I was lucky enough to receive a skein of Manos del Uruguay Alegria Grande for a blog review. I squealed when I opened the package. It is GORGEOUS. The color is rich and deep and nearly impossible to capture in a photograph. I picked out Tahiti, but there are tons of other semi-solids, and a bunch of what they call "space dyes", which are really cool variegated colors- I'm partial to Orquidea. Check out all of the colors here.
Alegria Grande is a worsted-weight version of fingering-weight Alegria. It's basically worsted-weight sock yarn- 197 yards per skein, 75% superwash merino, 25% polyamide (nylon). The yarn is actually made in Uruguay (it would be disappointing if it wasn't, given the name) and the tags are each signed by the artisan who made the yarn. It's also certified Fair Trade, which is a pretty hard label to get. I think that's pretty cool in this world of "made in China" mass-produced crap. I always like to know where my clothes and my food come from.
Knitting with this yarn was a joy. The color is glorious and it's so soft. Great stitch definition, too. It's hard to say for certain because I made mittens and not a sweater, but I think the drape on this yarn would be really nice. The only thing- it's a little slippery, probably because of the nylon content. I used metal needles and the stitches slipped off a few times, but I bet if you used wooden needles that wouldn't happen.
I designed some mittens with this yarn- more on that in another blog post. I've got enough yarn left over that I think I will knit some baby mittens for Elaina- the old fashioned kind that are connected by a string that goes through the arms of a coat. Then she can't lose them, and I get to knit a bunch of i-cord. Love.
Thank you to Fairmount Fibers, the North American Distributor of Manos del Uruguay yarns for providing this yarn to me for review. Opinions are my own!
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