Spinning Suri Alpaca

At an alpaca festival in Columbus last year, I got a six-ounce bag of chocolate brown suri alpaca roving (I got some white suri and gray huacaya too, but that's for another time). Most knitters are familiar with the soft, warm, sheepy huacaya alpaca fiber, but suri alpaca wool is markedly different. It's slick and shiny as well as warm and soft. It's silky and feels even more luxurious than other alpaca.

A perk of buying straight from the farm is I got to know who I was spinning in addition to what I was spinning. This comes from the blanket of Sweet Suri Olympia.



As roving, suri alpaca feels soft and squishy. It has a nice sheen to it.

I have lofty plans for this bag of alpaca. I want to spin myself a shawl. ("Suri-to-shawl", if you will.) Upon deciding this, I spun myself a small sample skein.

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So...

...This is interesting.

I just trusted the pattern. I did just what it said. Who's the expert on cuff-down socks? Not I! Still, I'm fairly sure this is not how cuff-down socks are normally constructed.

The relevant instructions follow.

Next round.--Rib 60 sts., turn, rib 41 sts., turn.
Now work 1 in. in rib on these 41 sts. for the instep, ending witth a row on wrong side of work.
Break off wool.
... [working heel flap and turning heel]
1st round.--K 19 heel sts., k. up 18 sts. along side of heel flap leaving last in. free to be sewn to instep to form part of leg (!!!)


What is going on?, I think to myself. What could the possible purpose of this be?

After a long while of pondering, I finally understood.
You see, the heel flap is knit with the yarn double-stranded. And the instep isn't. So, to get around this, they have you knit them separately. Why they don't just have a shorter heel flap, though, is beyond me. It's a screwy pattern. For the second sock, I'll just knit that extra inch of heel flap and instep together with one strand of yarn, and start the doubled yarn once I knit the heel back and forth.

Upon finishing my second sock, into the box it goes along with various other goodies for my boy in the UK. I am willing to put up with the torment that is the screwy cuff-down vintage sock pattern, for him.

~Joy

Surprises in the mail

I just received a lovely surprise in the mail today. It was a spindle from Spinsanity.

I had made a post on a Ravelry discussion board that I didn't have the best luck with my spindles holding up, because I keep dropping them on the ground. And Shannon from Spinsanity sent me a Ravelry message offering me a new spindle (with extra glue to hold the whorl on)!

I can't recommend Spinsanity enough. Their spindles are beautiful, reasonably priced, and those little keychain ones are downright adorable. They sell fiber too. And who can argue with that kind of customer service, offering me a new spindle without my even asking? Please check them out.

Once I've spun through the sample fiber you can see on the spindle (I'm not sure what it is - something soft and slick. Might be bamboo?), I'll start working on the bags of alpaca fiber I got from Columbus' Alpacafest last year. I got over a pound of the stuff wandering around the different booths, from Windy Lane Farm and Rodger's Reserve Alpaca Farm (large amounts of suri alpaca in bags for $4 each!). I'm going to take the 6 oz of deep brown suri that I have and hopefully spin it into a shawl. I like the Ethereal fichu (Rav page). It's beautiful, and it's knit from the point up so I can use as little yardage as I may have.

I also got some blocking wires in the mail (I got a Jo-Ann giftcard for Christmas, plue a 40% off coupon = great deal). Inside a comically large box (you should have seen me trying to bring it up to my room) was a tube containing a yardstick, a whole bunch of long stiff wires, a couple flexible ones, and a bag of rustproof pins.
Most excellent!

So, I blocked my Swallowtail again, which was in dire need of a re-blocking after spending a couple unfortunate days caught in the rain (Ah, England). A disaster has also befallen my shawl. The cat, you see... well...



I fixed it up as best I could. I'm no expert at darning, and I didn't even attempt to preserve the lace pattern. I only tried to save the stitches from laddering down and away into oblivion. This, I think I accomplished. Only time will tell, I suppose.

~Joy

Speed Knitting and Vintage Socks

Knit Picks recently sent out an email about speed knitting (basically shilling their Options needles since the world's fastest knitter, Miriam Tegels, uses them, but there's interesting information in there too).

Anxious to see how I stack up against the world's fastest knitting, I conducted a very un-scientific experiment with my recently cast-on sock and an online stopwatch application. Click below to read about it.

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