It’s cold and grey outside and keeps trying to snow, but nothing sticks and it just ends up looking… ugly. We are officially into the mid-January blahs. And, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to do but just hunker down and wait for spring.
Fortunately, there’s also new yarn in the shop: warm rust BFL, rich purple cashmere, and some wonderfully daring variegated yarns. Does that sound a bit better? Yeah, me too. Click the button below to see them!
Happy New Year! Lots of you will be heading back to work today, so let’s start the year off right, with some lovely new yarns. There’s a lot of sparkle, some smooshy DK, and fabulously intense colours. Click the button below to see them!
There was snow on the ground this weekend, and there’s a tree covered in twinkly lights in my living room. What better week to put a little bit of warm and sparkly in the shop?
These are Lucina, an incredibly soft fingering weight yarn in Superwash Merino and Nylon, with a just the right amount of sparkle. There are four skeins of each colourway, and pink in Translucence is the same pink in Gentle, so they go beautifully together.
Now is the season for warmer knitting and thicker yarns, so here are two skeins of Astrid, a wonderful DK in 100% Superwash Merino, in a colourway called Happy Secret.
And as this is also the season for going a bit overboard, how about a few skeins that have both warmth and sparkles? These beautiful experimental colourways are dyed on a soft and luxurious DK yarn in 75% Superwash Merino, 20% Silk, with 5% Stellina to give that fabulous touch of sparkle.
So, I’m standing there in the studio, mixing colours in the dyepots, when my husband appears in the doorway. It’s a rare treat when he stops into the studio and I’m always pleased to see him. We start chatting, while I apply this colour and then that to the yarn…
And when I look down, I realise the yarn looks completely different from what I’d been trying to dye. Completely! Different! And… I don’t know what I did to achieve it. Chatting and dyeing — they do not mix. And what’s more, I love this new colourway. Whatever it is, however I did it, I looooove it.
But I should be able to figure this out, right? I mean, I know the colours I mixed, I just applied them in some strange order. It shouldn’t be too hard to reverse-engineer. Right? Right?
People, I’ve been trying. Trying and trying! And while I haven’t quite hit it yet (damn! what did I do?!?), I’ve produced some really beautiful yarns in the process. And they went into the shop today!
And those aren’t the only colours I’ve fallen in love with lately. Check out these purples…
And I did some warm browns and jewel tones… Oh! Aren’t these lovely?!?
And then… and then… I decided to play with the negative space a bit, and try lay down the softest, lightest, most barely-there layer of colour I could. What do you think?
If you like them as much as I do, get over to the shop and nab them before they go!
And if some of these colourways look a bit too wild for you and you’re not quite sure how you’d use them, then keep you eyes open for my new ebook, Launching Into Hand-Dyed. It’s a 42-page guide designed to walk you through choosing and using even the most highly variegated colourways. I’ll be launching it in the next week, so do look for it!
Hey, it’s Friday! And here’s a little something to get your weekend started off right: I’ve just put a bunch of great yarns in the shop! And best of all, most of them are in 4-6 skein batches, perfect for a larger project. Have a look…
Last weekend was Rhinebeck, otherwise known as the New York Sheep and Wool Festival and one of the best and most exciting fiber festivals in the country. Or… so I’d been told. I’d never been to it before, but this year the stars aligned and I got my chance!
Rhinebeck was everything I hoped for. Sheep, alpaca, llamas, kangaroos (seriously!), fair food, fine food, wine, spinning wheels, spindles, fiber, and yarn yarn yarnyarnyarn. At the Ravelry meet-up (above), I got the chance to meet Laura Nelkin, a designer I’ve featured here before and whose work I’ve admired a long time. I also ran into the delightful Ariane of Falling Stitches, my friend Julia of Knitterly Things, my friend Gwen of GwenErin Natural Fibers, and Ravelry’s own Mary-Heather and Sarah (wearing a fast-asleep Carlton).
But never mind all that, because I discovered two people whose products I loved so much that I really thought you’d want to meet them!
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First is Melissa Tompkins-Stahl, whom I liked right from the moment I met her but — more importantly for you — who also makes absolutely lovely ceramic buttons. Seriously, they are like candy for knitters. My friend Kristen introduced us and pointed out how beautifully the colours of Melissa’s buttons and colours of SpaceCadet yarns go together. Kristen put several buttons against a cowl she’d spun with SpaceCadet fiber and she was right. Melissa and I clearly share a colour connection, and if you’re ever looking for buttons for a project you’ve made with SpaceCadet yarn, it’s worth looking at her website…
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And the other person is Leah LaFera of Ulster Soaps. I knew I needed to check out Leah’s stall even before I saw it — the smell of her soaps was tugging at me! And when I got there and met Leah, I knew I wanted to tell you about her. I’ve always wanted to try soapmaking (don’t you?), so I asked her a whole bunch of questions, and she answered them all so enthusiastically. It’s clear she loves what she does! I chose some soaps: Peppermint Delight, Lavender Dream, and Lemon Poppy Seed (nom nom nom!) and I knew I wanted to share them (and her!) with you too.
And of course, there was all that yarn — so much fun to look at it, to smoosh it, to pet it! And it inspired me to do a shop update…
Clockwise from top left: Fingering yarn containing Bamboo in a Dept of Rocket Science colourway, Celeste in Cove, Estelle in a Dept of Rocket Science colourway, BFL yarn in Algae, Celeste in Cove, BFL yarn in Salmon.