The majority of our women have chakras, or farms, on which they raise alpacas alongside their husbands and family members. These chakras are located high in the mountains, several hours by car and even longer on foot. To improve the quality of our products and deepen our relationships with our weavers, Awamaki traveled to the chakras to carry out workshops on alpaca shearing with the husbands of our weavers. Adam Riley, a professional alpaca shearer from the U.S. whose company shears alpacas all over North America and Europe, led the workshops and spent anywhere from three to nine days at a time working and living alongside the families. He taught our weavers’ families his style of shearing, which includes separating the higher-quality fleece from the lower-quality fleece. Adam used traditional hand shears in his demonstrations, but many of the families use even more basic equipment, such as a sharp kitchen knife. The new shearing methods will improve the raw quality of the fleece that we use in our products. The next step in the lifecycle of our products is cleaning the fleece before spinning it into yarn. We plan to buy alpaca fiber-washing equipment for our Huilloc cooperative so that they can be a quality control checkpoint for the fleece that will then be spun into yarn. The handspun yarn will be sold as is for international markets or used by our local knitters from Rumira and Puente Inca in finished products. By working alongside our weavers from fleece to finished product we can better ensure the quality and sustainability of our processes. Our all-natural handspun yarn line – which we hope to launch soon – is a major step in closing the loop of our fair trade and ethically-made products.
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