Gimme Gimme Gimme Your Questions About Hand-Dyed Yarns!

I’ve been working on a lot of things that have got me pretty excited lately — things that I hope will help us to bring you more of the best and most beautiful yarns that we can create.  And, for one of those things, I really need your help….

I’ve been putting together an eBook, a little guide to choosing and using hand-dyed yarns.  Because they can be really special things, hand-dyed yarns, can’t they?  Beautiful, enticing, intoxicating, and… sometimes overwhelming.  When you first see them, you want to dive in the colours.  When you hold them, the colours change as they catch the light.  And when you cast them on, the results can be absolutely spectacular…  or sometimes terribly disappointing.  Yep, there is a real art to using hand-dyed yarns!

hand-dyed yarn, yarn, knitting, crochet, indie dyer
Celeste Yarn in Garden In Spring

So, as I’m putting this eBook together, I’ve been trying to look at my yarns through the eyes of my customers.  I’m asking myself the questions that they have — that you have — when picking yarns and choosing colourways.  And, as I was trying to put myself in your place, trying to come up with these questions, it suddenly dawned on me… why don’t I just ask you?

Huh!  Now there’s an idea!

Fingering Yarn in Bamboo, Superwash Merino, and Nylon, in Translucence

So, when you bought your first hand-dyed variegated yarn, what questions went through your head?  Were you confident in choosing a pattern for it, or did you have trouble?  Were you worried it would pool, or did you not care?  Or maybe even hope it would pool?  Did you shy away from wildest colours or gravitate straight to them?  And did you do anything to tame them …or did you just let them rock?

When you work with beautiful, wonderful, variegated hand-dyed yarns, what are your biggest questions?  What perplexes you?  What do you wish you had a little guidance on?  Go on and tell me!  Put your questions in the comments below and you’d really be helping me out.

And if you have answers to any of the questions, leave them too!  Because I suspect that the answers are actually just as individual as the yarns that inspire them…!

hand-dyed yarn, yarn, knitting, crochet, indie dyer
Fingering Yarn in Bamboo, Superwash Merino, and Nylon, in Juicy

(Hey, by the way, I’m not guaranteeing I’ll have all the answers.  But if life is about the journey, then the journey has to start with the questions, right?  Hit me!)