Making The Macho Poncho* by Mary Hahola Rosell * This is the article as it appeared in Alpaca's Magazine with a few minor additions for understandability within the AT&T Worldnet audience.

I had the opportunity this in the spring of 1995 to design, spin and weave a 100% alpaca garment to be auctioned off for the benefit of the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association (AOBA) at their annual conference in Estes Park, Colorado, in June. The Macho Poncho, as I called it, is pictured above as it was modelled in the conference fashion show. The auction took place during the conference banquet. The garment consisted of 30 three- to four-ounce fleece samples donated by breeders from across the U.S. Patty Bowers, a good friend and accomplished spinner, helped me spin about one third of the fleece.

The idea for the project came from my love of ruanas and the simplicity of their construction. My opportunistic desire to sample some of the highest quality alpaca fiber in the country translated to a request exclusively for herdsire fleece. A herdsire is the male who does procreation duty on alpaca farms. He typically will have the highest quality fiber and conformation in a herd. Since a herdsire is called a "macho", I named the project the "Macho Poncho".

When I first accepted the project at Linda Berry Walker's, the conference chair's, request, I set three goals for myself: timely completion, an attractive design, and a useful garment. I felt these factors would maximize both the exposure that I would get and the benefit to AOBA. In retrospect, I think I accomplished all three of these goals, and in the process, had lots of fun and learned something, too.

The most fun part of the project was coming home and finding new samples of fleece in the mail, sometimes three or four in one day. People were sending me these wonderful samples for free. As the fiber started to arrive, Patty and I realized the project was going to be a spinner's dream! Each fleece was unique. Regardless of preparation, or lack thereof, each one spun differently. It's difficult to appreciate the uniqueness of one alpaca fleece without spinning a number of others within a short period of time. There are subtle differences to the way each one spins, and consequently to the texture, quality and characteristics of the yarn.

It was also interesting to sample different preparations from various mills. Some rovings drafted better than others, but none were difficult to spin. Some were rolled on paper towel tubes and others were loosely boxed to retain fluffiness. Still others were rolled into bumps. I also received a few samples prepared into batts, which also spun nicely after being split and drafted.

There were variations in the way the raw fleece was packaged. I received some nicely hand-combed locks, locks that had been washed on the animal a week prior to shearing, and locks that were right off the alpaca's back. All raw fleece samples were very clean and free of contamination. With few exceptions, we were able to spin these samples right from the lock. We did not wash any prior to spinning.

The most time-consuming part of the project was the spinning. We spun all single-ply yarn at about 12 to 15 wraps per inch. It took one to two hours per ounce to spin the singles. I deferred the decision to ply until after most of the singles were spun. I decided to use 2-ply yarns so that I could easily use any sample in both the warp (lengthwise yarn under tension on the loom) and weft (widthwise yarn being woven in). Plying took about 5 minutes per ounce.

The most challenging part of the project, the design, began "percolating" in my mind the day I starting spinning. The real design challenge was to avoid excessive complexity by limiting the variables in the project. The type of garment chosen was a ruana, which is a very simple rectangular shape. But what was I to do with small amounts of 30 different colors, so that I would end up with an attractively designed garment? Roughly half the samples were white, cream or light fawn (collectively, the white group). The rest were darker colors in the brown and black families. All were distinctly unique shades.

I wanted to highlight all those beautiful, natural colors without creating confusion. As I washed and blocked the skeins of finished yarn, I arranged them within their major color groups in a "rainbow" sequence of white, caramel, brown, rose grey, silver grey, and black. This turned out to be the key to my color arrangement. I used the fleece samples within each color group as if they were the same color, but did not mix fleece samples within individual stripes.

The very dominant, left side of my brain demanded symmetry. So, I decided on a balanced plaid, which contained the same color sequence in both the horizontal and vertical directions. The sequence consisted of one inch stripes of the dark colors arranged in sets of three and and five. The sets of five were rainbow sequences (one stripe from each of the five dark color groups). The sets of three are random choices from the dark color groups. Two- and five-inch stripes from the white group alternated with the sets of dark stripes in a Fibonacci sequence (a mathematical progression with a visually pleasing, additive quality).

I wanted the weight and texture of a warm blanket with the drapability of a shawl or cape. At the same time, it was necessary to balance the complex color arrangement with a simple weave structure. After a few small samples, I had determined the appropriate warp density and weave structure. At eight ends per inch, a twill weave gave me the weight, balance and drape that I was looking for. And so, at last, I was ready to warp the loom and weave!

The weaving was the quickest and most satisfying phase of the project. When the fabric began to take shape on the loom, I knew that the project would come together, in spite of all those variables, in a wonderful way. The weaving was completed within a few days. The fringe was twisted and plyed so that the handspun yarn would not fray with repeated washing.

The last step in any weaving project is to finish the fabric by washing it. Just when I thought that I had managed to control all the variables, one more arose. The textural variability among the fleeces caused different shrinkage rates in the finished garment, causing some puckering in each direction. The finer, crimpier fleeces resulted in a more elastic yarn, and therefore, more shrinkage. This was particularly unexpected, since I had washed and blocked all skeins prior to weaving.

Minor shrinking due to crimpiness is stretchable and reversible (unlike the felted shrinkage of a fine wool sweater that was mistakenly put into the dryer). After rinsing, spin drying and some gentle stretching, the garment was blocked back to it's original shape. This finishing process relaxed the yarns into the snuggly, blanket-like texture that I was looking for. After drying, I carefully packed the "Macho Poncho" into my carry-on bag, not to be trusted to the new luggage-eating system at Denver International Airport!

I was thrilled with the money raised for AOBA and all the wonderful compliments I received, but I must admit to a bit of depression at seeing my poncho disappear so quickly. I am also very grateful to Fred and Linda Walker, two of my best paca-buddies, for the opportunity to serve the AOBA organization in such a fun and enlightening way.

mhr-09/26/95