New yarns in the shop are always exciting. But not nearly as exciting as those yarns are in person — holding them in my hands, they are simply sooo much better than in the pictures. How I wish you could just reach into this blog post and feel the softness, squeeze the smooshiness. They are gorgeous!
But since you can’t, pictures will just have to do! Have a look:
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.
When I discover my yarns featured in an Etsy Treasury, I get such a rush of excitement, I can’t tell you. And so it was yesterday when I found Sunflowers had been picked for a treasury called “My Sunshine“, put together by ThePlumTree.
Sunflowers sold pretty quickly after that, and I am so excited to send it off to its new home. But if you loved all these golden colours, don’t worry — I’m going to be dyeing a lot more beautiful yellows over the weekend.
I’m really excited to show you some of the new colourways I’ve put in the shop this week! I have to say, I just cannot get my camera to really capture them, but I hope you get a good idea here.
Dragonfly flitters by, catches the light and throws back iridescence — greens, lilacs, pinks that shimmer in the sun for only a moment… and then are gone. This skein is over 100g of Superwash Merino in Celeste, a wonderfully soft 3-ply fingering weight yarn.
These are ancient mountains, gentle and rounded, that seem to go on forever, ridge upon ridge disappearing into the distance as the night falls and the mist rolls in — deep blue fading into soft purples that stretch as far as the eye can see. This skein is over 100g of Superwash Merino in Celeste, a wonderfully soft 3-ply fingering weight yarn
Happy yellow that welcomes the sunlight, stretching skyward, petals open to catch the rays. Yellow petals, deep brown seedheads — happy sunflowers basking in the mid-day sun. This skein is over 100g of Superwash Merino in Celeste, a wonderfully soft 3-ply fingering weight yarn, which has been dyed using a technique to create random, short bursts of contrasting colour.
Dark waters, dark night. Soft waters, cool and still, flashing deep blue, purples, greens. Water dark as bruise, quiet as the night, so cool on the skin… Irresistible. This skein is over 100g of Stella, a beautiful and distinctive 2-ply fingering weight yarn in 80% Superwash Merino and 20% Nylon.
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These skeins are over 100g of Superwash Merino in Celeste, a wonderfully soft 3-ply fingering weight yarn. There are two skeins available, sold in separate listings.
And there are more new colourways going into the shop later this week. Keep your eyes open for them!
This yarn was a dyeing disaster. I was aiming for Garden In Spring, one of my favourite colourways, and the colour just went all wrong on me. I pulled it out of the dyepot and… Oh no! The pinks were crazy-bright, the greens were just plain ugly, and the purples totally non-existent. I have a picture of it… I can’t even show it to you, it was that awful. It was embarrassing.
I set it aside and decided not to think about it for a few days.
When I finally went back to it and turned it over in my hands (cringing, cringing the whole time), I realised what I wanted to do with it. I thought I knew the shade that would salvage it. I mixed my colours and in went the yarn. And a little while later, this is what I lifted out…
I had hoped to salvage it — instead, it has been saved. It came out so much better than I could have hoped!
There’s one skein in Astrid DK and one in Celeste Fingering weight. And now I just have to decide if they go in the shop or… if I keep them for myself!!! I may have to think about this for a spell.
In Abigail‘s post last week about Choosing a Knitting Pattern for Hand-Dyed Yarns, she focused on reading the yarn’s colour repeats in order to choose a pattern that would work best with the yarn. Doing this avoids undesirable pooling and flashing, and brings out the best in the unique colour changes in each hand-dyed yarn.
But there are a few other things to take into consideration when choosing a pattern for a hand-dyed yarn, and one of the most important is the type of colour changes the yarn contains. Whether a yarn is dyed in gently undulating shades of the same hue or with wild changes from one colour to another makes a big difference to the type of pattern that will suit it. And understanding thise difference will help you choose a stitch that will really show off both the pattern and the yarn.
Hand-dyed yarns can be generally put into three categories. I tend to call them “Semi-Solids”, “Gently Variegated”, and “Wildly Variegated”. Carol J. Sulcoski, in her wonderful book Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarns, calls them “Nearly Solids”, “Muted Multis”, and “Wild Multis”. Either way, the distinctions are the same.
Semi-solids gently move through different shades of a single colour. The transitions from lighter to darker are usually subtle and gradual, giving the colour more life than if it had been dyed in a single shade. Because the colour changes in semi-solids aren’t very attention-seeking, they don’t draw the eye away from intricate stitch work. And for that reason, semi-solid yarns are a wonderful choice for complicated patterns and delicate lace work. Examples of semi-solids are SpaceCadet’s Luna Laceweight in Sage and in Plum Wine.
Luna Laceweight Yarn in Plum Wine
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Luna Laceweight Yarn in Sage
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Gently Variegated yarns contain more than one colour but the overall effect is still subtle and gentle. The colours are all closely related in either hue or value, so the changes don’t pop out too much. Gently Variegated yarns can be used for textured stitchwork, but they work best where the patterns are simpler so the colour changes don’t compete with the stitches. The kind of intricate patterns that work so beautifully with Semi-solids would be overwhelmed by Gently Variegate yarns, but choosing a simpler pattern lets their colours sing. SpaceCadet’s Celeste yarn in Spiceberry and Astrid DK yarn in Red Brick are good examples of Gently Variegated yarns.
Celeste Fingering Weight Yarn in Spiceberry
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Astrid DK Yarn in Red Brick
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And finally, there are Wildly Variegated yarns. These are the yarns that grab everyone’s eye, the ones that seem to jump right out of the yarn basket and yell, “Look at meeee!” They contain multiple colours, of wildly differing hues and values, and their colour changes are distinct and eye-catching. With colour as commanding as that, the key is to choose a knitting pattern that will make the colours the feature, and not compete with them. So, with Wildly Variegated yarns, the best patterns use simple stitches that really let the yarn show itself off. Good examples of Wildly Variegated yarns are SpaceCadet’s Celeste yarn in Garden in Spring and in NightDive.
Celeste Fingering Weight Yarn in Garden in Spring
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Celeste Fingering Weight Yarn in NightDive
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So, there we have it. Three categories of hand-dyed yarns — Semi-Solid, Gently Variegated, and Wildly Variegated — and one simple rule: with wild colour changes, go for simpler stitchwork and, conversely, when the colour changes are gentler, the yarn can handle more complicated pattern work. Just keeping that in mind when you match your yarns to patterns will help ensure you end up with finished objects in which both your yarn and your stitches shine.
