RRae, that's interesting. Nope, alpaca is usually quite soft, especially baby alpaca. Angora is also soft, but can be irritating because the long fibers fly fee and get everywhere, including in your eyelashes (if you are me). As Caro said, think soft as butter to army blankets or horse blankets, all from the same animals. Belly hair that has never been cut? Soft as can be. Hair from the back that's been cut before? Rough.
Even I'm shocked by the variety I've seen. I've seen cashmere that is no better than common wool (not even merino) as everyone raced to create inexpensive cashmere sweaters a few years ago. I have an older, very nice cashmere sweater from Ann Taylor and it is nothing like the ones that I picked up at Ann Taylor just a few years later. All cashmere, but the older one was in the $200 range and the later ones were well under $100. They can't make it that much cheaper without cutting corners.
