Alpacas

I visited my friend Steve last weekend. He moved to a small town near Christchurch from Anchorage 8 years ago and is now raising alpacas (besides other venturesome undertakings). There are two kinds of alpaca in New Zealand and his are called Huacaya (wa-ki-ya). And here they are:
And here is the reason they are so nakkid:
You can tell which animals the wool came from - the yarn was not colored. Steve had a friend spin the wool and knit sweaters and hats out of it. And I ended up being the lucky recipient of this sweater. Here is a picture of the backside:
The yarn for the sweater consists of 80% alpaca and 20% sheep wool. The alpaca fibers are somewhat weaker than other wool fibers so that the addition of some sheep wool fibers strengthens the yarn. Alpaca is very warm, really soft (I stroke my alpaca a lot !) and does not contain lenolin like sheep wool (which makes alpaca wool hypoallergenic). I looked it up and learned that lanolin is what makes sheep wool naturally water repellent. Judging by the recent weather sheep wool is the way to go in Dunedin!

Steve told me they make weirdly fascinating sounds during mating, so I looked it up on youtube and sure enough: it's called 'orgling' and sounds like this. Enjoy :)

PS: It's not quite perfect yet but the angle has definitely improved: