Fiber Arts Friday – Alpaca Rug

Welcome back Fiber Arts Friday fans!

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook you know I’ve been working hard all week on this one and I’m sad to say I wasn’t able to finish it yet. Errrr.  No worries, here’s what I’ve done so far.

At the Northeast Alpaca Expo last weekend I picked up 2.5lbs of cotton core spun alpaca rug yarn.  I was just tickled to find rug yarn around a cotton core instead of jute.  This meant I could easily crochet it without too much of a fight.  Unfortunately any time you involve a ‘S’ size crochet hook there’s always a fight involved.

I actually made 2 rugs.  The first one I made a SC rectangle rug and set it out and looked at it for a day and decided I didn’t like it at all so I ripped it apart.  I wanted an oval rug and when I crocheted it the traditional way it was way too thick for my liking and the thickness resulted in a smaller rug size wise.

What I ended up doing was a hybrid between a braided rug and a crochet rug.  I made a huge long single crochet line out of the rug yarn and then sewed it together like a braided rug.  The last step is to felt it which is where I’m at now.

Here is a photo of my very soggy rug.  It is not yet complete and is just in the beginning stages of felting.  I must say, felting a rug is fun; it’s a lot like stomping on grapes.  Just put it in a kiddy pool with warm water, some good tunes and stomp away!