Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Unraveling the Alpaca


Alpaca Mosaic
Originally uploaded by wenjomatic.
My good friend Lauri gave me her gorgeous 100% alpaca sweater to recycle. Its fantastic, but just too hot to be worn very often and she hated to see it sit in her drawer winter after winter.

I wasn't sure I'd find the right end originally but I turned it inside out then stretched the neck and saw the yarn end moving inside where it had been woven in. Once I got it out, it quickly came apart.

The fair-isle color work around the neck had me a bit worried. But I was pleasantly surprised that it came apart so easily. I pulled a few yards out at a time, then wound each color separately so it didn't tangle.

Detail of fair-isle.





I've cast on and knitting around 120 stitches for a tote. I'm just going to wing it and see what I come up with, since I have no clue how much yardage there is. We'll see what it turns into.

2 comments:

Heather said...

This is great Wen! Did you have to soak and stretch the yarn to get the kinks out of it?

Becky said...

So lucky! All that free wool! Can't wait to see what you come up with.