Category: Wool & Knitting

• Raglan Lace Sweater Lesson 4: Completing the Sweater.

  

  To keep the sweater cohesive and to eliminate any heavy bulky areas the sweater will be completed with an I-cord cast off. Begin by picking up stitches along the right front of the sweater and knitting them. Pick up 2 stitches for every 3 along the front edge. Knit 3 stitches into the corner stitch…

• Raglan Lace Sweater Lesson 3: The Yoke

  

  With the body and sleeves completed, we now put all the pieces together. Reserving Stitches for the Armhole Once the sleeves and body are done the next component is the yoke.  Prior to completing that however we need to address the stitches that will become the underarm. The underarm area should be roomy enough for…

• Raglan Lace Sweater Lesson 2: The Sleeves

  

  Once the body is complete it is time to move onto designing and knitting the sleeves.  For the most part this is almost the same as how we calculated the body. Measuring for the SleevesThe first calculation you will need to do is to determine the number of stitches to begin with.  This will be…

• Raglan Lace Alpaca Sweater Lesson 1 The Body

  

  If you are like me, you process your own fibre and spin your own yarn. At a fibre fair I ran across a wonderful bag of alpaca fibre. It was teddy bear soft and I wanted a sweater. While doing research I read you must add wool to the alpaca by at least 30% or…

• Plying Alpaca

  

  Today we move onto plying our alpaca singles. Be sure to give your spools time to rest. Freshly spun singles have quite a bit of energy in them and can fight you a tad at the plying stage. When knitting I’m not fond of working in ends. For this reason I like a fair amount…

• Spinning Alpaca Fibre

  

  With the fibre processed it is time to move onto spinning our alpaca fibre. As alpaca is soft and airy and has natural drape, I wanted to keep as much of those qualities. For this reason I will spin the fibre into woolen spun. Yarn is spun either worsted or woolen-spun. When spinning worsted you…

• Picking and Carding Alpaca

  

  Once your alpaca fibre has been washed and completely dry it’s time to prepare it for spinning. To achieve a nice clean well prepared fibre we will follow two steps. The first step is picking. Nothing complicated here. You are using your hands to pull the fibres apart from each other, while pulling out large…

• Washing Raw Alpaca

  

  Over the next several posts we are going to go through how to take a raw alpaca blanket from start to finish. On the Canadian Prairies it isn’t difficult to find alpaca fibre for sale. Most often the type of alpaca you will find is the huacaya. They are the alpacas that have the fluffy…

• Designing an Aran Sweater: The Sleeves

  

  This sweater will have set in sleeves. This can be a bit more complicated in the planning stage, so grab a coffee and a calculator and a comfortable chair. Beginning the SleeveSleeves start at the wrist. Measure your wrist and multiply by your stitch gauge. Be sure this number is divisible by 4 for a…

• Designing an Aran Sweater: Finishing the Sweater

  Now that all the pieces of the sweater are complete it is time to start the button band. There are several approaches for this, in my opinion the sewn on button band looks the best. Before we begin, the fronts and back should be stitched together at the shoulder.On the front of the sweater mark…