A north Georgia man and woman are trying to revive textile manufacturing in the area. And they're using alpacas, knitting needles and lots of classes to do it.

"The textile industry is dead here," says Elwin Bagley. "The cotton industry is dead. The wool industry is dead."

Seeing an opportunity, Bagley came out of retirement in 1995 to start raising alpacas. He shears the llama-like animals at his Windy Hill Alpaca Farm in Jasper. Alpaca fiber is used for making knitted and woven items and doesn't involve killing the animal.

"You just shear 'em and keep going, just like sheep," he says.

It was during a spring shearing a few years ago that Bagley met Cynthia Willard, who visited the farm to help shear alpacas.

"They will body slam you. They will step on your feet," Willard says of the experience. "It requires a good sense of balance and a sense of humor."

The duo started a fiber arts club two years ago and found that teaching was a good way to get the public interested in textiles. So, they opened Alpaca Yarn USA at 5165 Atlanta Highway in Alpharetta in June to sell yarn and offer classes.

The shop, located across the street from the Midway Meal House, initially squeezed weaving equipment, knitting goods and tables into 1,000 square feet. Willard took out a wall in September, more than tripling the shop's size to 3400 square feet. It now has room to showcase ready-to-wear knitted and woven accessories such wool shawls that Willard weaves on one of several in-house looms. The shawls sell for $150.

“We expanded because we didn’t have room for classes,” Willard says. “You can imagine all the looms and all the wheels and trying to set up tables to have a meeting or a class.”

Classes include beginner weaving, spinning and knitting ones. There's also a Tuesday knit-along from 6-9 p.m. for those who have their knitting basics down. Participants have been working on fingerless reading gloves, hats and cowls from patterns. The shop's Lynn DiCristina is present to help and Willard says several participants have finished their projects after several knit-along nights.

Janet Osborn keeps meaning to attend a knit-along but hasn't been able to yet. The middle school teacher started knitting seven years but says she only got serious about it a year ago, shortly after the birth of her first child. She found Alpaca Yarn USA by accident, when visiting a neighboring store. She says likes the shop’s laid back atmosphere and finds it a welcoming place to knit.

“For somebody who is starting knitting, it’s important to have someone with patience be able to sit down and show you,” Osborn says. “And Cynthia is pretty friendly. She’s the reason why I return.”

The shop recently hosted a yarn tasting in which customers were invited to sample fibers as a way to preview and help select 2012 inventory. Judy Weurding and Betty Cropper, who met as teachers in 1992, were among the dozen or so women present on Nov. 18. They passed around plates of boutique yarns with colors reminiscent of rainbow sherbet, coffee ice cream and cranberries and made note of yarns they liked.

To make room for 2012 inventory, Alpaca Yarn USA is discounting its 2011 yarn supplies.

“It’ll be 20 percent off the first week of December, 30 percent off the second week and 40 percent off the third week,” Willard says. “I’m trying to make room for new yarn.”

Yarns are regularly priced between $4 to $60 a skein with the more expensive ones being hand-spun and hand-dyed.

The store also plans to expand its teaching-focused calendar. It is bringing in spinning experts and kicking off an independent dyers sock lovers club in 2012. DiCristina is designing the sock patterns to go with the yarns.

“Not only are people going to be getting a really unique yarn product," Willard says, "they’ll be getting an unpublished sock pattern.”

The patterns will be published down the road, likely in a book, Willard says, but the sock club members will get the pattern for free.

Bagley also has plans to expand his fiber offerings in the future.

"I wanted to have a farm that produced a product that could be used by everybody," he says. "We're succeeding so far because people want this exotic fiber and we're going into cashmere goats, mohair goats, bamboo fiber."