Handspun Alpaca Lace Scarfette

blocking the scarfette

After a few weeks of work, most recently while listening to "My Antonia" by Willa Cather, the last of my raw alpaca fibers were transformed into yarn.  Last year I had processed the better part of a grocery sack of fiber into yarn and made scarves for a friend.  She owns the alpacas and (gasp!) just had the fiber languishing in her living room!  Most of that fiber was prepared with a dog comb or my mini combs (it's been long enough that I don't remember which!) and this fiber was the stuff that was too short from that original processing.  I carded this and made a sport-weight two-ply yarn.

Once the yarn was spun & wet finished, I started knitting lace.  The first pattern I tried had four or five pattern rows.  By row three or four I had made a mistake, and found a one-pattern-row lace.  Whew.  I can do one row of lace patterning!

Alpaca scarfette

Here it is, carded, spun, knit, blocked and ready to be worn.  The little pin is a handcarved do-dad that I whittled just to have something to hold the scarf together.  Alpaca is a wonderful fiber--so soft!