Purely Whimsical

Since I last wore my light, frothy, mohair lace smoke ring hiking, He who shall not be named has been asking for something similar. I offered to make him a nice lacy qiviut smoke ring, but for some unknown reason he decided against it. Some men are just weird, I suppose.

So, last November I saw some Blue Sky Alpaca - sport weight, 100% alpaca - in a nice charcoal color, and I knew I had to think of something. Alpaca is warmer than wool, and it’s much less expensive than a similar quantity of qiviut. So I bought two skeins and did a couple of swatches.

It soon became obvious that any complicated stitch work would simply become invisible against the dark alpaca. I wanted to use ribbing, as alpaca has much less elasticity than wool, and ribbing would make up for that. I finally settled on the mistake rib stitch, as it has quite a bit of definition and would be easily noticed even on the dark yarn.

I cast on 124 stitches, and knit the first ball of yarn. it quickly became apparent that this would be far too wide to be a good gaiter. It needed to be quite a bit more snug.

So I wound all of the yarn back up into a ball, and cast on 96 stitches instead. This was much more satisfactory. It’s finished now, and is He who shall not be named’s new favorite scarf this winter.

Here is a picture of the finished gaiter.