The "Platts" Carding Machine hard at work.

Hello to all.....

At  Humminghills we offer an alpaca fleece carding service on our Platts Worsted Carding Machine, which gives an end product of aligned fibres in a lovely soft roving which is wonderful to spin and felt with.

Contact Sue or Dennis to discuss your carding needs on:

                                     (07) 5590 7745

                                      0407 458 107 

                 or email us on: alpaca@humminghillsalpacas.com.au

                               Prior to sending your fleece.

Some wonderful effects can be achieved by blending colours.

So get those fleeces out of the attic and let's make them spinnable....

Prepared, skirted Alpaca fleece may be posted or delivered to -

                                     Humminghills Alpacas

                                     216 Carool Road

                                     CAROOL NSW 2486

It is in your own interest to prepare your fleeces to be carded as costing for carding is based on inward fleece weight.

Industry standards recommend a carding loss of 5%-25% is to be expected, so good preparation achieves the lower % of loss.

Our costs for Carding Huacaya is $20.00/kg plus GST.

All fleeces need to be prepared for carding by picking, and this is done by hand - we charge $8.00/kg for this preparation.

Fleeces arriving with high VM (vegetable matter ie: very dusty, burs and twigs), we charge $8.00/kg.                                                                                                                  To avoid this charge get the fleeces out of the bag from the shearer, and spread them out on a skirting table or wooden verandah with gaps works great as a skirting table. Give the fleece a good shake, lifting and shaking and you'll find all the short cuts will start falling away from the good fleece and a lot of the dust too.                                                   This is also the time to pull out the coarser guardy hairs too to get a better finished product. At our discretion, very poorly presented fleeces with high bur contamination will be returned at your cost, if unable to be successfully carded.

Blending of colours: Depending on how the fleece is fed into the feed tray you can achieve a  streaky roving of 2 to 3 colours, or an evenly blended roving, ie: black & white = grey. We will do blending for $10.00/kg.

Fleeces can be washed for you prior to carding for $10.00/kg. This service is particularly desirable for people who are sensitive to the dust in natural alpaca fleece. To the final rinse I add a wool conditioner with a few drops of added eucalyptus oil.

Our fleeces from the farm are particularly clean as we are very lucky to have grass covered paddocks throughout the year, so we, usually wash at the skein stage. 

As we have many different coloured alpacas ourselves we always have for sale bags of carded fleece suitable for spinning for $8 to $10 per 100g for super fine & ultra fine and $4 to $7 per 100g for felting suitability.

Three of us here on the farm are active spinners, so hand spun yarn of many natural colours and hand dyed colours are usually available or can be ordered. Available for $12.50 to $18.00 per 50g ball. It takes about 60 hours to spin a kilo of fleece more for 2ply.

(Pictures soon to be added to website)

Postage through Australia Post is surprisingly inexpensive as fleece is large in size yet light in weight. Best to pop it in a strong bag, or better still, a feed sack, as it's dearer in a box, as they cube the weight.

To fellow alpaca breeders in our region, more than happy to pick up fleece at participating shows or meetings.

Please feel free to call with any enquiries.

We look forward to assisting you with your carding needs and hope you will support us with your custom.

Happy Spinning, Weaving and Felting.....

Postage is relatively inexpensive