Verlore Vallei Alpacas & Fibrecrafts

If you love fibre and letting your creativity blossom, spinning dreams and weaving magic with your fingers, you’ve just arrived at the Pearly Gates! Here, you will find everything you need to make your dreams come true. And if you’re in need of inspiration, why not head over to our Facebook Page once you have done your browsing!

Follow us, and you will stay up to date with our latest art yarns, fibre specials, and rolag packs! Many of which never make it to the website! What’s more, you will get a heads-up when new Majacraft stocks are about to arrive in South Africa, so you can have first dibs! Stock seldom makes it on to the website!

Majacraft – All you need to spin your dreams!

We have the full range of Majacraft spinning wheels, fibre preparation equipment and spinning accessories for you to choose from, so if it’s a spinning wheel, a drum carder, hand cards, hand combs, a blending board or a hackle system, not to mention bobbins, flyers, lazy kates, pullies and even wax to keep your precious equipment protected and shiny as new, whatever you’re looking for, you will find it here!

When you order your Majacraft products, chances are it will show as out-of-stock. If you are ordering a Majacraft product that doesn’t appear in stock – excluding stock that we have allocated to you allready, or that you have been told will be arriving imminently – a 50% deposit will be acceptable and the balance will be due on arrival of the product at Customs. To complete your order, please select ‘Direct Bank Transfer’ and we will email you with the amount to be transferred for the order to be confirmed. Delivery charges will also be added to the final amount. This will obviously fluctuate according to the physical size of your package, and your location.

Fibre

As alpaca breeders, we stock almost every colour of natural coloured alpaca fibre, raised right here on our farm, both huacaya – teddybear-like heavenly clouds of fluff, and Suri, silky-smooth flowing fountains of fibre.

And depending on availability, which fluctuate throughout the year – shearing season being October in our corner of the universe – the fibre may be available in its raw form, or as washed and picked fibre, or hand-carded cloud, in roving, as hand-combed top – the cream of the crop, or dyed in fibre blends, bats and rollags.

I do however focus on HAND SPUN yarns, in lace weight, sock weight, DK yarn, bulky and in various chunky art-yarns, like beehives or boucles, and my own recent design, my ‘Lace Tallies’ yarn.

We are NOT a commercially driven production machine, it’s a small Cottage-Craft Venture where the focus is on quality rather than speed. You will not find shelves of ready-made/packed products to cart of by the truck-load, you will however find something SPECIAL when you shop for ingredients to make your own heirloom creations! We are passionate about our craft! And we are constantly searching for exciting and different fibre-related products to source globally.

If colour is what you need, we do overdyeing of the lighter natural colours to create some truly spectacular yarns. There is no fixed dyed range, we will dye and blend according to your needs, or keep a look out for our inspired creations! Refer to the colour chart below for the alpaca fibre colours available.

RAW FIBRE has not been washed or processed, and comes directly from the Huacaya or Suri Alpacas on our farm. It has however been tumbled and VM removed. The lovely Premium fibre is ready for you to create whatever beautiful item your imagination has in mind!

Due to the nature and free spirit of our animals – they just LOVE rolling around in the dust or grass, and untill recently when we lost one of our valuable Suri girls to a crockodile – dipping in the river – there will be bits of vegetable matter in the fibre which will come out with further processing.

Our Premium-quality fibre is luxurious and soft. Sold in 50g packages. Please note, alpaca is light as air, so 50g of fibre is a LOT! And if you were wondering about the price you have to pay for our alpaca fibre, I refer you to my blog post ” The true value of Alpaca fibre, and why it’s pricey…“

Remember, wool contains lanolin – that’s why i kilo raw wool will still be less than half-a-kilo when washed – and that’s not even considering the effort to remove that lanolin! Alpaca can be spun litterally freshly shorn off the back of an alpaca – your hands will just be a bit dusty and dirty, and your lap cloth loaded with VM, but you will have to wash your spun yarn anyway to set the twist! And a lot of spinners prefer to spin raw alpaca! I have done so a number of times, and there is really no issues worth mentioning – other than dirty hands and VM. And every spinner will tell you, you get that even from washed fibre!

If WASHED, the fibre has been tumbled, VM (vegetable matter) removed, and prewashed, meaning it has been soaked in soapy water and rinsed multiple times, removing the majority of the dust. Your final project should always be washed again.

Your order will be processed as soon as payment is confirmed. Washed fibres are allowed to dry naturally, so it may take a day or more before it will be dry enough to be processed into the final product. Spinning will also take a few days, depending on the size of your order, and the type of yarn. After all, it is hand-spun!

And just a reminder again, for those who are so addicted to ‘instant gratification, off the shelf, super-cheap, made in China’ products, these are high-quality natural, hand-processed products, sourced from a VERY scarce fibre (there are only around 3000 alpacas in South Africa – and around 200 of those are suris! – compared to around 22 million sheep!), so this is not some easy to come by fibre, and certainly not your average cheap polyester blend either! And may I stress, of these 3000 alpacas, very few fleeces are processed by hand! Most people send their fibres to a mill, to be spun there. So truly consider what you are paying for, and what you will be getting!

I feel extremely strong about supporting all those breeders in South Africa who love their animals, who are looking after them diligently, and who are going to great efforts to process their valuable fleeces – hopefully more and more by hand too – the least people can do is to pay the breeders what those fibres are really worth! Alpaca fibre is truly on par with gold and silver, diamonds and rubies and such! Alpaca used to ONLY be worn by royalty – and mainly the Anunaki ‘gods’! Anyone caught wearing these precious fibres who were not from the right ‘class’, where ‘dispatched’ – read sacrificed! For a reason!

Premium alpaca fibre (also called Baby Alpaca) with microns between 20 and 23 can be used for next-to-skin garments. We have limited quantities of very low-micron Royal alpaca (micron below 20) available in 30g packages, but please note, as Royal alpaca is as light as a feather, the volumes of these packages are quite surprising and goes a very long way, even exceeding the volume of a 50g package! I do not really advertise those separately – people have yet to learn to appreciate it’s true value – I prefer using those in my rolag and bat creations, or spin it up for special baby garments.

We sometimes have courser leg fibres available, perfect for stuffing of toys and comfy cushions, as well as making lovely comfortable and warm shoe-liners, and don’t forget dryer balls! We also use it for making corespun yarns in rug making. Nothing goes to waste! Our felted crochet cushion pads are absolute winners!

The lighter colours can be readily overdyed, thus offering a rainbow of colours in every depth of shade for fibre artists. Alpaca fibre can also be combined with other fine fibres like merino and other wools, cashmere, mohair, silk, and angora to achieve incredible blends. Contact us with your requirements, and we will be happy to accommodate your needs!

Due to all monitors showing colours differently, the colours may appear slightly different than what you see on your screen. Should a colour not be in stock, we will replace it with a colour that will be the closest match to the colour ordered.

Please note, as this is a natural fibre, and every alpaca’s fibre differs, even in the same fleece, there may be slight variations. This could differ in the depth of colour, to different coloured fibre strands.

In first-cut fleeces, also called Royal alpaca, there is one more point to consider – so-called ‘cria-tips’. Little felted nubs, like baby’s tangles, form at the very tip of the fleece. The finer the fleece, the greater the likelihood of these tips. It is quite simple to just pick it out as you process your fibre, or as you spin, and we take care to remove most of it in the processed products, but like VM, there may be some left.
It also presents itself as tiny flecks of different colouring at the tips – another indication of the fineness of your fleece. Usually, these disappear during washing and further processing.

Being infatuated with fibre, means we also stock other fibres, the bigger the range, the better. Right now, we are working on building up wool from a range of UK sheep breeds – some also classified as rare-breeds due to their limited geographic spread around the world. As we complete the breed studies, fibres of which we are convinced we couldn’t live without in our fibre haven will be included in the shop. South African karakul, mohair and merino are already on the list.

This will certainly include courser fibres too, perfect for spinning into weaving yarns, core yarns and exceptionally strong warps for weaving too. All of these can be used in interior decor items, like rugs, runners, baskets, throws and cushions, or whatever you can dream up.

We also stock small amounts of factory processed merino tops and roving, as well as spun yarns, both natural and dyed into a variety of delicious custom colours.

Do keep an eye out for our custom-blended bats and rolags, as well as one-of-a-kind art-yarns added from time to time! These will usually be posted on Facebook. See link above and below.

Woven items will be added as special releases as and when available, but rarely make it to the stock-item stage – they are usually snatched up while still on the loom.

As we are passionate about nature and all things natural, and quite fed-up with corporate control, passive ingestion of poisonous additives, and nutritional deficiencies caused by foodstuffs stripped of all real food value, not to mention that constant corporate drive to achieve ever greater profits at the cost of everything and everyone else, we decided to add another 3-pronged approach to our arsenal of being self-sustainable.

That includes natural soap making, food preservation to fill up our shelves instead of our freezers, and herbal teas to feed our spirit, body and minds – because herbs are just bursting with all those nutrients and minerals we have a hard time getting from our food! Our herbal tea blends are not only delicious, but they’re good for you too!

The intention is to add to our online range over time, but due to logistics, chances are not everything will make it into the online store right away.

Our shipping fee is specified without insurance, and subject to quote. Feel free to message us with any questions you may have.

Custom orders are welcome! You dream it, we do it