My Box of "Crayons"

If you’re just landing here, you’ve got some catching up to do.  Check out the previous two posts to get up to speed!

One of the things that I love about Carla is her love of color.  She puts beautiful colors together onto yarn, and then when knitters purchase her hand painted yarns, they can effortlessly watch the beauty flow past their fingertips as they knit or crochet.  I love that, but am a bit more of a control freak when it comes to how color works in my projects.

I love to plan exactly where each bit of color goes, and place it specifically in my projects.

We’ve decided to marry my love of Fair Isle knitting with the colors that we created in the studio. 

One of our concerns about Welcome home is that it is an artisanal yarn, and is a bit pricier than yarns you can easily find in a big box store.  It is priced at $26 for the undyed skeins and $29 for the dyed skeins putting it right where it should be compared to other yarns that have been created with a similar process.  My concern for the pricing was that I’d want to use MANY colors, and that a simple accessory project would require a significant investment to get the colors I’d want.

Carla and I talked it over, chatted with some friends about our concerns and decided to do things a little bit different for this run of yarn.

We’re pairing a pattern with a kit that has lots of bits of color. . .they’ll be priced competitively, and for now only available in person at the shows we have this spring.  Any extra skeins left over after we’ve kitted things up the way we like will be sold individually, and we think they’re going to go quickly. 

The first kit we’ll have is of a pattern I released several years ago, and have just re-named and will be re-released.

Marquette (formerly I Heart Fair Isle) is a more advanced Fair Isle pattern that keeps a knitter quite chart dependent, as the motifs in the hat don’t have short repeats that can easily be memorized.  This is not a project for social knitting, but the results are incredible.  When I wrote the pattern, I used only a few colors of yarn, but for our kit, we’ll be using seven different colors to give you a full rainbow to top off even the greyest of winter days.  I've even added an extra chart to the kit to help you know where to change colors for the best effect.

Are you looking for a full box of crayons?  This is the pattern for you.  I love the way the natural brown plays against the kettle dyed colors.  For our sample, I knit it in the rainbow order that would have made my thirteen-year-old self extra happy, but there is enough yarn in the kit to put the colors in whatever order makes your heart sing.  I honestly don’t think you can go wrong with color placement here.  Carla’s attention to color values makes this kit a home run.   Plan your colors, or surprise yourself by choosing a color randomly, and you’ll have a hat that makes you look and feel like a color superstar.

There are a few other kits up our sleeve that I’ll share with you later this spring that are a little bit simpler in their knitting and less complex in their color choices, but this one?  This one is my favorite.  I hope you love it as much as we do.

As I mentioned, for now, these kits will be available at Yarn Con, Ann Arbor Fiber Expo, and Carla will take some to the Ply Away Retreat.  We will also have some in person (assuming we can keep them in stock) at the Black Sheep Knitting Guild meeting in early April where we’ll be sharing more about this sheep to skein project.

We didn’t intend for this to be a limited run, but we’re testing the waters with Welcome Home this year.  Our suspicion is that you’re going to love it as much as we do, and we’ll buy Mary’s entire clip of fleece next year.  For now, mark your calendars, and make a plan to come and see us. 

If you haven’t signed up for my email newsletter yet, and you’re thinking you’re going to want a kit, you may want to take a second and do that now.  Any kits we have left over will be listed on etsy, and my newsletter will let you know exactly when that’s going to happen.  If you're a newsletter subscriber, you'll also see a coupon code for a new pattern this spring.  You won't want to miss out.

I'm headed today to Chicago, I look forward to seeing some of you this weekend!

P.S.  Head over to CraftSanity, I was told there'd be a video about Welcome Home that I'll bet you'd like to listen to!

Trust the Process

Where were we? Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me Explain.  No, there is too much, let me sum up.”

We sourced fleece, had it spun into yarn, and then set about dyeing it in cjkoho Design’s studio.  (For the longer version, look at Monday's post.)

Carla and I talked about the colors we wanted, and decided on a palatte of kettle dyed semi-solids to go along with the natural grey and dark brown.  We thought six colors that worked with each other would be perfect.  The natural colors would round that out and we’d have a full spectrum to knit with.

I’m going to be honest here.  With the tie dye that Princess Monkey Toes has made for her scholarship fundraiser, we’ve purchased dyes, mixed them up, and dyed according to the directions.  She did a pretty great job of things, and her mom and I felt proud to help her achieve so much last summer.  She made beautiful items that sold across the country and she was able to send a girl to MichFest with her earnings.  (There are still a few pieces in my etsy shop if the thought of spring and tie dye has you looking for a fresh piece for your wardrobe.)

This, my friends, is not how professional fiber artists roll.

There is a PROCESS.

There is mixing.

Dark blue does not come right out of the powder, it is CREATED by the fiber artist by mixing just the right amount of this, with the right amount of that.

Much like with knitting, where we swatch to see if we like a stitch pattern, in dyeing there is sampling too.  Carla carefully measures and mixes and drops just a touch of color on a filter to see if it matches her expectations.

I kid you not, folks.  She is particular about her colors.   Do you see the slight differences in the reds here?

None of them met her expectations.   We started all over again when these didn’t work out.

Once the colors were determined, Carla used her formulas to measure just the right amount of dye for the number of skeins we planned to dye.  I wouldn’t be that far off in comparing her to a scientist at this point.  The yarn is soaked, raised to a certain temperature, color added, heat added, then it needs to cool, be rinsed and washed, and dried, and put into skeins.

It is a very precise and labor intensive process.

Those of you who know me personally, know that I’m not especially patient.  I pushed the process a bit and put the kettles out on the porch to cool in the cold February afternoon.  Carla rolled her eyes a bit at me, but allowed me to feed my impatient curiosity at seeing the yarn in its final state.

After the end of three long days on our feet, here is what we ended up with.

You can see that we’ve got a few more than the six colors we intended.

Carla tells me that part of the magic of dyeing is in what happens in the dye pot.  In spite of her meticulous measuring and our sampling, the dye absorbs and attaches to fiber in unique ways.  Some of the colors, while not what we expected were colors we fell in love with, so we kept them.

We will have this lovely yarn at Yarn Con on Friday (that's only a couple of days from now!!) and (if there is any left) at the Spring Ann Arbor Fiber Expo April 9-10.  Come out and see me!

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the next part is pattern support.  I’ll tell you more about that next time.

P.S.  Pattern updates are happening soon!  Now's your chance to grab previously published patterns at a lower rate.

Welcome Home

I wrote almost a couple of weeks ago about the lists I’ve been making and trying to finish up before Yarn Con, but what I haven’t written about are some of the things I’ve already finished.

During my last school vacation, I spent some time working with Carla of cjkoho Designs on a project that we’ve been collaborating on since August.

A dear friend, Mary, cares for a small flock of sheep on the west side of Michigan.  I’ve purchased a few fleeces from her in the past, and love the Blue Faced Leister/Romney cross sheep that she has in her flock.  It’s truly a dream to spin, and I love that I know the shepherd, and feel connected to her flock as though they are somehow friends by extension.

Carla and I visited with Mary this fall at the Michigan Fiber Festival, and Carla, too, fell in love with the fleece.  So much so, that we grabbed up all eight that Mary brought to show us. . .and we fought off people in the parking lot who were eager to see the beautiful wool and take it home themselves.  Our vision was to have all of this Michigan grown fleece processed into yarn, right here in Michigan, dyed in Carla’s studio, and then supported with patterns designed by yours truly.  The vision is to welcome our customers to the good parts of Michigan; we’ve called the yarn Welcome Home.  The process has been awesome in the way that only projects that push you to grow can be.

This labor of love, from the state we love is being released to the public at Yarn Con in just a few days, and we were interviewed about it by Jennifer at CraftSanity when we met up at MidWest CraftCon in Columbus. . .but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m one of those “shop local” people.  I love to go to locally owned stores.  I don’t mind paying a bit more for ethically produced products.  We buy organic when we can. . .you get the idea.  I don’t snub big box stores completely, there are certainly reasons to shop with larger corporations too, but I have bought into the idea that my local dollars spent locally help my neighbors and friends who own businesses locally.

It’s another reason I love going to fiber festivals.  I can meet the artists who dyed the yarn, I can see photos of the sheep that grew the fleece, and maybe meet the farmers who raised them.  Even if the dyers don’t live in my little town just outside of Detroit, that connection is important to me.  Friends in fiber.  Knit from the same cloth. (Yes, that horrible pun was intentional.  Go with me.)

I’ve never really complained much about the cost of hand dyed yarn, but know it’s pricier.  An artist touched it.  Worked her magic on it.  Thoughtfully created something beautiful for me to use.  It’s worth the extra cost.

What I had never done for any length of time is to spend time in the studio with one of those artists.

Holy Crow.  Is that a lot of work. 

I’ll tell you more about that in the next blog post.

P.S.  I've got a batch of patterns to look at in my inbox fresh from the tech editor and graphic artist I'm working with.  Some of which are refreshed patterns already in my Ravelry library.  If you've been thinking about one of them, now is the time to add them.  Next week, all customers will get an update, and the price will go up.  Take a look!