The best friends a knitter can have are the sorts of friends who spend their holiday minding an alpaca farm! My chums ran riot in the farm shop and I received a massive bag of alpaca yarn in the post.

I’d promised them that I would knit them something with the yarn, which conveniently included a few skeins in their favourite colours. Then I looked closely into the package and my heart sank. What do you get when you turn non-knitters loose in a yarn shop? Brushed yarn. Yarn so brushed it resembled a scouring pad and so annoying to knit with that I parked a half-knitted mitten in a project bag and ignored it for a year. Yes, I know, I’m a terrible friend.

Eventually my conscience goaded me into reviving the horrid half-mitten and I ploughed through finishing a pair in a yellow –orange colour that made everyone blink when they first saw it. This yarn just isn’t fun to knit: it can’t be undone, it’s hard to keep track of stitches and when being worked on two circulars it catches on every join and makes a ladylike knitter use unbecoming language.

Then I had to take a deep breath and make another pair in the purple yarn. For all those people who complain about Second Sock Syndrome, come and talk to the woman facing down Fourth Mitten Hysteria and tell me how bad your life is. Not only was it unfun, I had to start again on smaller needles when the first attempt became mysteriously baggy. I could only reclaim about half the frogged yarn - after it all felted itself into a giant knot I lost my temper, cut the yarn and my losses and chucked the giant furball into the bin.

I followed the pattern as best I could, although I did 10 rounds at the end of the finger bit before casting off. And once I had finished I fell in love with this yarn. The mittens are soft, fluffy, light and warm. I’m not going to make any more for a while, mind you, but I quite like these.