Good morning, and happy Friday to you. This week, I dyed up a new yarn base called Suri Lace Cloud, and I want to tell you all about it.
At the end of May, I was considering a few new yarn bases and decided to ask all of you which ones you were most interested in. The one that got the most votes by far was this one–a fuzzy, soft lace-weight yarn that is similar to mohair but so, so much better because it has all the wonderful texture and none of the itchiness that mohair can have.
I used to carry one that is very similar called Alpaca Lace Cloud, but the new one–Suri Lace Cloud–is even better. It has more silk and more yardage. The extra silk makes it extra strong and, well, extra silky. It is made of 65% suri alpaca and 35% silk. The extra yardage–coming to 437 yards per 50 gram skein–makes it easy to hold double with a sock-weight yarn base since the yardage is so similar.
I took some of my most popular colorways and dyed them on Suri Lace Cloud. Here they are all together:
When I was dyeing these up, I made a sample skein of each one so I could show you some different combinations. I took a regular smooth skein of Monet’s Cathedral right here…
…and I held that double with six different colorways of Suri Lace Cloud. I used the five colorways I dyed plus a little bit of undyed Suri Lace Cloud too. Here is how the samples worked up. Please forgive my unblocked samples. I just finished them this morning!
I can’t stop feeling them! They feel as soft as a kitten. Here are three of the combinations with a little more detail:
Which combination do you like best?
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Some Tips on Choosing Colorways
Several years ago, another indie dyer, Tayler from Fiber for the People, put out a video about combining colorways such as this. Her suggestions were as follows:
- Use a semi-solid smooth yarn with a variegated textured yarn or
- Use the same colorway for both or
- Use the textured yarn (like Suri Lace Cloud) to soften or mute the colors of the smooth yarn.
The point is that the star of the show is likely to be the textured yarn much more than the smooth yarn, which is a little counterintuitive. Because of that, it makes sense to choose the Suri Lace Cloud colorway first and then choose a smooth yarn to go with it rather than the other way around most of the time.
You can use these anytime you see a pattern that calls for mohair yarn. In my opinion, it is better in every way simply because it is so much softer.
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Nerding Out about Alpacas
In case you’re wondering what exactly suri alpaca is, I’ll take a moment to nerd out about alpacas, which are some of the most adorable animals out there. There are two varieties of alpacas, and there are some differences in their fleeces. The more common type of alpaca is huacaya, and that is what I use in my art batts. These are the ones that look like big teddy bears with long legs and necks, and their fleeces feel fairly similar to fine sheep’s wool.
Suri Lace Cloud, however, is made using the rarer variety of alpaca, suri alpaca, and their fleeces feel silkier and drapier. Here’s a website that shows suri and huacaya alpacas side by side with info about their fleeces.
I hope you really enjoy this new yarn base!
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Fresh from the Dye Pot
This week, I dyed the rest of the silk hankies I had on hand. Here are the new colorways:
These are great for spinning and nuno felting. Joy, one of my lovely customers, mentioned that she teaches new spinners using silk hankies instead of the more traditional long-staple wool. I thought that was fascinating, and it actually makes sense because the staple length on these is basically an entire cocoon. Anyway, you can find all the silk hankies I have in stock right here. This will be the last of them for awhile.
I also dyed up Liberty on Sparkly Merino Sock so you can wear something patriotic for Independence Day.
Last but not least, I dyed up some more yarn sets for Deborah Bowanko’s beautiful new Pools of Color pattern that we talked about last week. You can find those right here.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and find time to enjoy the fiber arts.