I am becoming obsessed with alpacas. Their crimped fringe is so cute but more importantly their fleece is super soft, it doesn’t contain lanolin like sheep’s wool, so there’s no itch! The wool is also very lightweight and breathable.
There are a number of smallholdings with alpacas popping up everywhere in the UK and I enjoyed a visit to Blackwater Alpacas a couple of years ago where we took an alpaca, named Curly, for a walk.
Since then, I’ve been looking at ways to bring alpaca wool into my craft business. As I am often cold I’ve already been making fingerless gloves and scarves, so I thought “what about socks?”
I have an old chunky Knitmaster knitting machine and I wanted to try using it to make socks, so I bought some chunky alpaca wool and had a go…
It took many failed attempts and hours of watching YouTube tutorials before I finally got results that resembled socks.
Each sock was knitted on the machine and the cuff was finished off by hand. The finishing touch was to design a packaging sleeve for them.
My alpaca socks are £20 a pair and are made to order. DM me if you would like to enquire or to place an order. Thanks!