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Finally: a use for fuzzy, chunky-weight alpaca.

Materials: 7.5 balls Baby Alpaca Brush (80% baby alpaca, 20% acrylic) in #402 (grey) from Discount Yarn Sale; circular Denise needles. Trumpet sweater pattern free online.

Time: 1 month, excluding protracted finishing time.

Cost: $45 for a bag of 10 balls.

I'd had my eye on the clean lines of the trumpet sweater pattern here for some time, but my last experiment with a bulky-weight sweater ended catastrophically. I'd also had my eye on Baby Alpaca Brush for some time, but couldn't figure out a good use for it -- until I made a mental connection between the two. Bingo.

The knitting process for this sweater was entirely uneventful, as the size of the yarn meant that it knit up really, really fast. Also, the yarn is so, so soft, warm, and lightweight; especially with the collar up, there's no way that I'm going to freeze next winter. I like the drapeyness that alpaca gives to the pattern, and I presume that it's going to stretch out a bit with some wear. I didn't bother adjusting the pattern for my size, although it's larger than what's called for -- re-blocking should do the trick.

Despite the close fit of the body (I was playing MST3K's "Tubular Boobular" as I went through these photos), the sleeves are a little loose through the upper arms. Most knit sweaters seem designed for the opposite sausage-casing look, so I'm quite fond of the extra room.

In short, it's an extremely warm winter sweater that doesn't look like most extremely warm winter sweaters.