At the weekend Dave and I took a trip to Alpaca Loom, a local working fibre farm near Paarl, with a herd of hundreds of alpacas (and a few rogue llamas, camels, horses and donkeys in the mix too!)

We got to handfeed the beautiful alpacas and see all the adorable newborn crias (babies) playing. There’s nothing like looking into an alpaca’s huge dark eyes and feeling its hot breath on your hand as it delicately snuffles up grains with its soft mouth…

At the Alpaca Loom, they process the alpaca fibre from start to finish on site in the traditional way, from shearing, to hand-spinning the fibre into yarn, to weaving the yarn into fabric using floor and table looms.

Take a look at a few more of my photos in the gallery below:

I also couldn’t resist buying some (unprocessed) silky soft fine alpaca fleece for… spinning? needlefelting? art weaving? I’m not sure yet, but I’m looking forward to making something with this gorgeous fibre – you can definitely expect some alpaca-fibre craft posts from me in the coming months 🙂

And, if you’d like to make your own gorgeous Alpaca, try my bestselling Alpaca crochet pattern! (I made my dark brown alpaca with real alpaca yarn and it’s so soft and snuggly!)