What is Baby Alpaca Yarn?

Whenever I go for a walk, I pass by a small alpaca farm. There are about six or seven alpacas in the pastures. They are very cute and fun to watch. Some alpaca owners raise them to sell to others. But many more sell the hair to someone who makes yarn. Alpaca sweaters and other clothing items are very expensive, but beautiful.

I saw the alpacas just days after they were shorn. They looked funny after their haircut. I had a chance to pet the alpacas and found their hair to be extremely fine and soft. I don't know whether I was petting an alpaca with superfine baby hair or not. Anyway, I'd love to have a baby alpaca sweater one day.

@strawCake - I've heard that too. I think it depends on what you're allergic too. For instance, if you're allergic to lanolin alpaca would probably solve the problem. But I bet you're just highly allergic to animals in general.

I know alpaca yarn is pretty well suited to a lot of different projects. But not if you live in a warm climate. I read somewhere that alpaca is even warmer than wool (and wool is pretty warm!)I have a good friend who lives in Florida who knitted herself a thin alpaca scarf. Even though it's thin, it's still too warm to wear in Florida!

@aLFredo - That's funny. My boyfriend is an audiovisual technician, and he works at a lot of conferences. He's always coming home with some interesting story about a conference. I think the strangest one he ever told me about was a corrugated box convention he teched for (seriously, I'm not making that up.)

Anyway, I'm a knitter and I'm allergic to wool. Like, hives and itchy swollen eyes allergic. But I heard that sometimes people who are allergic to wool can use alpaca. In fact, I've even heard the word "hypoallergenic" bandied about.

However, I tried baby alpaca dk yarn and it gave me hives too. I just can't win. I think I'm going to have to just stick with the non-animal fibers.

@aLFredo - Not to worry – just like in other farming practices there are probably some farms that do not take the best care of their animals but there are alpaca farm websites out there that show the care they take in their alpaca keeping and alpaca shearing process.

So the good news is that with the glorious ease of the internet, you could find where your alpaca yarn came from if how well the alpacas are taken care of is a worry, but if you are looking to actually purchase an alpaca - I can't help you there, my one year old labrador retriever keeps me busy enough!

I have never actually come in contact with alpaca yarn, but I had recently learned about alpacas from a friend of mine and I just could not believe it so I thought I would see what else I could learn about this animal with a funny name.

My friend learned about it when he went to do some video and multi media work for a conference and the conference ended up being a conference for alpaca owners!

I thought that was just outrageous, but he went on to tell me about how the alpaca's wool makes for this ridiculously amazing yarn.

I had to tell him that I had heard of crazier things - I once read a short story on how to use dog hair for sweaters.

Now after reading this article and seeing my friend's crazy conference story is legit apparently - maybe I should jump on the alpaca bandwagon. I wonder how alpacas would like our North Carolina climate...

Unless, of course, it bothers the alpacas to have their hair taken off... I would not want alpacas to be harmed for soft sweaters!

@manykitties2 - If you don't want to make a sweater with the baby alpaca yarn you have why not make some nice socks or a scarf? If the yarn is really chunky you may even want to consider making a small rug out of it, or perhaps a throw for your couch. It really depends on how much your mom gave you.

As for care of baby alpaca yarn you're in luck.

Baby alpaca yarn doesn't need to be dry cleaned, in fact, you can just wash it with cool water and a bit of baby shampoo to keep it looking great. Though remember that it should be hand washed and hung to dry. I would hate to see what a dryer would do to it.

My mom recently gave me some baby alpaca chunky yarn that she got on sale at the craft store and I am wondering what to do with it. Does anyone have any projects that are well suited for chunky yarn?

I am considering making a light sweater with it but it seems to me that the yarn may be a bit too thick for that. It doesn't ever get really cold where I live so a thick sweater really wouldn't be much use.

Also, once I have a finished project, how do you care for baby alpaca yarn? Do I need to take it to the dry cleaners?

I currently have some sweaters that are dry clean only and I admit that they are a bit of a pain to look after.