Review of Blue Sky Alpaca Sportweight Yarn

Hey everyone, it's Deja from CrochetEverAfter.com. Today I'm going to review this yarn that's in front of you. It's Blue Sky Alpaca. So that's the maker is Blue Sky Alpaca. And it's a sport weight type yarn and it's 100% baby alpaca. I got this in a yarn mail order subscription service called KnitCrate. And I've never used it before so I want to do a review about the makeup of it and what I think of it. how it looks after it's crocheted up, because some yarn is not super crochet friendly. This stuff looks great though, I think this will be perfect for what I want to use it for. I'm going to be making a free pattern out of it that you guys will also get to make up if you choose. But let's look at the actual information tag real quick. And I wanted to point out that on this information tag, it only gives needle size. So what that means is there's no crochet hook size for us to go off of when we first start making up our own projects. That's okay though, because it gives you the millimeter size, and you can use that to translate to a crochet hook. So a 3.25 to a 3.75, that's like around a D, C, D, E size hook. In the U.S. or just millimeter size for anyone outside of the U.S. So when you see those, just start with, depending on what you're making. So if you want to make something that's nice and hairy and drapes well, use a bigger size hook. So use closer to 3.75 or even larger. Totally up to you. You'll see that this is a hand wash. This is a natural fiber. It's really soft. It's on the line of... Not as soft as cashmere. Close to like merino wool, so it's very soft. If you have a wool allergy, this might be a great choice for you. I'm going to wind these into cakes because these are hanks, that's what you call this twisty form, usually smaller yarn companies will put their yarn into hanks because those big skeining machines are probably very expensive, so they twist it into hanks and then you'll have to wind it into a cake, which I'll show you what that is in a minute. But so far, the yarn, I really like it. It's very soft, very squishy. In comparison, you'll see that it looks different from this sport weight. This is a sport weight from Knit Picks, one of my favorite yarn companies to work with. It's about the same thickness. Remember that all sport weights and all thicknesses of yarn are not created equal. Each manufacturer has different thicknesses, but it should be pretty close. You'll see that this one looks a little bit bigger, but it's probably just because of the twist. The Knit Picks twist is twisted, it's usually, you know, you go by the inch, it's twisted a lot more per inch than the Blue Sky Alpaca, but it should work out just fine once we start. If I was to make something out of this, it would probably, the gauge would match just fine with the Blue Sky Alpaca, so you should be able to substitute with another sport weight without a big change in hook size. So, with all that said, I'm going to go make this into a cake, and I'll talk about, I'll show you how they join their yarn when you unfold this, and after I make up my pattern, I'll show you how this looks all crocheted up. Alright, so we're continuing our review of the Blue Sky Alpaca. I am going to wind it on my swift. If you don't know how to use a swift, I have a tutorial on it, so you can check that out. But, this isn't a hank, so I just unwind it, and what I wanted to check was how the loop, if you've ever had a hank before, you know that they use scrap yarn to tie up the loop. I wanted to see how many ties they had. they're using separate colors of the color of the yarn. I like when they use separate color because I don't feel as nervous cutting it. When they are using the same color yarn, which they are, they only have one tie on here, which is nice. So I only have one chance of actually cutting my yarn. That's how I think of it. But it is... It's nice that there's only one and it is attached to the hangtag, something that probably my ends are all attached right here in the hangtag. So I'm going to stick out my swift and give it a cut. It's definitely a plus for the blue sky alpaca. I do like when there are less. It could be also because this is a smaller hank. It's only 110 yards, so that might be why there's only one tie. Because I've never worked with this company before, that just might be how they do it, so either way. I'm going to cut the hang tag, so that should be pretty safe, and wind and see if my ends are here. So they actually use the ends of the yarn to attach the hang tag, which makes life much easier because it will have extra ends that I'm cutting. And I'm always afraid that I might cut an actual strand of yarn, which, you know, you never want to do that. So I'm going to wind this into a cake, and then I'll get started on the pattern that's going to be free for everybody, and we'll see how it crochets up. Okay so what is the frog test? When you have, especially natural fiber yarns, they have a tendency to stick to each other. So what I'm testing in this review is how well I can frog this piece that I have stitched. out of the Blue Sky Alpaca. So we call it frogging because we're ripping it out and so when you rip it rip it rip it it sounds like rip it rip it rip it so that's why a lot of times people say that they're frogging their work. So I made this with an E-hook or a 3.5 millimeter so that it's nice and tight because the tighter the stitch the more likely it is that the fibers are going to stick together. Why is this important? If you're working a project that you're not familiar with or you're making up your own project and you think that you might have to rip out your stitches more than once or at all, if you have a yarn that is sticking to itself when you're trying to rip it out, you're going to have a really tough time, one, undoing your work and you might end up breaking your yarn. So you want to make sure. That you're choosing a yarn that you can unravel easily. So this is, I'm just going to pull and see if anything sticks, because if it was to stick, then we know that this yarn is not good for experimentation. But it looks like this is frogging out really well, it's not getting stuck at all. The foundation chain can be the best. Um, determinant of it, because once you get to those kind of chain stitches, they can really stick. But this frogged out really well, so that means that this is a good yarn for any kind of project. So even if you think that you might have to rip out your stitches because you made a mistake or anything, you're not going to have problems with this yarn. Um, I have had yarns where I've had to cut them because they are so extremely, um, sticky. So, all in all, I am really happy with the Blue Sky Alpaca. I made a project out of it. I'm just working on weaving in the ends for it, but it's a scarf cowl infinity one that's been, it's a big loop. It's going to be a free pattern that's going to be available, so you guys can check it out and make it as well. But you can see how nice the stitches are, and I haven't even blocked it. It looks really great, even without the blocking. Some natural fibers can look pretty rough or not as soft, and these are, the baby alpaca is extremely soft even when it's not blocked. So... Really really like the Blue Sky Alpaca Sport Weight. I highly recommend it. They have great colors It's great in the frog test easy to wind There's not one single bad thing that I can say about this yarn. So if you've tried Blue Sky Alpaca and You have an opinion about it. Let us know below. Thank you for watching