THE shearers have been and your alpacas are getting used to feeling lighter and probably appreciating being without their warm, bulky fleece. You are sitting looking at your fibre - and wondering what to do next.

The first thing is to decide how you are going to process your clip. Are you planning to keep your prize fleeces to enter into a show? Are you going to sell it as raw fleece? Are you going to get it processed to add value? Will you get it spun into yarn for hand knitting or do you want to go further, getting your fibre knitted or woven into garments, shawls or other products?

You will be aware that not all the fleece is of the same quality. The best fibre is found in the blanket, the area over the back of the alpaca, between the base of the neck and the tail, and down the legs to around the knees. The next finest (second quality) is found in the neck and better areas at the top of the legs. The fibre from the hairier areas of the chest, legs and belly is counted as 'thirds'. Having decided on the end use of your fibre, you can sort it accordingly for further processing. You might even wish to divide the qualities further into four or five grades depending on your chosen end use.

The shearer will probably have separated out the lowest quality fleece while he was shearing, leaving you with the rest in one piece. The ideal would be to skirt and grade a fleece as it comes off the animals but this is not always practical. If you have to wait until later, roll the fleece with the cut side inside and store it in a paper sack or woven nylon sacking. Make sure that the fleece is dry before storing. If it is put away damp, it will lose its crimp and, more importantly, it will probably go mouldy. Fold the edges in towards the middle and then roll it up from the tail end. If you do this the same way on each fleece, when you unroll it you will know which end is which!

Before you store your fleece or proceed to sort and process it, check whether it is tender. The animal's health and the environmental conditions in which has lived during the year will affect its fleece. It the alpaca is ill, stressed or suffers from a change of diet, this can lead to weak areas along the staple. Take a small amount of fibre, about the width of a pencil, and hold it firmly at each end between thumb and forefinger. Then flick it in the middle with your ring finger. If none of the fibres break then it is sound and will process properly. The fibre is considered 'stretchy' if there is a slight tearing sound but the staple remains intact. If the fleece is rotten, the staple will break completely. It is classed as 'tender' if only some of it breaks.

If your fleece is tender or rotten, discard it. These fibres will break during processing and will spoil the whole batch if they get in with sound fleece. The broken ends of the fibres get caught up in the spinning and the yarn becomes slubby. You definitely don't want to enter a tender fleece in a show!

Your fleece needs to be 'skirted'. Lay it flat on a table, cut side down. As you sort it, dust and debris will be dislodged, so lift the fleece every so often and brush this away. Special sorting tables are available which have a mesh top, allowing this debris to fall through. You can dislodge a lot of this type of contamination by shaking the fleece gently. However, you will find twigs, dried grass and other foreign matter clinging to your fleece. If you are going to show your fleece, you need to carefully remove major debris. However, you do need to balance cleaning it up and destroying the lock structure which is one of the things that a judge will be looking for. You also need to remove heavily contaminated fleece around the edges but balance this against loss of fleece weight, particularly for a showing situation.

Having removed major contamination, turn the fleece over. Now you are looking for other types of contamination such as fibres which are either over long or short. You should also remove 'second cuts'. Although the shearer tries to make clean smooth sweeps of the shears, bits will get missed and he will cut these off to tidy up the animal. Second cuts can be identified easily because they are short and are cut straight across each end rather than having one end tapered as in the full staple. If second cuts are left in the fleece, they will cause slubs or uneven lumps in the finished yarn. Brittle fibres in the fleece can also cause slubs when they break during processing. Any areas containing significant amounts of guard hair should be removed. These stronger, straight fibres reduce the quality of your finished product. They do not take dye in the same way as the other fibres which makes it difficult to obtain a uniform colour if you are dyeing your fleece. Also, they can be difficult to control during spinning and are the cause of any 'prickle' factor in your final garment.

Another form of contamination is coloured fibres. This comes in numerous forms - black fibres in a white fleece; white fibres in a coloured fleece; fawn patches on a white fleece. You will see this more easily if you can sort your fleece in good natural light rather than under artificial lamps. White fleeces may look off-white and you will have to decide whether this is because they contain fawn fibres or because they are simply dirty. Look at the cut end of the fibres. This is the cleanest part of the staple and will give you a better indication of the true colour. The other, outside, end has been exposed to the environment including dirt in the paddock.

Having cleaned up your fleece, you are ready to grade it. When you have spread your fleece out, you will find the lowest grade fibre along the long side edges and you need to remove this. Don't throw it away as you can collect it together until you have enough to use it for felting or maybe for making rugs or carpets. What you should discard is any very contaminated fleece from around the tail area. Separate out your first, second and third grade fibre and bag it up separately. If you only have a few alpacas, you may have to store your fibre until you have enough to complete your project.

Fibre fineness is measured in microns and when you start it is difficult to distinguish between different thicknesses. However, as you handle more fleeces you will be able to feel and see the differences. If you take six samples from across the fleece, you can compare them to see how uniform your fleece is in terms of both length and fibre diameter. Take the samples from each side on the shoulders, mid-side and britch. If you feel at bit a sea to start with, you can send samples to a fibre testing laboratory. Take a 10 cm square sample from the mid-side, split it in half lengthwise and send half to the laboratory and retain the other half in case of problems. Remember to clearly identify the fleece with details of the animal it came from. You will probably find it easier to take this sample before the alpaca is sheared and your shearer will be happy to oblige. Testing laboratories can use three different methods so it is important that you use the same laboratory to ensure that your results are comparable.

The laboratory will send you a histogram which indicates the number of fibres in a sample of a particular diameter. The higher the vertical bar, the more there are of that thickness. The best fleeces therefore produce a tall, narrow histogram with minimal readings outside of the main area. This indicates that most of the fibres have a diameter around a narrow range of values and the narrower the peak the better. Samples with a lot of variation will produce a curve like a flat hill with values covering a wide range. You will also be sent a note of the average fibre diameter which is calculated by adding all the results and dividing by the number of fibres in the sample. Generally, the lower the better but look at this in conjunction with the histogram. You also need to check what percentage of fibres have a diameter of over 30 microns as at this thickness they become uncomfortable when worn against the skin.

Now your fibre is ready for the next stage which we will consider next month.