Alpaca Scarf- Suri + Huacaya, gradientesque.

I wanted to “do” something with the suri alpaca yarn discussed here. There wasn’t very much of it though, so it needed boosting. Ah, I had a small amount of fairly coordinating grey huacaya alpaca yarn from the alpaca adventures of last winter.  These two:

I thought the shiny of the suri wanted a knit faced pattern. I decided on a pattern called “Favourite Scarf Ever” by Lisa Bruce, a free pattern on Ravelry.  I split every thing in two as called for by the pattern. Each side is knitted separately and then grafted together. I was worried that my limited yarn would not give enough length, but blocking delivered, hugely. The huacaya yarn is much softer and nicer to the touch so the central position serves both visual design and comfort.

Here is the finished scarf straight off the needles:

and after wet blocking:

Silly me forgot to take measurements before, but I hope you can see that a lot more length as well as stitch definition and drape was achieved in the blocking. It’s now about the minimum length I would hope for in a linear scarf. I’m a bit annoyed that is now obvious that my attempts to make a gradient of colour in the suri failed a bit. The dye did not fully penetrate the locks, so there was a variable amount of white blended in with the colour. That’s my reasoning anyway. Oh well, this is still a pretty thing.

Here is a pic of the ends to show the pattern in better detail:

and a couple of it on me:

 

 

Gradient Suri Spin

Spinning was also a good activity to do while hiding inside in with the aircon. I was given this pretty bag of Suri as a christmas present.

I’d never spun pure Suri befoe so this is now added to the small but growing collection of fibre types I have experienced. I decided to try for a 2ply gradient yarn so I split it out into colour groupings and halved those by weight.

I knew it ought to be long staple, so I combed it. Not easy! Some of the locks were lightly felted and/or twisted and they were slippery so getting the combs to work was fiddly. There was also a lot of shorter stuff present that needed to be put aside, a bit less than half the weight. I’ve kept that for possible carding adventures.

Here is some combed. Lofty clouds.

I spun each half into singles, both starting from the turquoise, aiming for a fairly fine spin. The second half went much better. Surprise! Partly due to simple practice. Partly because in the first half I started out by trying to include the short fibres. Bad idea. I rather wish I could wind the clock (and the spinning) back and do the first half again with just the good long stuff. Oh well, I knew this would be a learning experience. It’s long staple and really slippery. I hope I’ve got enough twist in it for it to hold together.

From there it was more familiar plying, skeining, wash and dry. 56g or 130m lace weight yarn.

I have thoughts on what to knit from it, but I want to clear at least one of the projects on needles first.