Stripes

We started back to school the last few weeks of August, DD in her 3rd year of college, DS in his second of high school, DH his 29th of teaching, and me on year 20. The apples start ripening this time of year, so I suppose that is where the ‘Apple for Teacher’ thing began. Pair that with an old fashioned slate chalkboard, and you have our color for this month’s yarn and fiber subscription box.

Our fiber is Shetland, a wool that makes me think of fall for some reason. I really wanted crisper colors than a gradient or variegated would give me, so I decided to kettle dye each color separately and assemble them into a pack for you. There are so many possibilities for combining these, let your creativity roam! You could hold colors together to make a marled single, you could design a fractal or striping yarn. You could spin each separately and combine them in your project with the yarn. You could get out your combs, hackle, carders, or blending board and make your own special combed top or rolags. Have fun, and be sure to share with us in the Club thread on Ravelry, on Facebook, or Instagram!

The yarn this month is Safari, a great sturdy 3 ply made of superwash Corriedale wool and nylon that wears like iron. I designed a striping pattern for it that reminds me a bit of notebook paper, a much needed school supply. The sample shown is 64 stitches, it’ll stripe a bit wider if you use less stitches or snugger tension, a bit narrower if you use more stitches or looser tension. Because the pattern isn’t too busy, you could use a variety of sock patterns for this, there are a lot of fun ones to make stripes do interesting things.

Want to join in the fun? I have openings in Tiger Sock Club and Tiger Fiber Club (and even combinations, just jet me a message!).

While this picture captures the inspiration pretty well, I was actually inspired this month by last November’s Receding Twilight. I wanted to make something that would go with it, particularly with the fiber (see below). I started with the deep blue of Receding Twilight, then pushed the color into blue purple and finally out to a deep pink leaning purple.

Our fiber is luxurious 60% Polwarth wool and 40% Bombyx Silk. I managed to squeeze 3 ounces of this goodness into club, and I’m glad I did. It’s gorgeous and shiny and soft. It should make a good addition to the tail end of your Receding Twilight, or will be great on its own, or as a border with something else you have.

I’m still not happy with this picture, the yarn looks much more like the purple parts of the fiber above, with bits of the deep blue peeking through. Ah, well….I can’t win all the time at photo editing.

Anyway, this is another new yarn I wanted to try. It’s a blend of 60% Merino Wool, 20% Baby Alpaca, and 20% Nylon. It isn’t superwash, but it held up very well to dyeing, and should make good socks (keeping in mind negative ease, as both merino and alpaca like to ‘grow’). Otherwise, this mottled semi-random kettle dye could make a great edging on your Receding Twilight project, or stand on its own.

Tiger Club is open for August, I have a number of fiber spots open, and one more sock spot. Join us!

I’m finding it very amusing that the color title is this, and I’m finally getting around to posting this reveal! June continues the theme of this year related to water (because we sure still have a lot of it here in the Midwest)! I changed the color sampling on this one, see your club note for my color picks….the blues are similar, but I went for the gray metal of the boat, a bit more peachy tan on the paddles, and obviously the glorious coral of the faded boat interior.

The fiber is a new one for club, Dorset Horn. It’s actually a threatened breed, as the polled (non-horn) are generally more popular for farmers. You can read more about them at the Livestock Conservancy. The wool has an irregular crimp and twist to it, which encourages loft and bounce even when spun worsted, and it resists felting. It’s a medium wool, your tolerance to itch factor will determine what you want it to be. I’m thinking socks, at which point I think I might do a combo spin on this…..tear it into much smaller pieces and grab randomly (or color ordered if you prefer), then chain ply to make stripes. You make it do what you want, you are the boss of your fiber.

Our yarn is a new version of an old favorite, Panda. This version leaves out the nylon, because really….you already have the Bamboo rayon in there. This leaves room for more wool, which lends more bounce and memory. This is also spun thinner, so there’s more yardage to play with. Finally, the skein put up is several inches more around, which gives me more options on color placement. I like it, I hope you do, too.

Tiger Sock Club is full for July, but I can still take a few fiber club members. Stop by if you are interested, Club is open through the 15th. (Kaspersky insists my club page is some sort of risk, if your antivirus says the same, I assure you it just has a bunch of PayPal buttons on it!)

May has been one wet month here in the Midwest along the Mississippi….and we’ve had a few of these storms, where the plants take on an eerie vibrancy, and the sky is all blue and black and grey (and cheerful and white and fluffy in the middle!). It’s a great subject for our May yarn and fiber.

The yarn is an old favorite of mine, Bengal, which is a nice round 4 ply of 100% Superwash BFL. The longer fibers of the Blue Face Leicester sheep make for a sturdy, yet soft yarn. I folded the yarn and basically painted on this picture, so the color sections are shorter and repeat twice. I can’t wait to see how socks in different stitch numbers and gauges work up.

The wool is also 100% Superwash BFL. I also folded the fiber and painted on the landscape. Be sure to hold your hands a little further apart for BFL, and if you find it too slippery (superwash does that), try pulling off a chunk and spinning from the fold. This is also a good option if you want to rearrange the colors. Go ahead, I really don’t mind!!

Not in club? I have one sock spot, and a couple of fiber spots open through June 15th. Stop by and join!

Throughout April, our family had been eagerly awaiting a certain huge movie release, so a name jumped out at me when it came time to name this month’s fiber (based on the above picture of multi-colored doors). I chose to ge with four colors, a blue sky turquoise, lemony yellow, a pretty pink coral, and a purply fuschia. I allowed the colors to blend together at transitions to get all the other colors of the spectrum.

The fiber for April is Wensleydale. While many fibers have a variety of ways to be spun, Wensleydale is really happiest spun thin, in worsted technique, with lower twist and ply. If too much twist is added, it makes the ends poke out and it gets prickly. The staple length is longer, so get your hands further apart. I really love the color blending that happened on this fiber.

For the yarn this month, I’ve been experimenting with different patterns. I wanted to do a gradient over matching 50 gram skeins, but I wanted a little more variation than just the gradient. So I added a grey stripe in there, as it fit with the theme. I love playing with the tool on Planned Pooling for experiments like this. Above is my prototype.

I’m super pleased with how it turned out. The yarn is Journey, a 4 ply Superwash Merino and Nylon blend, with plenty of yardage (~460 yards), in this case split between two matching 50 gram skeins. Due to the method of winding and dyeing, there are only two matching sets in the world, each turned out a bit different. Shown is one repeat, there are 4-5 repeats per set, so you don’t have to worry about using up the whole thing to get the entire gradient. I think this would be fun as ankle socks for summer. If you used a solid for toes and heels, you might even get two pairs of ankle socks from it. (Let me know if you want a matching mini or two!)

Tiger Club is currently open for new subscriptions, you can stop by the shop and sign up now!

March is a season of sunny skies and storm clouds. It seemed fitting to choose this picture from collection of ‘shelter pictures’, with the cool blue door and concrete, and the bright wall and citrus. A Tropical Delivery!

The wool is Superwash Corriedale, a great all purpose medium fine wool. I chose to dye it in a blended gradient so that you had the most options in spinning it. Please take it apart and make it do what you want. I love the way the fiber (and superwash treatment) made a natural resist and lead to more colors than I started with.

The yarn is also Superwash Corriedale wool, blended with nylon to make Safari Sock yarn. The striping pattern plays the gold and orange against the blue and grey, enlivened by a springy lime green. The sample here is a 64 stitch tube.

Would you like to enjoy a surprise yarn and/or fiber every month? There are a few spots open in Tiger Club, we’d love to have you join us!

As you’ll see later in this post, sometimes the yarn or fiber selection leads the inspiration process. With the fiber having a high contrast, I wanted the colors to work with that. I started thinking of what would be fun with a bunch of bright colors against dark, and ran a search for Paisleys. It did not disappoint, this tie has just the vibe I was going for.

Our yarn is Titanium Tiger Twist, a two ply blend of soft superwash merino fortified with nylon and a healthy hosiery twist. I dyed the background a nice uneven kettle dyed navy blue, then worked in orange, yellow, turquoise, and pink-purple on the undyed parts. The idea is to get a reverse speckle effect. Here’s the yarn:

I was hoping to show you a completed sock, but life got in the way this week. Here’s my swatch, though….it shows you how the speckle might work up (it will vary depending on your gauge and stitch number, just like any variegated yarn).

As I said earlier, the fiber was leading the way in color decisions. I used Jacob Humbug. Jacob is the sheep below. If you remember your Bible stories, Jacob made a deal with his FIL that he could keep any spotted sheep born of the flock. Humbug is the prep of this combed top, and just means they separated the colors of wool and combed them, then made a final pass with the colors together, so they stay in bold stripes.

I kept the dark brown as the background color, then variegated bright orange, yellow, turquoise, and a pink-purple, then generously smooshed everything so that it would blend and give us greens and darker blues and yellow oranges, and even pinks where the purple split. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

This particular Jacob wool is on the rough side of medium, so I’d suggest making something outerwear, and/or lining it with something softer. It would make a colorful hat or boot toppers, be great for mittens thrummed or lined with soft wool inside, or maybe make some potholders in your favorite fiber method…knit, weave, crochet, felt….

Thanks for being a part of February Club. Would you like to join in the fun? I have a few spots open for March, but grab yours fast….March 15th is the last day to join and I’ll start dyeing on the 16th.