Lace Alpaca Scarf

For months now, I’ve had some baby alpaca, hand-dyed, fingering weight, given to me by Mary Page. Mary lives in San Angelo now but drives to our Knit Natter meetings anyway (God bless her). In San Angelo, she’s met some local folks who have alpacas and other fiber critters and they are spinning this dream yarn. She gave me some as a gift-for-no-reason, and I’ve puzzled over what to make with it.

Mary’s charming, positive, and an encourager. Many times once I’ve seen her make a stranger’s day with kind, appropriate, and sincere words.

Last night, New Year’s Eve, I set up the garter carriage and knitted a scarf using this hank of yarn. It’s only 2.2 ounces, but there’s a lot of yardage. The next morning, I bound off the finished scarf and tried it on. What a shame – it’s not really long enough (I let the g-carriage run until it ran out) and it’s not soft like it ought to be. I used too much bumpy little seed stitch. I unraveled the whole thing and began again with an idea of how to make the yarn go much farther by knitting lace.

This is the finished lace scarf done on the 965i (on my brown comforter, maybe not the best background).

I got a nice 5-foot scarf out of my little 2.2 ounce hank! And, it’s silky and soft.
The scalloped edges are not all that difficult, and one of my favorite things to do with lace knitting. One of these days, I’d like to write a lace instruction book.

This is my demo for January’s Knit Natters’s meeting, Saturday 1/10/09. Blocking it was necessary to make the scalloped edges show up and to get it not to roll. I pinned it on the ironing board, because it’s long, steamed it like crazy, and left it to dry. I worked quickly, didn’t measure as I pinned, and that was fine for this project. Also, here’s a close-up shot of the finished scarf.