Custom orders can be exciting… and daunting. Dyeing can be an unpredictable process — the slightest change in acidity, temperature, or concentration can create really noticeable colour changes from one dyelot to another. And it’s just the way life works that those unpredictable changes will always occur on that special order where the customer has a really specific result in mind!
So when a customer contacted me the other week and asked me to dye three custom orders for a birthday celebration for three knitting friends, I had a slight moment of trepidation. But when I asked her what she had in mind, she put back at my ease: “Just be creative!” she replied. That I can do!
The birthday girls’ favourite colours are red, purple, and green, and I spent all week letting my imagination run wild on that theme. I wanted to do a few different colourways of each, and then her choose whatever yarns she liked best.
It wasn’t an easy choice. Here’s what she picked…
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Kristen’s HeartBeat
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Jill’s Storm
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Natalie’s Steel Leaf
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I was having so much fun dyeing and just letting my creativity run free that I rather let it run away with me, and I now have quite a stash of exciting new yarns to put in the shop. Look for them to start appearing Monday or Tuesday of next week!
Years ago, when I was a corporate buyer, I remember my boss explaining that buying was both an art and a science. I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time — surely it was just a matter of knowing how much should be in stock and plugging in the numbers, wasn’t it? It was simple. What was he on about “art”?
I didn’t really get it until I’d been in the job for some time, and I found myself explaining some of the basics to our intern. She was plugging in the numbers — just plugging in the numbers — and coming to conclusions that I knew would spend our money in all the wrong places. And as I explained that there was more to it than just the number, that was the moment that I realised what my boss meant by “art”. Over time, I’d been quietly and unconsciously learning to follow to my instincts as well as the numbers, learning to apply both art and science. And when I watched that intern making those simple, novice mistakes, I began to understand the value of staying tuned into both.
Today I tried to duplicate Westerly, the beautifully shaded colourway from the Tradewinds quartet that I showed you last week. And there I was, duplicating the recipe exactly when… I just suddenly didn’t trust it. My instinct told me the colours weren’t right. My instinct told me to add a bit of this, mix in a little more of that…
My instict wasn’t right. This is what came out of the dyepot…
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It’s beautiful for sure, but it’s not Westerly. And though I think I’m going to love it when it’s dried and reskeined… there’s no denying that it’s not Westerly.
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Which just serves to remind me that, even though dyeing is undoubtedly an art as much as a science, and even though a dyer’s colour sense is borne of instinct, it’s important to remember and never to forget the first rule of the second dyelot: even when you want to follow your instinct…
“I’m inspired!” Heather said after reading Pattern Roll-Call: Something Gorgeous Around Your Shoulders, and she ordered a skein of Celeste in Red Brick. Last week, she showed me what she made with it. It’s a gorgeous, lacy cowl — I don’t think she could have picked a nicer pattern. And I thought you might like to see too…
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The pattern is Eclipse by Jacquelyn Ridzy — so simple and really lovely.
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It always amazes me how the colours in yarns totally transform when it’s knitted up. Look at the way the red flows into the purple! And those little flecks of gold really pop.
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And it’s got this sweet little garter-stitch border. I love it!
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I can’t tell you how much I love it when people share their projects with me. Thanks, Heather — your cowl is gorgeous!
When I tell people that I dye yarn, I get a variety of responses — from surprised to confused to intrigued. Occasionally, I find the person I’m talking to is a knitter, and that’s always a nice surprise for both of us. I love it when that happens.
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Sometimes the person asks if I can teach them to dye, or if they can come and watch the process. And I always struggle with that, because I’m not sure what I’d show them. The mechanics of dyeing are no secret — they’re well documented in books and websites — and it’s easy to learn how to do it.
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But the Process happens in my head — it’s when I think of the colours and the combinations I want to create, and I work backward to figure out how to mix the dyes to get exactly what I’m visualising. The Process is me experimenting with colours, making mistakes, learning from them, saving them at the last minute, and learning some more. And I honestly don’t know how I could show that to anyone without them actually getting inside my head.
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But there is something I can show you. It’s the most important part of dyeing.
It took me a while to figure it out, but it’s the one piece of equipment you really cannot be without.
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It’s not the wool. It’s not the dyes. It’s not the dyepots, nor a special magical stirrer that makes the colours come out just right…
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The most important piece of equipment a dyer possesses is…
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…her Sharpie pen, so she can write NO FOOD on every piece of dyeing equipment.
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Because poisoning your family by accidentally serving dinner out of the bowl you’ve been dyeing in really takes the shine off of achieving even the perfect colour!
Megan was thinking of a cardigan, something simple, with a crew neck… maybe with snowflakes. The kind of go-to cardigan that could keep her warm and cosy all winter long. She was excited to get it on her needles, and asked me to dye the colours of Frost.
It would have white, of course, and a soft silver grey, and… and… ah yes, that lovely cool blue of winter shadows. I couldn’t wait to get started!
The key was getting the balance right: the amount of white to blue to grey, and the intensity of the colours. Frost can be soft and light, or it can hard and crisp; sparkling bright in the sun, or shadowy and blue. I wanted to make sure that Megan got the Frost that she had in her mind, so I dyed it twice and let her choose.
I loved pulling the yarns out of the dyepot, seeing how the colours came together. But, better than that, Megan loved the colours — she said her yarn was exactly what she was hoping for. And I can tell you that nothing is so nice for a dyer to hear!
It’s raining today — a nice, warm, gentle summer rain, but rain nonetheless. And I know I promised you sunshine for this week, but the reason it’s raining today is because the lovely yellows I dyed over the weekend are still drying and if they are wet, then there is no sunshine to be had and the world must be wet too.
But even if your day is rainy like mine and there’s no yellow to brighten it up, let me offer you instead something as deliciously dark and moody as the clouds above.
First, I was delighted to discover that myhideway included my Red Brick yarn in a treasury called Rosé Wine. It’s so inspiring to see all those beautiful rosy reds together.
So inspiring, in fact, that I went and filled the shop with warm colours from pink to burgundies. Have a look…
If autumn leaves turned pink instead of red, it would be this pink. If they shunned the sophisticated golds and the russets, all the subtle shades of brown, and chose instead to wear a girly hue — something wild and unpredictable — it would be this. An explosion of pink tinged with the warmth of the season, this is the colour that autumn leaves secretly wish for. This skein is over 100g of Stella, a beautiful and distinctive 2-ply fingering weight yarn in 80% Superwash Merino and 20% Nylon.
This is a bottle of burgundy wine, rich and deep and smooth, poured out on the brown of the parched desert earth, there amongst the green cacti, where the merciless sun dries it to dark, dusty stain. A waste of good wine, but worth it just to see the amazing colour.
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And a lovely new colourway, DK Weight Yarn in Superwash Merino, in Sleep Deep, that I simply cannot get my camera to capture accurately. It looks all blue-red in the pictures, but as I hold it here in my hands, it’s swirls of deep red and purple.
Here are the colours of dreams, at the moment when you slip from the dark of the room into unconciousness, surrendering to the safety of bed and the soft of pillow behind your head. These are the colours of a mind freed to wander, a psyche unencumbered, your true nature as you let yourself submerge into the deep deep of sleep. This skein is over 100g of Superwash Merino in Astrid, a beautifully smooshy 4-ply, DK (double knitting) weight yarn. There are two skeins available, sold separately.
And watch the shop for those sunshine yellows too! As soon as they appear, the weather is sure to change for the better.
