I recently came into eight beautiful ounces of creamy white Huacaya alpaca fiber. The problem being, I have never liked 100% alpaca yarn. It's too warm, it has no body, and it sags like crazy. I might be content to spin 100% alpaca fiber, but I would not enjoy knitting with it - nor would I love the item that finally gets knit out of it.
The answer, obviously, is to blend the alpaca with something else. In this case, ideally wool.
First you have to choose which wool to blend with your alpaca. Research shows that the best results come from blending the alpaca with a wool that is slightly finer than the alpaca fibers. Assuming you don't have access to a micrometer, the best way to do this is by feel. Basically, just choose a wool that feels finer than your alpaca. No need to get caught up in the minute details, just know that you would probably not want to blend the alpaca with a coarser wool.
For most spinners, merino is the go-to default wool choice. And given merino's fine micron count, this is probably an excellent fiber to blend with your alpaca.
If you don't have a drum carder, or access to one (e.g. through a local spinning guild or friendly shop), you can easily blend fibers with a pair of affordable hand carders. Blending fiber with hand carders is a simple and intuitive process. Knitty has a great tutorial on this, with lots of pictures that help demystify the process.
Blending two similar fibers (like alpaca and wool) is a great first project for using hand carders, because if your proportions are a little "off" from one spot to another, you won't really notice the way that you might with blended colors. And once the fiber is spun, plied, and knit up into fabric, you will never be able to tell the difference. And it's so fun to be able to customize your own fiber blend!
Image courtesy Flickr/marlana
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