Do you love alpaca yarn too?

If you saw my last post about Nuevo Norte Alpacas and my trip into a little world full of alpaca-based happiness, you will know that I one day intend to keep alpacas.

Why? Well, the first time I felt alpaca yarn my mind was blown. I knew on a vague level that alpacas were a thing, but alpaca turned into my gateway drug into the world of fancy, soft, fluffy, amazing fibre. One small skein of pale blue baby alpaca/silk and I was sold on the world of fibre.

That project was one of the early documented ones on the blog, back in December 2011. I had been knitting for about a year and a friend send me the yarn. I found a nice pattern for fingerless mitts, something I’d never needed so badly before I knitted, and spent some of the worst weeks of my life knitting them. I was sick, I was in pain, and I’d had to postpone my year in Canada due to all of the above. (The picture to the side is from when I was bed-bound for a few weeks, and the featured cat is Disney who hated almost everyone but loved me so, so much. Especially when I didn’t move for a while.)

By December I was better and ready to go, but there’s a reason I called them ‘Escapism Mitts’. They gave me the space to enjoy texture and colour and the process of knitting instead of dwelling on the difficulties at the time.

I still have and use the mitts and they still look fabulous.

Since then I would have to say alpaca has remained close to my top spot in terms of my favourite fibre. I knit with wool more often as I knit socks pretty much constantly, but when I have an excuse for alpaca I don’t often resist.

How does that translate into wanting to keep alpacas myself?

My girlfriend and I are animal lovers. We surround ourselves with them, her even more than me (at her work). One day we plan to have a small farm – one they call here a ‘hobby farm’ – and keep a few choice animals. We’ll have alpacas (because I’m deadly serious about it), goats, chickens, horses. Maybe a few cows one day.

I mean, ideally I’d like to have an enormous herd of merino sheep but as I would spend all day running around hugging those giant puffballs, I’ll stick to alpacas.

Just look at this fluffy asshole. – Merino, Glen Orkney, Awatere, Marlborough, New Zealand, CC BY 2.0.

Wait, alpacas are also giant puffballs. Maybe I should reconsider. (I won’t.)

Do you like alpacas? Would you ever like to keep animals for their fibre? If you do already, how do you find it?

 

Hat.

This is not the hat I knit for Martina at Kniterary, but it’s made from the same yarn in a different colourway.

It is not a hat for this weather. I tried: this morning I pulled it over my ears and about thirty seconds later sincerely wished I’d brought a real winter hat. As much as I try to kid myself it really is time for the hardcore clothes here in southern Ontario.

Still, it’s pretty.

This is a lovely yarn. The colours are awesome and the pattern it makes is pretty. Making a hat doesn’t take up a whole skein either (especially impressive since I have a large head).

As I mentioned in my last post it’s Cascade Color Duo. Colour? Color? You know what I mean.