Surefoot Sock

Everyone loves sock yarn, so a brand new sock base is something to celebrate. This gloriously goatish new yarn is 40% mohair, and if you’re anything like me and have only encountered that fiber in it’s most fluffy, frizzy, downy incarnations, like our Aloft lace, you’re in for a surprise. Sporting only the slightest of halos more akin to an alpaca yarn, Surefoot honestly compares in softness to merino Stroll, but with slightly less loft and a pleasantly peculiar smoothness all its own. The requisite Superwash fiber and touch of nylon makes it firmly sockish, and I’ve already dyed a bit of it for a pair of socks just for me. If you like Stroll, you’ll definitely want to give Surefoot a try.

Aristo Lace

I am hardly shy about my love of lace, so this new addition has a special allure for me. Also: cashmere. Who can resist it? In this new lace yarn, cashmere combines with Merino for a smooth and ethereally soft body, finished off with a bit of Mulberry silk. At only 15% silk, it has less of a shiny, lustrous look than a subtle sheen, but the silk keeps the halo subtle and the yarn smooth and sleek, and adds precious tensile strength for blocking. It’s slightly thinner than most of our other lace yarns, so it should make incredible fine lacework. Aristo is easily one of the fanciest yarns we now carry, a perfect blend of soft, smooth, and strong, exactly what you want for lace.

Rustic Wool

If you’re a fan of wonderfully natural wool with lots of texture and plenty of crunch (like me), then you need to check out Rustic Wool. The single-ply gives it a nicely homespun feel, with a perfectly balanced twist that’s tight enough to prevent splitting but gentle enough to avoid the overspin too often typical of these kinds of yarn. And between the wooly wool and the single-ply, the stitch definition is astonishing. You’ll want to be extra careful with your winding to avoid kinking, and also your washing, as the construction will make it more prone to felting than a multi-ply yarn.

Swish Fingering

For those of you that gravitate only to the softest fibers, Swish Fingering is at the opposite end of the wool spectrum from Rustic. A plied Superwash with a literally microscopic micron count (19.5; about a fifth the thickness of a human hair and nearly invisible to the naked eye), the high grade of this wool is sure to satisfy the most sensitive of skin, making it suitable for next-to-skin accessories. Get a good set on your dye, and this is the perfect yarn for colorwork accessories in a custom palette. Best of all, you only need to dye the quantity you need for each color; split a single skein in smaller batches for dyeing and you can do smaller projects more economically. With Superwash fiber, you can wear your cozy color wonders as much as you want without spending all of your time hand washing.+

Alpaca-Merino Boucle

If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to cuddle a lamb or a cria (a baby alpaca!), then you have got to try this yarn. This boucle has the typical construction, where coils of fiber stand out from a spun core, forming loops. But you won’t find any novelty acrylic here, with softest Baby Alpaca (cria!) fluffing out like a cloud from the strong core of Merino and nylon. The fabric that it knits up into has almost no stitch definition to speak of (as you can see from the swatch), but it’s about the fluffiest, coziest thing I’ve felt this year. Wearing a sweater of this is probably as close as you can get to actually *being* an alpaca without miraculous intervention.