I was lured by the softness of alpaca yarn during my 2015 Central KS Yarn hop stop at Alpacas of Wildcat Hollow.
I love the softness but the drape the yarn has sort of limits its use for me. And I only had one skein of worsted weight in a pink/green colorway. I did some Ravelry perusing through my queue and a quick pattern search and I found the Casu Cowl by Galia Lael. A lovely worsted weight grafted cowl.
When I caked up this skein of yarn I found a lot of veg matter as that something accompanies small batch milled yarn such as this. I also found the yarn to be very loosely plied and quite a bit thinner than worsted weight in my opinion. In a fit of productivity I had this yarn paired with printed pattern and needles in a project bag ready to go a few weeks back.
I cast on according to the instruction and knit one pattern repeat. But it was looking nothing like the pattern page…and then it hit me. I had put the wrong printed instructions in this project bag and was in fact knitting an entirely different project…the The Darn Kinetic Cowl. Insert forehead smack here….
In a way I’m a little glad I found this mistake because I hated the yarn/pattern combo with the Kinetic cowl. So now I need to rip this out, print the correct instructions, and start knitting again.
Le sigh….
My Tangled Yarn Knitting Adventures 
It happens to the best of us. I think I might try the Kinetic cowl pattern, thanks.
I love alpaca too but you’re right, you have to be careful about what you use it for. Those colors are very pretty. I can’t wait to see it knit in the ‘right’ pattern.
Been there, done that!
I cant tell you how many times I have done it
Ooh, alpaca! I have some to play with, and I don’t know what I want to do with it. Definitely nothing that has to fit in a particular way, as I know that alpaca wants to grow and grow and grow. So drapey! But so soft, too.
Oh no
I think its use is for sweaters. I bought an alpaca sweater in Peru in 1996 and it’s still as good as it was fresh off the market lady’s needles. Twenty years! I personally love 50/50 alpaca-wool blends.
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Some alpaca yarns drape quite nicely. And sometimes it’s the choice of stitch that makes a difference.