Alpacas are Filthy

That is unwashed alpaca fleece.  Doesn't look too bad, does it?

Up close, even the vegetable matter (VM) doesn't stand out too much.

I figured the easiest way to clean the entire fleece would be in the bathtub using laundry baskets.  I added a large dollop of dish liquid and then loaded up the fleece.

Look at the water.  This was taken immediately after adding the fibre.  You can maybe excuse the colour as reflecting off the baskets, right?

After the first twenty minutes, you can't make any excuses.  Four soaks later, still dirty.  After six, the water seemed mostly clear and at that point, I got bored and called it done.  The cats, however, were fascinated by the whole process:

Chippy wants his bathtub back.

Crunch takes a look.

Crunch wonders why i've put beds in the bathtub.

All in all, i think this is a pretty good way of washing the fleece, but i think i would prefer to do it outside using a screen table, dumping the used water onto the grass.  Also, the baskets were probably overloaded because when i squeezed the fibre before laying it out on the screens to dry, it was still a little dirty.  I doubt a bit of dust will matter much because alpaca is spinnable without any washing.

After the bath, the fibre shone.

The lighter parts are much coarser than the rest of the fleece.  I've since discarded most of that.

Even laying on the screens and turning every day (yes, the screens from our windows), the fleece took almost a week to dry fully.  I've been handcarding it bit by bit and have even spun a little, but i'll leave that for another post.