Every Stitch is like Petting a Kitty
So, I’m doing the thing that everyone says you shouldn’t do. I’m making a sweater out of Alpaca. See the thing is that I love soft, bulky yarn. Alpaca is wonderfully soft. Not terribly elastic, so not great for a sweater with elaborate designs, but this one is plain stockinette with stripes. Of course that means this is a very expensive sweater, but it was my Christmas present to myself. It could stand a little more shaping around the waist, but ultimately it’s designed to be comfortable worn over a T-shirt, so I didn’t want it too tight. I already had to frog it once to fix too-tightness.
The thing is, this is my first sweater. Ever. Well, that I’ve knitted, anyway. I’ve owned plenty of sweaters before, but they were all store-bought. I learned quite a bit along the way. Like the reason why you need to use smaller needles for ribbing. This yarn is really loosely spun (Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande), so I dropped from US 10.5 for the body to US 6 for the ribbing on the sleeve cuffs. It’s nice and tight right now, though I’m sure it will loosen up with wear.
(It looks much better on me than on the couch, but I can’t divide myself in two at will like Dr. Manhattan.)
All that’s left is to finish the second cuff and do the neck! This brings me great joy, because:
a) I will be able to start my Clapotis when I finish this sweater. YES, I know everyone’s doing/done it. I don’t care. I found a yarn that just screamed “Make me A Clap!” to me and I’ll make it if I want to. So there.
b) I have used EXACTLY the amount of yarn that I bought for this sweater. After the neck, I won’t have any extra balls laying around. There will be small remnants, but I can use those for needle-felting.
Both of these are great for my Yarn Diet! The Clap will be another simple stockinette pattern I can work on when I don’t want to have to think too much, so it’s a great follow-up project to this one.
Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: alpaca, clapotis, diet, geek, lessons, needles, new knitters, Organization, pattern, selfish, stash, sweater, yarn
2 comments 
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April 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Rules are made to be broken. I made a pure alpaca sweater too and while it is VERY warm (almost too warm for the NC climate), it’s just heavenly to wear.
Also congrats on your first sweater! That’s a big milestone, and it looks like you’ve done very well.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Thanks! Well, technically it’s almost like my 2nd sweater since I frogged back to the raglan and re-did it! Yes, it is VERY warm…but I’m moving to NY this fall.