This very pretty bird of many colors is native to Southern and Eastern Africa, and in African culture considered the bird of peace. This particular angle and palette selection focuses in on the blues, pinks, and purples of this fine specimen.
The fiber this month is another roving, this time a reclaimed 50/50 blend of wool and rayon, a nice cool blend for summer with a fun cottony feel. Both fibers are short, so you might prefer to do a short draw on this one, or make some rolags (or fauxlags) to give you better control if attempting long draw. I dyed this layed out in a diagonal pattern across a rectangular pan, then dyed across in stripes for regularly changing colors that taper at each end, one end favoriting purple, the other blue.
For the yarn, I tried a more free approach, scrunching the skeins with a half twist, applying the colors in short stripes across, then flipping and applying stripes on the reverse, but offset from the first side. It made for some nice blending of colors, and a more random watercolor look overall, and each skein and definitely each batch is unique. I didn’t have a chance to swatch this yet, but I did ball it, and you can see it isn’t showing any regular patterns in the ball.
This is a new sock yarn for us, it’s similar to Journey, but a 3 ply, and from a different supplier. Let me know what you think of it.
Interested in joining the fun? Sock Club is now open for new subscriptions through July 15th. Fiber Club is full for now, but you may send a message through the shop to be on the waitlist and have first dibs at any spots that open up.
After the April showers take last month with Red Umbrella, I felt some May Flowers were appropriate. I liked this grouping of tulips, with the bright pink-red, a bold orange, a calming gold, a leaf green, and a barely there celadon.
While these colors do work well in a gradient context, they were also perfect to pull out the Safari 4 Ply Mini Skeins I’ve been itching to use. I did a multi-pour with these, ironically to bring out some color variation as they seemed to want to be solids (so boring, lol!). I was pleased to see some fun speckling show up in the colors that used one of the yellow dyes, sometimes it’s ok if the dye doesn’t want to dissolve all the way when mixing!
In keeping with the yarn being in a bit different form, I pulled out this fun New Zealand Romney Combed Sliver, which is a different prep than our usual Combed Top. Sliver ends up being thinner than top, so I doubled it up in the dyepot, and braided it up doubled, you can easily separate the two to make a 2 ply yarn, or just leave them together and spin across as usual. Romney began as the Romney Marsh breed in Kent, England (with hardy feet sturdy coat up to the wet and marshy area), further improved by breeding with leicester sheep. Romneys took easily to life in New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, and also the United States. The sheep are popular as a dual use sheep, including heavy fleeces that are generally a consistent medium micron throughout, with nice locks, uniform crimp, and beautiful luster. It takes dye like a champ, and is quite fun and easy to spin, I often recommend it for beginners. As carded sliver, it is also great for intermediate spinners wanting to practice long draw techniques, this one will be great for supported long draw.
A bit of a riff on that old adage “April Showers bring May Flowers”, I present Red Umbrella. I chose a nice strong red, and then added the shadow of black next to it….both to get some of the maroon color in the suggested palette, and to prevent purple. I then mixed up a bright cheery royal blue and a moody Navy blue.
The yarn is Safari, a great 75/25 SW Corriedale Wool and Nylon blend in a sturdy 3 ply. I dyed this in a double reflected pattern, which should mini spiral stripe on socks (depending on stitch count and pattern). The blue areas were dyed in an opposing hot pour, so they’ll randomly alternate throughout.
The fiber is Shetland, a lovely wool that feels softer than it’s medium micron count, and takes the dye beautifully. I dyed this in a down and back variegated pattern, feel free to re-engineer the colors to do what YOU want them to do!
It’s been unseasonably warm the past few weeks, and the neighbor’s hills are covered with Muscari, commonly known as Grape Hyacinth. Typically they are purple, but I’ve chose these blue ones, and brightened the whole palette up to be very spring like.
The fiber is Hoof and Leaf, a blend of Whiteface Woodland Wool, Ramie, Llama, and Bamboo. The fibers take different amounts of the dye (or none at all), adding interesting shading to this simple colorway. The staple length of these fibers should be comparable so you can spin from the end, but you may find you have better control spinning from the fold. I dyed a blended gradient to give you the most options for working with the colors.
The yarn is MTBN Sock, a premium soft yarn of SW Merino, Tussah Silk, Bamboo, and Nylon. Since the colors are analogous (next to each other on the color wheel), I was able to be more free in color placement, and chose a hot pour method, allowing the colors to blend on the yarn. It should knit up fairly randomly, or at least any patterning won’t last long.
Happy knitting and spinning, and thank you for being a part of March’s Tiger Club!
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I don’t know about you, but I could use something fun and bright! This Flamingo Floatie brought a big grin to my face!
Finn, or more properly Finnish Landrace, is the fiber for February. Most notable of the breed it that they tend to throw ‘litters’ of 3-7 lambs, and are thus used in crossing some of the newer breeds of sheep to improve lambing numbers. The wool is on the fine side of medium, with high luster. I like this spun worsted to bring out the shine, but it’ll be happy with a woolenish spin, too. I know you are probably tired of hearing it….but make these colors do what you want!
Soft Sock is the yarn, 90/10 Superfine SW Merino and Recycled Nylon. I dyed this in a double down and back for stacking or spiral stripes, and let the yarn resist itself to bring in the blinding dapples of the sun. These will definitely be cheerful socks!
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What’s better than rich creamy chocolate and tangy cherries? Yum. Although I’m afraid this particular image I found on Pinterest is possibly an AI image of ‘Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake’ (or at least augmented with the little cherry bits), no recipe was actually attached to the Pin, and well….that brownie looking layer on the creamy filling doesn’t seem possible unless you are layering that later. I did find a recipe that quite look good, check that out here.
Anyway, I’ve done some choco cherry in the past and while they were ‘nice’, they didn’t quite have the dark ‘punch’ I wanted. I also wanted the colors to have a chance to ‘do their thing’ in the dyepot, so instead of starting with brown and leaning it the way I wanted, I mixed up two browns from scratch, one with a pink base, another with red, both with good swacks of yellow and navy. I similarly mixed up a pink based red (did you know magenta + yellow = red?), and a red based red deepened with complementary colors.
To achieve the depth of color I wanted, I’d have to start with careful selection of the base yarn and fiber. This calls for Superwash, as the process to knock off the scales that can felt also opens up the spots where dye can bind. I had the perfect pairing of yarn and fiber for this purpose.
The fiber is a blend of 80% Superwash Merino and 20% Nylon. My supplier is touting these as recycled, however this isn’t deconstructed sweaters, but simply mill ends of the fibers, perhaps sourced from a number of places, that were re-carded and combined to create a lovely top. It’s still wonderful that they’ve turned a potential waste product into a more valuable product. I dyed this with the 4 colors in a double down and back method with roughly the same amounts of the reds and browns. Strip this down longways and spin stripes, spin as is and ply on itself for long swaths of color, or divide it up to do what you want. I do have several more braids of fiber if any club members are interested, otherwise they will be released to the shop in May or so.
The yarn is one I debuted last January, Safari 4 ply. It’s the same composition as my favorite Safari (75/25 SW Wool/Nylon), but has a 4 ply construction and is thinner overall, great for lighter socks that will fit in regular shoes. I also dyed this in a doubled down and back method, perhaps a bit more obvious here:
And here it is balled up….yummy!
My intent was to get spiraled stripes when this was knit into socks or mitts. I finally had a chance to throw this at my knitting machine, and I think I did indeed succeed!
And now I have a conundrum. While I like the thinner stripes at the top of this swatch (64 stitches around at about 8.5 stitches per inch), and that is what would fit my feet, I’m really loving the thick chonky stripes at the bottom where I was using 72 stitches. I think what I will do is try this on my circular sock machine where I can set stitches to rib down the entire foot. That would give me space for my heel (where the ribbing would stop in order to short row), and tighten up the rest. That’s a project to swatch for another day! All my measuring and calculations are not in vain, I have last year’s Sea Nettles also on Safari 4 ply to knit up, and since it’s a true gradient it will be fine at any stitch count.
Today is the last day to sign up for February Tiger Club, if you’d like to join the fun please learn about the clubs, then contact me through the website and I’ll send you a link to sign up. Thanks for joining me for a decadently delicious Tiger Club!
While the dandelion (Taraxacum) with shimmery water droplets did inspire the fiber, the colors themselves are loosely inspired by the bokeh color background of these little seed heads (cypsela). I decided to intensify the colors to make them a little easier to dye, since I did have a bit of a time crunch with the holidays and being a musician.
For fiber, I selected this really fun humbug (which means only blended one or twice so there are large streaks of the fibers) of Blue Faced Leicester and Firestar, which I dubbed BFL Firebug. It was really fun to see the way the sparkly nylon really sucked up the dye, and the BFL was more subtle. This may require a little extra attention when spinning, the nylon will want to slip out easily giving you bits of pure firestar yarn. With some care in drafting across, you can be sure to grab some wool with the sparkle. And of course you can blend it further, do faux or true rolags, rip up and reorder, or whatever your heart fancies.
Yes, I’m absolutely crazy. I made sock blanks. I couldn’t help it, I wanted this gradient for you. This is a double stranded blank of our classic Journey Sock Yarn. Simply remove that white loop of thicker yarn from the end row of stitches on the purple end and cast on for Two at a Time socks, or knit one and ball the other (handy if you have a way to make a center pull). Because I like complicated, I’m tempted to ball both of mine, halve them, and alternate every two rows, lining up the yellow with the purple, blue with the orange, and green with the pink. You could also alternate with a solid (white, black, navy, grey?) and use the same for toes/heels/cuffs and easily get two pairs of socks from this skein.
If you want to unwind the entire blank, I suggest finding a way to unwind this blank from the side, as that is how it was knit (with one of those circular hat machines). You can load it on your umbrella swift, putting the blue section around the middle, then folding it back and forth over itself until you get to the purple bit (you’ll need to cut that safety loop to be able to stretch it over). You could also try this with a loose lampshade, or even a box mounted on a lazy susan. Get creative, I’m sure you have something you can do to feed this off the side. Then if you have another swift with solid arms, you can put a finger between the two ends of yarn and wind off into two separate skeins. Or just wind off by hand. If you make skeins, be sure you either ball from there, or put in 4 ties before you remove it from swift or box, it’s going to be very boingy from those knitting kinks. You can give your skeins a bath and hang them to dry again to relax this crimp.
Interested in joining Tiger Club? I do have spots open in all clubs, please contact me to subscribe.
Living in the upper Mid-West, we do appreciate our evergreens for providing some color throughout winters that are either very brown or very white! I’ve always been fond of the scaled needles and bright blue berries of Junipers.
Our yarn for November happened a bit accidentally, I was trying out a new supplier and totally missed that these came 5 in a bag instead of the usual 10 (read that fine print, and if the price seems too good to be true…), so I’ve been holding onto these for a while deciding whether to dye these for the shop, or for Club. You all deserve a little luxury, so meet a beautiful blend of extra fine Superwash Merino Wool, Mulberry Silk, and Cashmere.
I dyed this in a double down and back pattern to puddle into lazy spiral stripes up socks, however this is a very soft yarn, you may prefer to use this for something that will experience less wear, like leg warmers, mitts, a shawlette, or simply reinforce wear areas by holding in a sturdier yarn…extra cushioned toes, heels, and soles sure sound nice for this time of year!
Our fiber is also a special one, it’s a blend of 50% Polwarth, 30% dehaired Llama, and 20% Tussah Silk. I let the brown llama fiber take the place of the darker purple-brown-black background bit in the inspiration picture, and simply dyed a blended gradient of light to dark blue then dark green to light green.
Because of the varying fiber lengths in this blend, you may need to modify your spinning so you don’t pull all of one particular fiber out at a time. Leaving plenty of room between your hands will help with the silk and llama and hopefully the Polwarth will follow along. Some strategic pinching can help with your worsted spinning across the braid, or if you’d rather go woolenish with this, I’d suggest spinning from the fold or making rolags….either Fauxlags, or use your hand cards or blending board. You could ply this with something else or chain ply to maintain the gradient, or I think it would be fun to ply on itself, the light and dark greens matching up to the light and dark blues.
Tiger Club is taking new subscriptions by waitlist only at this time to be sure I have the materials and time to add each new Club Member. If you are interested, do check out the Tiger Club info page and use the contact form to sign up!
The sun bursting through this bunch of grapes was so eye catching I just had to make it! Concord has the burst of sunny gold, rich sagey green, and three very different shades of purple.
The fiber is Rambouillet, also known as ‘French Merino’. Although the breed first appeared in Spain, it was fully developed in France by crossing the Spanish Merinos with native French Sheep. The breed was also popular in the United States from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. I personally like this merino breed wool the best (compared to straight Merino, Targhee, Polwarth, and the like) with it’s fine fiber that has quite a lot of bounce and loft to it, and it also tends to be quite white, perfect for dyeing.
This blended gradient would be great spun straight (as either a regular or N-ply), but would also look great as a fractal. I always encourage you to follow your heart and make the colors do what you want.
Our yarn is a new one to us, Falkland Twist. It’s 80% fine Falkland Merino, and 20% nylon, in a two ply with a good strong hosiery twist and ply. What’s Falkland? It’s a wool pool from the Falkland Islands, the sheep are specially selected for the fineness and whiteness of their wool, as they are Merino type, the sheep look similar to the Rambouillet pictured above.
I dyed this the same way I did last month’s, in a double down and back. This way the colors are more likely to pool up in skinny stripes or wider diagonal striping on socks, depending on your stitch count, gauge, and pattern.
I do have some spots available in Tiger Club, due to the busy-ness of the upcoming season I’ll be adding new members via waitlist only. Please check out the club in the shop, then use the Contact form to drop me a line with what you are interested in, and I’ll get you in as soon as it is feasible!
You know I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work a bit of a rainbow into the year! I went for fall colors of rusty mum orange and gold, a rich green, a deep teal, and a very pink purple. It’s a little less literal than I typically do, but the colors seemed right, and I’m pleased with how it turned out.
Our fiber was the perfect one to make these colors really pop. Wensleydale is a fun mop of a sheep when allowed a full year’s growth. The long locks are wonderfully shiny, and feel softer that the 30-40 micron count suggests.
I dyed this in a long blended gradient, where the wool itself provided some resist, and was allowed to meander a bit for color blending. Due to the long staple length of Wensleydale, do keep your hands further apart when drafting. I do suggest worsted spinning for this, smoothing the ends into the yarn (this will also reduce any lingering scratchiness). You could split this lengthwise to spin two plies (this would make a lovely lace yarn), or ply it with something else, perhaps a deep brown or a color from the braid to tie it all together?
To mirror the lovely sheen in the wool, I chose Bengal as our sock yarn. Another long wool, Blue Faced Leicester (affectionately known as BFL) is the star. They are a very distinctive sheep with their long curved snout and long ears. The ‘blue’ comes from the grey you can see coming though around this animal’s neck. Their wool has a lovely crimpy curl to it.
I knew I wanted to give these colors a chance to pool up, because this many all random just kind of makes mud. So I went for a doubled down and back pattern, which you can see more clearly here:
I did a hot pour for this, and did not flip it to minimize color creep. Each batch (and sometimes even skeins within a batch) came out a bit different, with more or less of each color. To see if my plan for pooling worked, I did some swatching:
There’s two here, as I couldn’t see what it was coming out like while it was on the machine, and I wanted to fill in a stitch count upon seeing the results. The bottom left area with the widest pooling spiral stripes is 72 stitches. Now, at this gauge, that’s too big for my feet. However, I may try it with my Legare CSM (Circular Sock Machine) using ribbing all down the leg and top of the foot. However, the swatch to the right of this (under the ball) is 68 stitches and still stacks nicely, so that may be an option. My preferred 64 is in the middle on the left, and while it is striping (and how I originally planned), I like the wider stripes better. Again, I can work with a pattern to use up a little more yarn per row to get it. And the final top section on the left is 60 stitches, and could nearly pass for a striping yarn with the colors nearly horizontal. Another decrease of 4 or 8 would devolve the pattern into a more muddy random pattern, until it gets small enough around to puddle up again (and would spiral in the opposite direction).
Thanks for going along on this fall journey! There are spots open in all Tiger Sock Yarn and Spinning Fiber Clubs through October 15th if you’d like to get in on the fun!
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