This week, I dyed this. Six gorgeous, luscious skeins of this…
Estelle (merino, cashmere, and nylon) dyed in a colourway called Rescue …and I fell in love it with it. Absolutely, deeply, madly in love with it. I thought about keeping it for myself… and I was going to, I really was, but I talked myself out of it and decided to put it in the shop instead.
But first, I emailed a picture of it to a friend. And she emailed straight back with, “I want some!” And five minutes later, another email, “I’ve checked my pattern — I’ll need five skeins.”
And just like that, I went from six skeins to put in the shop to only one skein. But in that one skein… Oh! Some of the most intense, gorgeous green I have ever dyed.
(But if you love it as much as I do and want me to dye any more, talk to me…)
———————————————————————————————————————
And here’s a few other things going in the shop this week:
Lucina fingering yarn (with sparkles!) in Megan’s Blues
I’ve been thinking about colour a lot lately — about what draws us to it, about what makes us shy away. And, most interestingly to me, what is it that pulls some knitters and crocheters time and again hand-dyed yarns?
Lucina fingering weight yarn in Carnival
Hand-dyed yarns are very different from the rest of the yarn universe. One thing that struck me at TNNA is that there were only a handful of indie dyers scattered amongst the rows and rows of big yarn companies. And the big yarn companies were very impressive, with their extensive line-up of yarns in every colour imaginable. They sell dependability, repeatability, a yarn you can reach for time and again.
Whereas the magic of hand-dyed yarns lies in something completely different. It’s something about freedom, the pure abandon of colour that might submit to the knitter’s will or might… might just turn wild and uncontrollable. Hand-dyed yarns are about their untamed individuality, their uniqueness… With hand-dyed yarns, you never really know what you’re going to get.
Celeste fingering weight yarn in Baroque
So, as I watched them for a while, the hand-dyers at TNNA, busy chatting with LYS owners, I suddenly saw the dilemma… For the indie dyer who wants to grow her business, there is the temptation to emulate the big yarn companies and to aim to pull those wild hand-dyed colours under control, to create legitimacy in a bigger marketplace by moving her line toward more predictability and controlled results. But I suspect that what initially drew every hand-dyer into her craft was a desire to delve into the colours and go where-ever took took her.
Celeste yarn in African Violets
So, being pulled in both directions, which way does an indie dyer go?
I think the answer comes back to the customer — to you. The real question is, why do you buy hand-dyed yarns? Why do you seek out indie-dyers when there are so many wonderful, established yarn brands in your local yarn shop? And I suspect the answer is that you are a very special kind of knitter or crocheter. You are an adventurer. And buying hand-dyed gives you a yarn that is like no other yarn in the world, which acts as a base on which to create your own art — the unique work of your two hands. I think that people who buy hand-dyed yarn do more than just follow a pattern — they see the creation before it is created, they see the colours intertwined, they are drawn to the challenge of taming a yarn that they’re not quite sure will bend to their will.
In short, I think the knitter or crocheter who buys hand-dyed yarns is an artist herself, no less dyer whose yarn she works with.
So tell me, why do you buy hand-dyed yarns? What is it that draws you to them? And do you believe that when you create with them, you are also an artist?
Last night, I went round to a friend’s house and she showed me her knitting. The pattern is simple — just a stockinette cardigan — but the colour is spectacular. She has chosen a blue so deep, so intense, that I almost felt I was falling into it headlong. I felt energised just looking at it …just being near it, in fact.
Celeste Fingering Weight Yarn in Blue Horse
As adults, we shy away from colour. I first became conscious of this when my daughters were born. The clothes that they were given by friends and loved ones were full of colour: brimming over with wild, riotous combinations of shades that I would never (at the time) have had the courage to put together myself. Colours full of life, calling out with joy.
Shades of… Blah
By contrast, when I looked at my own wardrobe, it was made up entirely of drab. Sensible colours (yawn), muted colours (yaaaawn), black, brown, grey, beige (zzzzzzzz….). And I wasn’t alone — everyone around me dressed (dresses) this way. You know it’s true — and, next time you’re in a crowd, look at the colours you see on the people around you. Sure, there will be one or two red jackets, but that’s it — the rest will be a mass of greys, blacks, browns, and blahs that all merge into one big drab blob of blending-in. We all blend in.
We dress our children in glorious colour (and we are jealous of them), and then we dress ourselves to blend in …to disappear. If colour is primal, if it is the food that nourishes our visual souls, then we are all malnourished.
Stella Fingering Weight Yarn in Carnival
Colour Freedom
I’ve always considered the biggest appeal of knitting or crocheting was the zen-thing — that wave of calm that washes over as you fall into the moving meditation of stitch upon stitch. And then, of course, there is that wonderful rush of having created something — a garment, a pattern, a new stitch combination — from our own ingenuity and with our own two hands. Powerful stuff. But more and more, I’m coming to realise how much the fiber arts also set us free to embrace the glorious colours that we otherwise deny ourselves. Yeah, there are lovely yarns in neutral/natural shades and they can be formed into beautiful garments. But it’s rare for a knitter to walk into a yarn shop and choose black. We are called by the colour. It sings to us and we are drawn to it.
Stella Fingering Weight Yarn in Sweet Dreams
And so here is the other great appeal of the fiber arts: in our knitting, in our crocheting (our spinning, our felting…), we are suddenly free to dive into the colour that our hearts desire, but which we so often deny ourselves. With the yarn in our hands, colours running through our fingers, we can envelope ourselves in the glorious colours that wake our senses, that make us feel alive and giddy with excitement.
…That let us escape from the blah of blending in.
Celeste Yarn in Forgiven
Challenge: To Be Aware
So here is my challenge to you: let yourself become more aware of the colours around you — of the colours that nature presents to you each morning, of the colours that you see through the day, of the colours that call out to you. And more than that, become aware of the colours that you knit or crochet with, and of the colours that you wear. Do they match up? Do you adorn yourself (your home, your life) in the colours that you truly love? Or do you shy away? And if you do shy away, why? Or… perhaps more importantly, why not?
Because colour is primal, colour does feed the soul. And there is an absolute feast of colour out there, just waiting for you…
Sleep, as it turns out, is not optional. For over a week, I’ve been trying to knock this bug from TNNA on its head. For ten whole days. And the bug is beating me because it’s figured out my weakness: I need sleep.
I cannot sleep when I am coughing. And I am coughing pretty solidly from about 11pm to 4am, when I finally slip into a slumber from nothing more than sheer exhaustion. But until then,I lie in bed and keep very very still and breathe very very slowly, just willing this cough into submission long enough for me to sleep. It doesn’t work.
And so, the past ten days have felt like a total loss to me. Almost nothing done, almost nothing achieved. *sigh…* All I want in my bed, and that lovely, dreamy, delicious feeling of just slipping under the surface of sleep…
———————————————————-
Is it any wonder that the yarns I’ve put in the shop today are all of the softest, gentlest colours? Cool blues and sleepy greys that make me think of an inviting bed, of soft, dreamy light falling through sheer white curtains…
But there’s something far more exciting for the rest of you than going to sleep. Today is the day that I draw the three winners of the KnitCircus Summer 2011 Pattern Collections! First, a huge thank you to everyone who participated — I really enjoyed reading your comments and find out your favourite patterns and articles.
And now, the winners are…
vitpil
Dawn Hays
PandaLark
Congratulations! You’ve won the complete Pattern Collection from the Summer 2011 issue of KnitCircus!
Please email me at spacecadetcreations (at) gmail (dot) com with your email address (and remind me of your Ravelry name), and I’ll pass your details onto Jaala Spiro at KnitCircus so she can send you the collection. Enjoy!
Someone… who shall remain nameless… Someone in our house is celebrating a birthday this week. A big, BIG birthday. The sort of age you know you’ll get to someday, but you never really believe you’ll ever reach. A tough birthday …but a fun birthday.
So, on Sunday, we had a big family celebration, and it was a fantastic day. You can imagine the scene in your mind: a table spread with amazing food, glasses filled deep with buttery white wine, a luscious chocolate cake covered in strawberries… And everywhere, everywhere that beautiful, dreamy, glowing light of a summer’s afternoon, gently dappled as it falls through the trees. It was a glorious day, and a glorious start to a new decade.
Today’s shop updates are yarns that evoke beautiful, lazy, summer days. Days filled with good food and plentiful wine. Days filled with golden sunshine, and evenings of glorious twilight. Even if it’s not your birthday this week, you deserve a little celebration too…
Congratulations! Send me a quick email to spacecadetcreations (at) gmail (dot) com to confirm your correct email address, and I will pass your info onto Leslie and Rock&Purl Ruth.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
(…and just to let you know that we’ve got some more great contests coming up in the near future, so stick around! If you’d like to hear about them first, be sure to subscribe to the blog, using the subscription box over there in the right-hand column)
Last week, I asked you guys to give me your questions and tell me what intimidates you about hand-dyed yarns. And I loved the responses — I got some great food for thought, and you guys prompted me to ask a couple of experts to contribute to the ebook and answer some of your questions. Exciting stuff!
And that post has started several really interesting conversations with friends about their approach to hand-dyed yarns. In each of these conversations, there have been some saying they are always trying to avoid pooling, and there are others saying that they just sit back and go where-ever the yarn takes them — treating it as an adventure, a journey to be traveled, whether the yarns pools or not. I have to admit, I loved hearing that because, as a dyer, that’s how my creative process often feels too — a little adventurous, a little out of control. Sometimes I’m in charge and the colours follow my lead, but sometimes… sometimes it’s better to stop controlling and just go where-ever the colour takes me. Sometimes it takes me to some really beautiful places.
The Beauty of Pooling (…no, really!)
And pooling can be the same way too. Yes, absolutely, sometimes pooling can be horrible — just horrible — and I totally get why knitters and crocheters strive to avoid it. But sometimes pooling can take a really exciting turn that gives spectacular — and unexpected — results.
Take this scarf for example, knit by my friend Megan. Now, we’ve all seen pooling that forms diamond patterns before, but I have to say I’ve never seen a more perfect and even example than this. And though this was entirely unintentional, it adds so much to the scarf — gives it a real feeling of fun and adventure. In fact, she liked it so much that when she switched to her second skein of yarn, Megan was really careful to join it in such a way that the argyle-pooling continued uninterrupted all the way to the end of the scarf. Spectacular!
So, ok… being surprised by nice, evenly repeating pooling along a nice, even rectangle is one thing, but when you get patterned pooling on a shaped project like a hat, that is really something. Here’s a one that Megan knit (that woman has some kind of uncanny pooling gift, I tell ya!) for a little girl with brain cancer, and when I saw the pooling, I nearly fell off my chair. Check out the pictures — this is not colourwork, this is the yarn just pooling in a beautiful way. I love the way the stripes work through the colours and then back out again in reverse order, and they stay in that formation right up until they hit the sharpest decreases in the crown. Amazing!
But what if stripes and argyle-diamonds aren’t your thing? Well, check out this shawl by Karrie of KnitPurlGurl.com. Because it’s crocheted instead of knit, the stitches move the colours about in a different way… and it produces small squares of pooled colour that look to me just like tiled mosaic. Honestly, I can’t take my eyes off it! Breathtaking!
.So, have you ever had a project start to pool in a really beautiful way? Did you love it? And did you do anything special to encourage the pooling?
——————————————————————————————————–
Pattern Giveaway
Don’t forget, there’s only a few days left to enter the Pattern Giveaway to win beautiful shawl patterns from RockandPurl and Leslie Thompson. Click here to see the patterns and get entered!
