Alpaca Fibre

[Distaff]

Actually, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

Well, hoping this doesn't turn into too much of a thread drift.

Knitting yarns used to be toothy and substancial. People expected them to be a bit scratchy - they were wool, after all. I am 54. I remember those sweaters and yarns as a kid, and I paid for a lady to make me a fisherman cable sweater in my early twenties (? ...don't remember the exact date, but the Lillihammer Olympic games were on at the time). I still have that sweater, and wanted the challenge of re-creating it myself a few years ago. Couldn't find any similar yarn for it!

The Norwegian Strikkgarns are closer to what I was looking for, but they are less dense, and less robust. There was a guy in Romania, or Bulgaria (can't remember) trying to market some local yarns via Instagram, and I loved the look of his rustic yarns, but Instagram's format completely baffles me, and I could never get him to reply to me. There is a gal out of Maine (?) who produces gansey yarns from wool local to her, but her prices are out of my budget, and the runs are very small.

What happened to the easy to find basic wool yarns of my youth? I knitted with them in my twenties. The market seems devoted to soft merinos, or bamboo blends.... gah! Bamboo stretches and gets longer the longer it is hung - knitwear in bamboo can't keep it's shape. This stuff in pushed even in books for ganseys! The gansey is a traditional sweater with a traditional sort of 5-ply yarn (Frangipani yarn is suitable for it, but that is in no way a rustic yarn, or even a typical sweater wool from 30+ years ago). The gansey is supposed to be an iron tough knit, not a squishy soft to the cheek merino.

Everything is about novelty fiber and blends with silk and angora, and mohair, and a fancy boucle twist to it, AND some special indie dye lot with a supposedly clever catchy name.

Yes, I am a bit of a curmudgeon.

Back to alpaca, I would be concerned that this fiber might not hold pleats as well as sheep's wool. Just a suspician, based on what little I've handled of it. Should be easy enough to get a length of regular cloth (even if in tabby, not twill) and see what it wants to do when pressed. It also might sag under its own weight, even when woven - like bamboo, it is known to do that (badly) when knitted.