I’ve long been a big fan of Wool of the Andes worsted weight yarn! It’s a fantastic basic wool, and you can now grab a 10-pack for a limited time only, either in one of our curated multi-color choices, or in all the same color, perfect for a sweater! I’ve only been working at Knit Picks for a few months, but I was designing knits for many years before I started here, and I’ve used this fantastic basic wool with its enormous variety of color options in multiple design projects over the years.

The first time I used it was for my original stripy Haka hat, way back in 2010, held triple stranded for a super-bulky weight; I later expanded my Haka pattern set to include a cabled version and a matching cabled cowl, all super-bulky, and I knit all the samples in Wool of the Andes held triple stranded. (Sidenote: I love working with triple-stranded yarn to make heavier weights—it’s a great way to use sock yarn if you don’t like fingering weight! Here’s a tutorial for a really easy way to triple strand one strand of yarn, so you only need one ball/skein.)

The other major design project I used Wool of the Andes Worsted in was my third Adventure Knitting collection. These collections are like Choose Your Own Adventure books for knitters, and they have TONS of options; for my third book I wanted to color-code all the stitch patterns, so I went with Wool of the Andes since I knew I’d be able to get all the precise colors I needed!

There were five different categories, each with a color code, one of them using 2-color stitch patterns, and each category was named after a habitat based on the “adventure” story, which meant I needed several distinct shades of blue. The categories were Arctic, Forest, Grassland, Lake, and Ocean, and each category had five different stitch pattern options to choose from, so I knit swatches of each pattern in the color-coded yarns to match the font colors in the book.

I also used a bunch of the leftover yarn to make this sample cowl for the collection. This piece was knit with the Wool of the Andes Worsted held double, for a bulky weight:

And then after it was all over, I had all these pretty swatches just sitting there, so I crocheted a bunch of them together into a patchwork laptop sleeve! Even though the swatches were all varying sizes, the wool yarn is so great at blocking out, it totally smoothed out perfectly after it was all stitched together and washed. I love it so much!

I’ve never made a sweater out of Wool of the Andes, but I know it would be great for one! Browse all 410 pages of Wool of the Andes Worsted sweater projects on ravelry here! Some beauties! You can see just from the first page how great it is for both cables and colorwork. *heart eyes emoji* These below are some Knit Picks patterns: Corrie Sweater by Sue Gleave, Diamond Lattice Pullover by Kephren Pritchett, and Dun Laoghaire Pullover by Triona Murphy:

So yeah, basically Wool of the Andes is great for all the things! Grab yourself a value pack in a single color to make a garment of your own, or a multi-color pack (rainbow is my fave!) if you want to make lots of accessories and other small things like I tend to do!