How I Spent My Summer Vacation

It's been a most interesting summer; the long list of things I expected to get done has languished from neglect, and a whole new adventure opened up before me. And I have only myself to blame....

You see, it all started with my friend Alpaca Joe. As you recall, I visited his alpaca ranch earlier this year, and helped with the shearing of his herd. My reward was an alpaca fleece of my very own, to do with as I pleased, and the blanket from Llarry, the guard llama. I have chronicled my experience with Ace's cria fleece.

And now for the rest of the story:

During shearing day I was overwhelmed with the amount of fiber generated by Alpaca Joe's small herd. As I inexpertly skirted the fleece, and gathered the prime blanket fiber and rolled it into storage bags, and took seconds which are leg and neck fibers and put them into other bags, I muttered over and over to myself, "what are you going to do with all this stuff?"

At the end of the day, covered in sweat and dirt and alpaca spit, happily exhausted, I asked that question of Alpaca Joe. "Joe, you're a busy guy. You can only spin so much of this fiber. The animals are shorn every year. What do you do with it all?" His response floored me. "It piles up in the barn."

I went home with that answer playing over and over in my head. I dreamed of alpaca fleece piled up and up and up until it burst out of the barn. I imagined myself rolling around in a bed of soft soft soft huacaya fiber. And then it came to me. What Alpaca Joe desperately needed was a way to sell his alpaca fleece to the many handspinners like myself who could appreciate its fibery goodness. An online store! So I emailed Joe with my brainstorm; why didn't he open an Etsy store and sell the fruits of his labor?

"But I'm swamped as it is," he told me. "I can't possibly manage a store in addition to the ranch, my day job, and a little spinning time of my own. It's a great idea, but I just can't do it."

And before I could stop it, my mouth opened up and "But I can. And I work for fiber" came out.

So that's how www.alpacajoe.etsy.com came about. Joe puts up the fiber, and I put up the work. It's been a lot more work than I originally anticipated, but it's been a lot more fun, too. The Etsy store sells luxury fibers raw, as roving, as batts and as yarn. The intro says:

Alpaca Joe is the place to find fiber at its finest. Though the emphasis is on the beloved alpaca, you will find luxury fiber of every sort; cashmere, angora, silk, various breeds of rare wool, bamboo, cotton, tencel, mohair and more may grace these pages from time to time, almost always from local sources. Alpaca Joe is dedicated to providing an exceptional experience for the fiber enthusiast, be he or she spinner, knitter, felter, weaver or fashion afficionado, beginner or advanced.

Take a moment and visit the site. You'll see how I spent my summer!