Cone Yarn

One of my New Year Resolutions was to buy new and more interesting yarn, other than the usual Turkish yarn, available in our yarn shops. I did actually have something in mind - an online shop, offering Italian cone yarn. And yesterday my first cone yarn arrived - it's Macas 814, 60% baby alpaca, 20% merino and 20% PA. I ordered it in three threads and one uncut cone.

I was afraid that knitting the non-twisted threads would be a problem, but my small sample so far proved me wrong. The yarn is very soft and easy to knit and I can't wait to finish my current projects to start experimenting with it.

 The intended result would be this interesting design by Bergere de France, available on Ravelry:

Baby alpacas are so cute and the yarn does look like the soft coat of small alpacas:

But while the cabled poncho is in my dream plans, in the real world my knitting year began with a false start. We had a fortnight of very cold weather and Gaby asked for a long and warm cowl. So I bought 300 g of thick Merino Bulky and knit a big round cowl in Fisherman's Rib - the bigger, the better, I thought. And it's a total fiasco - it's too bulky and uncomfortable and it actually doesn't keep her warm enough, so I'll be ripping this and reknitting it into smaller and tighter cowl, haven't decided on the pattern yet:

And right after the cowl I started also a hat in an almost matching denim color, some remnant 80g from Gaby's tunic. I'm not sure if it's the yarn or my tighter knitting, but I started the hat with the usual 96 sts for 2x2 rib, as in several hats made with the same yarn, but in other colors, and having knitted almost half of the hat I found it to be too tight to be comfortable. I decided to abandon it altogether and to start it again in another color and with some minor modifications of the chart. So far I'm pleased with the new beginning, hope to be able to blog about a successful FO soon :)