Yarn Review: Araucania Azapa

I still remember the day Araucania Azapa arrived at Get Knitted, because I was instantly and powerlessly smitten with it and had to buy some immediately, though I had no purpose for it. It was an unusual purchase for me because, for once, I liked colours other than the blue more.

I liked the blue a lot too, but I could see the cream being more versatile. Plus, it feels a lot softer.



I heard this described as a thick and thin yarn, but it is not. I found it to be evenly spun, although it shed a LOT while I was knitting with it. I was working with it on the plane home from Malaysia last year and remember the other teacher getting up to leave the plane, seemingly unaware that his left leg (which had been nearest me) was covered in a fuzzy halo.

It is very soft, being made up of merino with a healthy slug of alpaca and silk in there. It knits to bulky weight and runs to 140 yards/100g, in spite of what the label might say.

This was an issue last year, which still has not been resolved. Some of my labels said 190 yards; some 140. I started a Rav thread about it and some kindly soul measured her skeins to see, finding it to be the shorter yardage. Get Knitted were excellent when I pointed it out: they contacted their suppliers, relabelled all their skeins and, when they put the price down to reflect the lower yardage, refunded me the difference for the skeins I'd already bought. Then I sort of forgot about it; but I just went back to look on Ravelry and someone has commented, a month ago, that this still has issues with labelling and some LYSs still don't know the skeins are much shorter than they claim.

This is a bit pants, you know. I mean, if I knew about it a year ago, wtf are the suppliers still doing? I know the whole universe does not use Ravelry but if I were a yarn supplier I would be stalking the pages for my brands and doing everything I could to get positive comments on there, because it is the largest online knit/crochet community going.

Anyway, rant over. Cheeky lying about yardage aside, this is a truly delicious yarn. I have, to date, made a hat from it, and a Versatility, and I have 3 skeins of the cream left (I think), and Rosee from knitting group gave me a skein of blue she didn't want so I have many more Azapa projects ahead of me.

But if you're going to use it - buy more skeins than you think you'll need.