At the end of February, David Smith wrote:
Enjoyed your blog. Where do you have your alpacas?
I have 6 alpacas here in Huntsville.
Hope to see you in next weekend at the show. I will be showing one or my alapacas.

He is referring to the the Southern Select alpaca show which was held recently in the area. I’ve been busy, so I basically ignored it. I’m still feeling set back by my trip to Wisconsin, although things around here are starting to feel caught up – except spring is happening. Our alpacas are on a farm in south-central Tennessee. They are for sale if anybody is interested.

On March 1, Sarah and Jody both commented on my onion dome hat. Sarah suggested a pattern that looks rather interesting.

Thank you both for the comments. I think that hat turned out rather well. I have another one in progress – although right now it’s starting to look wide enough to be a sombrero. I’m on the decreases, so I should have pictures soon.

On March 12, Jody commented again, this time about my scarf. She wrote:
Thats really beautiful…I like that crotchet stitch. I usually don’t use crotchet, just knitting.

Thank you, Jody. I, too, think that scarf turned out very well. I’m really proud of myself because I “invented” the stitch – although more accurately, I suppose I should say I discovered it for myself because I’m sure it has been used for hundreds of years. Crochet is the comfort craft among my fiber crafts. I learned to crochet as a small boy – almost forty years ago now. The difficulty I have is that I love spinning, and so much alpaca yarn just doesn’t work well in the in crochet fabrics – knitting works better – or at least I often like the knit fabric better. I started playing with a double-ended crochet hook and I experimented until I found a stitch that looked good and rewarded the fiber.

In this post, I am supposed to show you the second onion dome hat – the follow-up to this post.

It’s not happening today, and there will be no pictures.

There have been setbacks.

Version 2 was worked in a heavier, black, alpaca yarn – millspun from some of our animals. The knit part felt fine – like a nice, warm, thick, alpaca hat. The crocheted fabric, however, felt like a board. It as too knotty and too dense. I’m sure it would have been very warm, but it was so stiff and heavy, it would have mashed hair by weight alone – no stretch or compression necessary.

It has been frogged. I am working a third version in a much lighter weight millspun. It isn’t really far enough along to show anything yet. I’m already thinking about a fourth version.

I used this scarf as my travel project for my Wisconsin trip. I originally purchased the yarn over a year ago thinking I would use a double-ended crochet technique (crochet knit) involving this yarn and some dark brown handspun alpaca. After additional consideration, I decided not to use the alpaca.

I tried a true crochet-knit technique, and I just didn’t like the results. What I settled is really a Tunisian or Afghan crochet using alternating ends of a circular crochet hook.

Close-up picture of the stitch pattern showing the Afghan or Tunisian crochet modified by using alternate ends of a double-ended crochet hook.

I used two skeins of yarn, as in a crochet-knit technique. However, the stitch I used was actually closer to an afghan or tunisian pattern. However, instead of working this pattern with only one strand and one end of the crochet hook, I turned the work each time I completed the pattern. With all the loops on the hook, change ends, and crochet all the loops off. Using that same end of the hook, work all the loops back on. Turn the work, change ends of the hook, and repeat.

Yarn is Rowan tapestry. I used two balls of color 170, Country, and about half a ball of color 172, Pot Pourri. I started one end using country for both strands, worked the middle section with one strand of each color, then finished by working the other end with country – eventually getting one of my two strands from the center of yarn and the other from the outside of the same ball as I ran out of yarn.

The scarf is very pretty. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I like the pattern. I think the colors worked better than if I had attempted to use the solid, dark brown, alpaca as a ground color. The stitch is something I want to try with alpaca once I spin the right yarn. I think this stitch would work particularly well with suri. I’ll make something like this again.

I’m still making progress on the project that won’t die never ending project. I thought I would have everything finished by now and the yarn delivered, but a sudden trip to the great wintery north intervened.

This is the yarn I spun from Anna’s fiber, last mentioned here. It has been washed, and it is drying. Once it is dry, maybe I can finally make the arrangements to deliver it.

A number of years ago, at a fiber show, I saw a handspinner who had tied all her leftover single-ply yarns together and plied them to make a skein of odds and ends yarn. She said the technique was really popular. I recall thinking it had a lot of potential, but even though I was just beginning to learn to spin, I thought I could do better.

More recently, I’ve noted the popularity of commercial eyelash and novelty yarns.

In between, I have seen and felt many blends – of fiber, color, and materials – available as yarn, batting, roving, picked fiber, or simply bags of scraps. I’ve even worked with some of them.

I have hoarded odds and ends of fiber, and tossed all the leftovers, trimmed ends, etc. into a bit.

A couple years ago, I started making crocheted flowers for Pam’s paper crafting. Every time I make a crocheted flower, I end up with a piece of cotton crochet thread 0.5 to 1.25 inches long. I make a lot of crocheted flowers in a lot of different colors – many more colors than shown in that picture – and for some reason, I’ve been keeping all those cut ends.

The reason occurred to me a while back – actually, before we bought the house last spring – and I’ve only recently had the opportunity to follow up the project. I wanted to make my own Oddiments and Endiments Yarn.

Odds and ends – pieces of string, chunks of fiber, yarn ends, and other things – carded together and respun.

Using hand cards, I carded the odds and ends I could card. (I’m saving some for when I get the picker.) I carded some cut ends from the crocheted flowers into the fiber and held some out. I then spun the fiber, adding the short cotton ends from the crocheted flowers to the drafting triangle from time to time.

This yarn is a single. The diameter is highly variable and it is full of weak spots. I want to make another funky single like this one and ply the two together.

This yarn is probably more alpaca than anything. It is guaranteed to contain huacaya alpaca, suri alpaca, cotton, cotton crochet thread, acrylic, silk, wool and flash. It probably also contains mohair, pygora, chiengora, ramie, polyester, angora and whatever else I have worked with in the past seven years.

I hope it doesn’t take me five years to accumulate the other half of this future 2-ply skein.