In March 2021, I decided to order some suri silk lace and experiment with it….and I never went back!
I love it! It is buttery soft and luxurious!
It is also a lovely substitute for mohair silk lace, especially if you really want a soft and fluffy yarn but find mohair silk lace itchy or picky!
Adding soft halos to tops and wraps, Suri Silk Lace lends itself to all sorts of projects, whether knitting it alone or held with another yarn!
Is it very different from mohair silk lace? Is it a perfect substitute?
Well, like all yarn projects, that depends on the fabric and the colours that you’re looking for!
Suri Alpaca Lace
74% suri alpaca 26% silk 50g/328 yds
Let’s start with raw Suri Alpaca fibre.
If you have never handled raw Suri Alpaca fibre before, it’s quite lovely and super soft! The first time I bought some was at a small festival. The vendor handed me a small bag of fibre and at first, I thought they were giving me human hair because that’s really what it looked like! Then….I took it out of the bag and felt it. It was almost velvety to the touch!
There are 2 types of alpaca:
Huacaya grow a crimpy fibre, reminiscent of sheep fleece, and they look like cuddly little teddy bears! Suri alpaca grow long thin locks which may LOOK like hair, but are incredibly soft to the touch, with a gorgeous sheen! The long staple and smooth scales make it a great option for those who want to add a soft halo to their project but who find mohair a bit on the prickly side.
I wanted to see for myself the difference in the two yarns when knit up so I created a small sample. You can really see how different they are as a fabric and the differences are really apparent.
The two yarns in the sample below were dyed in the same pan, at the same time, with the same dye colours.
1) Suri offers a fuller halo
The first thing you notice right away is the difference in halo.
Suri is a longer fibre and so it has a looser twist to create the suri silk lace. This allows more of a halo. This is obvious in my sample. The bottom of this sample is the suri and as you can see, the stitches are fuller and the halo fills the empty space, unlike the mohair silk sample above it.
That would also suggest that the alpaca would be warmer as it is a somewhat denser fabric.
Depending on the type of fabric you are hoping to knit or crochet, this may affect whether you choose suri or mohair.
2) Suri may soften colours (Not always though, check out my Neon Suri Lace!)
I can get lovely saturated colours on the suri but the mohair silk more easily allows for those brighter colours.
These two skeins above were dyed in the same tray but if you compare the colours, you can easily see the difference. (Mohair is the top fibre, suri is on the bottom) So your colour preference may also dictate which fibre you choose.
Another thing to keep in mind….
3) Suri silk lace often comes out on top when holding two colours together….so swatching is recommended!
For example….if you knit the two bottom colours together, what do you imagine the swatch would look like?
Here is the result!
Is it what you expected? Since suri is somewhat denser than mohair silk, it has a habit of taking over the palette of a project. It plays with the base colours in really interesting ways though……I love this swatch!