good.

Don't get me wrong, the drum carder did its best to clean out a good chunk of the plant matter, but as you can see from the "processed" fiber below, the work only went so far.

I'd like to think I should have known better, but I honestly got stars in my eyes and hoped this would be the cure-all. Feeling defeated, I walked out to my car and put all 30 pounds back in the backseat and ran into the owner of Black Sheep herself, Tina.

She gave me these words of wisdom:

Wash it first: It may seem pretty clean, but it's not and the washing process helps significantly.
Take the time and pull the pieces apart: Sit down in front of a good show with a newspaper or drop cloth on your lap, and pull apart each pieces until it's all just fluff. It will get rid of a good chunk of the vegetable matter, and will make the fiber go in and out of the drum carder with wonderful smoothness.
Then come back to the drum carder: It's not great that it didn't work as well as you hoped, but it's not hopeless.

I allowed myself to sulk for 10 minutes in the car and then drove myself home to think about all of this and do something more productive than feel sorry for myself when I should have known better.

Other than the wisdom imparted by Tina, I had two more takeaways from this:

1. Just because cheap fiber at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival seems tantalizing and amazing, it doesn't mean it's actually worth it. Up front you don't pay much, but you end up paying the difference and then some with time and equipment.

2. This is why processed fiber costs what it does. People like me think that by having raw fiber and animals that you save a lot of the costs, and it's just not so. Yes, people who raise animals and dye fiber up charge a bit for their time and materials (as well they should obviously), but they're also saving you the trouble of doing it yourself. I love to dye yarn and fiber, but I don't always want to do it for every project I have. I also appreciate that there are creative and talented people out there making beautiful yarns and fiber for me, and I want them to be able to make a living off of their hard work.

While I was frustrated for 10 minutes, it's good perspective on why fiber costs what it does, and why cheap deals are fleeting savings. I'll probably still look into unprocessed fiber in the future because I have a problem, but I feel less inclined to sit with 30 pounds of fiber that needs hours upon hours of attention before it's usable. Life is all about learning.

Stay sweet, stay crafty, and stay tuned.

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