Alpaca Direct News and Perspectives

Alpaca Direct Now Has a Virtual Knitting Corner

For our knitters who live in Cyberspace, Alpaca Direct now has a virtual Knitting Cafe available 24/7 where our customers can visit, chat and socialize!

Chunky Alpaca from Cascade Added to our product line

We happy to announce that we've added the Chunky Alpaca line from Cascade Yarns to our offering. These colors will supplement our wide selection of chunky alpaca yarn from Plymouth and Catalina.   To celebrate these new yarns, we've put them on sale for just $11.99 per skein and as always, free shipping on orders over $50 with the USA at Alpaca Direct!

http://www.alpacadirect.com/Results%7Ecategory%7E8%7Esecondary%7E47%7Efeaturemain%7E16%7Efeaturesub%7E42%7Efeaturecount%7E54%7Efeaturevalue%7ECatalina%20Yarn%7Eshowsubfeatures%7E1.htm

New Line of Women's Specific Dahlgren Alpaca Socks

We're proud to introduce a series of new styles and colors of Dahlgren Women's specific sized socks. These socks have a special taper more consistent with a women's foot and nice vibrant colors like eggplant and marine.  Of course the new socks will have the classic high-performance of all Dahlgren socks with it's patented moisture wicking system.

An Update On Our Christmas Alpaca - Nicolas

We've heard from many of you wondering how our Christmas baby alpaca Nicolas was doing.  He made it through the first critical days and now is running in the pasture and playing with the other alpacas. He discovered mudholes this week following a series of storms passing through Northern California turning his soft white coat a few shades darker.  Anyhow, he's doing well and growing quickly! 

A Christmas Baby Cria Added To Our Family!

Christmas day at our ranch starts at about 4:30am with a trip out to the barn to check on our horses and alpacas, feed the dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits and ducks then settle in to see how all of our critters are doing.  All was well and we had some time to visit before the kids headed downstairs to see what was under the Christmas tree. We have 2 mom alpacas due in early January.  About noon today we were surprised to see a new little addition in the field. It seems Clarissa decided to have her baby Cria early on this very special day.  We named the little guy Nicolas given the day he entered the world.  He's doing well at only 14 pounds and is a bit premature but we're keeping him warm with a cria blanket to get through the night.  He's not nursing too well so we mixed up some special formula to help him learn the knack of nursing and will be up every 2 hours tonight to check on him and give him a 60cc boost of formula.  Clarissa is a first time mom so she has some learning to do as well.  We try to help the effort along but mostly it's instinct with a little support from the other mom alpacas.  So we're excited to welcome little "Nicolas" to our ranch on this special day! 

Did you see us on the cover of Alpacas Magazine?

We were thrilled when the editors of Alpacas Magazine chose to highlight our Alpaca Direct products and photo on this year's Cover of the Winter Alpaca Fashion apparel issue. Nearly all the photos on our website are taken on our alpaca ranch in Northern California.  If you look closely, you'll often see some cute little alpacas grazing in the background.  Thanks to Rayna our "Top Model" for sharing her awesome smile with the world, and thanks to Randy for his keen eye behind the lens. The journey from our original designs created in Peru to the cover of the magazine has truly been a team effort!  You can pick up a copy of Alpacas magazine at any Barnes and Noble or at www.aoba.org.   (Alpaca Owners Association). 

Have you seen our new alpaca scarf collection?

We went nuts buying scarves this year while down in Lima, Peru visiting with our suppliers.  The style, color and quality of our new alpaca scarves is the best yet.  The baby alpaca is buttery soft and the finishing and colors are out of this world.  We also made sure the edges are all hand finished unlike nearly all scarves coming out of Peru these days.  This will ensure you have a scarve that will last for years.  These scarves make a great gift since there are no sizing issues and the quality is so exceptional.  If you end up buying some for yourself or others, please let us know what you think!

Recent Upgrades to our website

In preparation for the holiday season we've been moving our webservers and configuring them for faster display times.  Occasionally, we'll have some downtimes but most of that is now behind us.  Please let us know if you experience any technical difficulties while shopping on Alpacadirect.com and we'll be sure to address them right away!