Monday, January 7, 2013

Alpaca Crocheted Blanket

I bought two lots of 200g balls of 8 ply fawn alpaca yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills many years ago without a project in mind. My shopping credo is to buy now and think about projects later (sometimes years later) when inspiration hits.This usually means I buy too much or too little, but I suppose there are worse worries in life. I bought two balls of natural cream yarn towards the end of 2011 during the sale to add to my alpaca stash (because we all need an alpaca yarn collection).  Inspiration finally decided to make an appearance so I bought two lots of fawn twist (which came in 50g balls) in August 2012 to make a blanket for my Dad. See, I end up using my supplies eventually…I just needed to buy more!


I asked BWM whether they would be expanding their alpaca collection as I noted their offering had reduced, and they replied saying they were discontinuing their alpaca (oh no!). BWM will now stock their Alpaca Rich range comprising 60% alpaca and 40% wool.



The alpaca is lovely to work with because it is soooo soft that I want to cuddle an alpaca ~ but I’ll refrain from doing so because they spit and kick. I used a 5mm hook crocheting nine rounds of treble stitch (50g plus 1 metre extra yarn makes 2 squares). I edged each square with one round of natural cream yarn resulting in a square that measures approximately 19.5cm. I crocheted the squares together, and continued to use the natural cream yarn and crocheted 5 rounds to make a boarder. The completed blanket comprise 30 squares, measures approximately 119cm x 98cm. The pattern is from Meet Me at Mike's granny square tutorial



Even though this is 8 ply yarn, the blanket is smaller than the blanket I made following the same pattern using acrylic yarn (see blog entry) which shows that differences in yarn texture does impact the resulting size.

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