Today, I finally made time to hand shear Leroy and Lucas, our two youngest suri boys. It took me just under four hours to get them both done. Check out the photo of Lucas above that I took after shearing him. The inset is a photo I took of him just a couple of days ago.
This second before and after photo is a close up of Leroy's fiber. Again the shorn photo is from this afternoon and the photo of Leroy's long locks was taken just a few days ago.
I have to say I'm very pleased with the beautiful job on these guys! Rick and my mom agreed. They look almost as though I used the electric clippers, but I actually used really good, sharp (Fiskar) scissors.
This wasn't my first time hand shearing. The first couple of alpacas I hand sheared several years ago, I had given them a layered look. This time I tried a different technique in order to give them a more uniform length. Rather than cutting straight across horizontally, I cut from the top of the back and down. I pulled out each section of fiber and cut straight down, trying to cut at the same length all the way down. It's difficult to describe in words and unfortunately I was unable to take pictures as I did it.
Fortunately, both Leroy and Lucas were relatively cooperative. They did get a little nervous when I sheared their legs and close to any "important parts" but otherwise they were very well behaved. I was hoping to get photos of their really shiny, lustrous fiber close up, but they both decided to roll in the dirt after we let them back out in their pasture...before I got the camera out!
So this officially wrapped up our shearing season. Now it's time to skirt the blanket fiber and prepare it for the fleece show.
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