alpaca Tag

Baa Ram Ewe Titus

The UK has a vibrant textiles history. Most argue that the fortunes of the British empire were, in fact, based on the wool trade. Somewhere along the line, between globalization and our quest for softness, this trade faltered. Today, Britain's wool manufacturing industry is hurting, as

October 4, 2012

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Blue Sky Fibers Techno

Whenever you take a single strand of continuous fibers and apply twist, you get something innately vulnerable and unbalanced. We have all sorts of tricks for beefing up the fibers, adding secret plies and twists and whatnot. But ultimately, such a yarn is so ill-suited

August 18, 2011

Classic Elite MountainTop Collection Preview

Please note: As of October, 2018, Classic Elite Yarns has closed its doors. I'm leaving the review up here for reference in case you're lucky enough to discover some of this yarn for sale. Classic Elite Yarns has introduced a new undyed, natural-colors-only yarn collection called Mountaintop.

June 23, 2011

Good Karma Farm Wool and Alpaca

If you ever decide to drive up the Maine coast to Bar Harbor (and I think you should), your journey will take you past the coastal town of Belfast. Stay on Route 1 and you'll see only the commercial outskirts of what is, at the center,

March 17, 2011

Blue Sky Fibers Hand Dyes

A plied yarn is greater than the sum of its parts. The mere act of twisting strands of spun fiber together produces a material that occupies more space than would those strands if they were simply held together without twist. Blue Sky Fibers (formerly Blue

February 2, 2011

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Isager Yarn Overview

A fixture in Denmark's knitting scene for more than 30 years, Marianne Isager is finally—and fittingly—entering the U.S. market. She dipped her toes in our waters a few years ago when Interweave Press published the English translation of her book, Knitting Out of Africa. But that book represents a

October 9, 2008

Classic Elite Yarns Fresco

Please note: As of October, 2018, Classic Elite Yarns has closed its doors. I'm leaving the review up here for reference in case you're lucky enough to discover some of this yarn for sale. This yarn is like a good rollerball pen. It's widely available, doesn't

October 2, 2008

Classic Elite Yarns Soft Linen

Please note: As of October, 2018, Classic Elite Yarns has closed its doors. I'm leaving the review up here for reference in case you're lucky enough to discover some of this yarn for sale. Linen has its fans and foes in the handknitting world. Derived from

March 20, 2008

Valley Yarns Berkshire

I still remember my first mail-order yarn purchase. It was from a mythical warehouse-sized place in Western Massachusetts where people pushed around entire shopping carts full of yarns. The yarn store—called Webs—offered a "color book" with generous samples of all its house yarns for knitting

October 20, 2005

Foxfire Fiber Upland Wool and Alpaca

For the last 10+ years, Barbara Parry and her husband have been establishing a flock of Cormo and Border Leicester sheep at their 220-acre farm in western Massachusetts. More recently, she began documenting her daily life on the farm in her blog, Sheepgal—it's one of my daily

April 23, 2005

Noro Transitions

We've seen yarns that shift from color to color, and even from texture to texture—slubby to smooth, bouclé to bumpy. But Noro has just upped the ante with a yarn that not only shifts colors but actual fiber content: wool, silk, cashmere, alpaca, angora, kid

December 16, 2004