Probably the most spectacular kind of sunset is this type…..all golden orange pink and purple while casting all the objects…..palm trees, cactus, barns, into stark shadow. Such Sunset Silhouettes seemed a fitting ending to 2022’s Tiger Club.
The fiber is a blend of 70% fine Merino and 30% Tencel, with the Tencel kept more in ribbons than blended with the Merino, lending another layer of interest to our colors. I split the top and dyed half the charcoal shadow color, and the other half in the bright gradient, then braided them together for presentation. You could hold them together to spin a marled single, or spin separately to ply together for a marl or separately to use as stripes (or separate projects).
The yarn is thick and bouncy Targhee Sock, and all American grown and processed yarn. To keep the idea of the silhouette, I striped this between the charcoal and the gradient….dyed as a double there and back variegated, which as you can see is stacking and spiraling nicely. Play with stitch count (or tension or needle size or pattern), you’ll find even a small change will made a difference in how the colors travel around the sock.
As I write, we’re tipping from fall to the edge of winter with fog and drizzly rain just at the edge of freezing. A wonderful day to curl up with a mug of something hot, a project to work on, and a fuzzy friend. Those friends like to be involved, and of course are so cute, so a friendly Boop! to the nose is in order! I chose this regal kitty to stand in for our own furry friends.
I mixed up a nice greyed turquoise, a golden buff, grey, and black….and of course our signature orange nose, and used a hot drizzle technique on Safari Sock Yarn (75% Corriedale wool, 25% Nylon). I wanted to keep a light hand on this, so there’s going to be a good amount of variation throughout the skein. If you want your project to be more consistent throughout, I’d suggest alternating every row or two from opposite ends of the skein. Otherwise, embrace the chaos.
The more I looked at this photo, the more it was obvious that the blended black and grey merino (last seen as Purple Highlights, July 2021) needed to be a part of this club package. I didn’t want to overdye it with the other shades, though, and was afraid of the blue and pinky orange getting muddy. I decided to create a fine fiber sampler. The Grey and Black is fine merino, straight from the mill. The buff color is 50/50 Merino Tencel, which lends a beautiful shine. The pink/orange is 19.5 micron American Merino, and the blue is American Rambouillet. I hope you enjoy deciding how to use these colors and fibers, whether it is together, or separate.
Tiger Club remains full for December (we’re musicians, so keeping things simple is the best plan at this time of year), however I do plan to open spots in January. If you’d like first dibs, do contact me to be on the wait list.
For October’s Tiger Club, I started with a basic Red, Yellow, and Blue palette, loosely inspired by this picture. I made up a deeply red magenta, a rich almost black navy, and a soft wheat yellow. I also mixed up a deep brown, and although I made the grey color, I ultimately didn’t really need to use it. My plan was to let the yellow and red make the orange, and similarly for the blue and yellow to pull in some green that is in the picture but not the palette.
The fiber is one we haven’t had before, Swaledale, which came in a natural pale grey, which I like for deep colors, it helps get rich colors without having to use an excess of dye. This British fiber is much more on the coarse side, with a micron count ranging from 35 to 45. In the undyed fiber it’s easy to see two type of fiber in here….the bulk of the fiber is the light grey and toward the 35 micron side, but it also has a lot of wiry guard hairs in black and white, and they are definitely on the 45 micron end. The fiber has a longer staple length. I’d suggest perhaps spinning this in a worsted style while smoothing the fibers, bulky, and not a lot of twist….keeping it singles or maybe doing a wrap or ply with something thinner. Think lopi type yarn. This is going to be very sturdy….but scratchy, so choose something lined, or something not on the skin like maybe boot toppers or even a fulled or woven bag.
My plan to let the colors blend and create the in-betweens was somewhat foiled….this fiber was eager to absorb the dye and didn’t let it play too much. You be able to urge more blending out of it depending on your drafting while spinning, or have some fun with blending.
The yarn is Titanium Tiger Twist, a great SW Merino/Nylon blend with a tight two ply hosiery twist. I tried a new dye technique with this one, dyeing 3 at a time in a pan, twisting the yarn to use it as a resist. On the first pass, I heat set in the burgundy, navy, and brown. Then I untwisted the yarn and dip dyed them with a golden brown color. I was not quite satisfied with the variety of blending, so then I further drizzled the skeins with a bright orange, green, and gold. The picture doesn’t quite capture the subtlety and variety of colors. I do hope to see some of these knit up in the wild. I’ll be trying this technique again, but perhaps in more analogous colors.
Tiger Club is still full and on wait list, this is because I buy supplies several months in advance, and they come in minimum unit sets which doesn’t make it easy to just add one or two at a time. I anticipate opening up a block to new subscriptions in January when I’ll be ordering supplies for the first quarter or so. In the meantime, you are welcome to contact me to be put on the waitlist.
Tiger Club for September is a sort of continuum of August’s club. We had some ‘turf’ – or forest for last month, for September we are visiting some turbulent ‘surf’ beating itself ‘On the Rocks’. I ditched the pre-selected palate as shown above, and mixed up a pale blue-grey, a deeper but dove-ish grey-blue (yes, there’s a difference!), a deep turquoise, a deeper inky blue, and finally a grey-brown for the rocks.
In August, our yarn had the tweed, but September the tweed is featured in the fiber. The blend is 33.33% each of fine Merino wool, rayon of Bamboo, and viscose Tweed bits. Neither the bamboo or tweed take up the dye (although may be a bit stained by it), with the bamboo giving a lovely shine to the overall look, and the tweed making the foam and tendrils of our waves. I expect this blend to want to separate while spinning it, I suggest using a technique such as spinning from the fold or making fauxlags to keep the fibers more together. I dyed the colors down and back again so that you can split it for a pair of something, and/or to ply to itself. This also matches how I dyed the forest inspired Northwoods Conifers, I think the two could work well together if you wanted to ply them together….or separately and use them in the same project. Just be mindful that Conifers is superwash, while On the Rocks is not, and a choose a project you’d be ok with handwashing.
The yarn is Panda 2, which is an 80/20 blend of Superwash Merino and rayon of Bamboo. It also has the lovely shine of bamboo, reminding of the sun glinting off the ocean. I also dyed this down and back for spiral striping that will change up a bit as the yarn was scrunched in the pan and a pour over technique was used, rather than precise painting. It lends to the overall organic look. I don’t have a swatch for you this month, while I did dye a skein for myself, it is on a different base and I just haven’t had a chance to do anything with it since life has been busy. It should pool/stripe similarly to the Conifer yarn, just more subtle since the colors are closer in value. My current thoughts are to use my On the Rocks as warp and Northwoods Conifers as weft and then make a long vest. I need to play with dimensions and see what the pooling will do, which may be a long process of stash and brain marinating!
I’m so glad you’ve joined me for this reveal, and thanks to those in club, it’s always a joy to come up with something new every month. We are still on waitlist for new subscriptions, you may drop me a line if you are interested in being added. If I get a few more interested in Sock Club, I can add a batch or two.
A favorite vacation destination in my life has been the Northwoods. My grandparents would take me camping and fishing at Leech Lake in Minnesota. As an adult, I’ve enjoyed many adventures in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with my husband’s family. While we do have conifers in Iowa, it’s a different balance between conifer and deciduous up there, and the air just seems fresher. For our Northwoods Conifers, I mixed up a deep blue-pine green, a medium green, and a fresh blue sky, all to layer over a natural color of wool.
The combed top for August is a wonderful blend of many colors of white, grey, and black superwash Merino wool and nylon, in a the perfect 80/20 ratio for making a yarn that can take some wear, such as for socks or mitts. The fiber was not blended all the way, leaving streaks of light and dark that lend a beautiful dappled look to our colors. I dyed this folded in half, so you may divide it more easily to make 2 matching skeins. Spin as is and chain ply the whole thing, then knit from both ends? Divide in half, then divide each half into 2 or 3 long strips for a conventional 2 or 3 ply? Or maybe something else entirely! It’s your wool, make the colors sing the way you want! This wool will be perfectly happy with pretty much any spinning technique you want to use.
To bring in some of that conifer texture, I chose Tiger Tweed for the yarn. It’s a nice soft superwash merino, flecked with brown, black, grey, and white bits of donegal. I dyed this in a down and back, with the yarn randomly squooshed in the pan (that’s highly technical) which softens the color changes. While I really love the look of this yarn, I’ll admit this isn’t my favorite for socks. Because the nylon content is concentrated in the tweed bits, the merino is left on its own, and is just going to wear faster. I advise a tight gauge if you are going for socks or mitts, and/or knit in reinforcement where you need it. However, it would be lovely in a number of other projects, so I swatched with that in mind.
It’s always helpful to see examples of hand dyed skeins and their swatches to get an idea of how to ‘read’ a skein. This particular down and back pattern did some very interesting things depending on the gauge used. This tube is 64 stitches throughout, and I loosened the tension on my knitting machine from a sock gauge of about 9 stitches per inch all the way to the largest it could go, about 6 stitches per inch (for this particular yarn).
I’ve marked on the swatch roughly where I changed tensions, and I find it very interesting, because these are really small tension differences. The bottom is the tightest tension, the one I would prefer for socks, and you can see the colors make a lazy loosely organized stripe that spirals around. As I loosened the tension, the striping got a little wider as more yarn was used per round, until suddenly the colors were stacking, the light green with the natural grey, the blue with the medium green, and the pine color with itself. I loosened the tension again, and puddling reversed directions. You can’t quite see the top due to the roll of the loose end, but at the loosest tension, the yarn went back to striping. So if you don’t like puddles, be sure to try subtly changing things….add or subtract a stitch or two, try a pattern, or change your tension/needle size. There are also a number of patterns than contain modular bits that would make these colors stack up, which might also be interesting to you. Try some things! I’d love to see what you discover this yarn can do, so please share here, on Rav, or FB or Insta.
I do have an extra of the fiber, if you are in Club and would like it, drop me a line. Otherwise it’ll be in the shop in 4 months (if I don’t spin it myself). Tiger Club is full at this time, you may send a message to be on the wait list for any spots that come up. Thank you!
It’s severe storm season, and we can’t go a hot second in Iowa without talking about the weather (wait 5 minutes….it’ll change!). This inspiration picture struck me as the right balance between bold and summery, yet could be a nice fall into winter feel. I pulled out some different colors than suggested, focusing on the purple into grey and black….with a shazam of light.
The fiber is Icelandic combed top. It’s a 34-36 micron wool, lightweight and good for felting. The fibers are long, suitable for lace spinning, or make the traditional Lopi low twist thick singles yarn, held together and relaxed into the twist by some light felting in the finishing. This wool is probably be spun worsted, but it could be fun trying to add some loft to it. The colors and micron are somewhat close to last year’s Southwest Sunset on Southdown (except Southdown is much more reluctant to felt). Think carefully, but they could be interesting used together….maybe differential shrinking in a woven project?
The yarn is Safari, and I went with a double there-and-back variegated pattern. The yarn acts as a resist against itself where folded, so it really did a nice job of catching the moody and billowing thunderheads of the inspiration picture. Your skein will be unique in the way it took the colors, and how much the blues and golds show up on each segment.
I went a little overboard with my swatch, but I always enjoy showing how a small change can make a big difference in how variegated yarns behave. If you see near the bottom of this swatch, I was knitting with a pretty firm tension, probably about as tight I can comfortably knit this yarn on my machine. See how the bold is making a bold diagonal from bottom left then off to the right? For my taste, that’s maybe too bold and regimented, and the way it is spiraling will shift with the heel and such and maybe not quite come back the same (I guess I could do an afterthought heel to avoid that). I ticked my tension dial (like loosing your gauge, or switching to bigger needles….or adding a stitch or two), and the yarn settled into a more organically soft spiral stripe, and that’s what I’ll aim for if I do socks with it. I continued to tick the tension looser, and the stripes got a little fatter. That’s probably the loosest tension I would want for socks, I’m pretty happy with the middle bit. Do experiment with your gauge, I know swatching is a dirty word, but a bit of time at the outset will give you a better idea of what your yarn will do with your gauge and stitch number….and give you an opportunity to adjust before you’ve invested time in a fancy cast on and ribbing.
Just for fun, here is last year’s Southwest Sunset with Thunderbolt. I think these could be interesting to use as a project together, which is why chose the same yarn for this color. I’d love to hear your ideas!
Tiger Club is currently full and available from the waitlist only. You may drop me a message to be added to the list and I’ll let you know when I have a spot!
With Wensleydale in hand, I knew I wanted to make a gradient for the fiber this month, and I must have the beach on my mind because this picture stood out. Is it sunrise or sunset? I went with First Light. 😉
Here’s that Wensleydale gradient, from bright coral through to grey then black. I used my dappled gradient method, so it isn’t crisp color stripes, there’s some back and forth between them.
Wensleydale likes to be spun thin and in a worsted style, smoothing the ends in while you minimize the amount of twist. This fiber is longer and has low crimp, so less twist is appropriate and keeps it from being ‘pokey’ or itchy. This will make a lovely lace yarn, or try boucle.
The yarn was a bit of a conundrum, but I settled on Targhee. It was a nice smooth and creamy canvas for the coral, grey, and black. I went really impressionistic on this one and used a hot dapple technique to create a random pattern on the yarn. This is actually much more involved than simply painting! There are at least 3 sides to the yarn….top, bottom, and inside, that need to be randomly….but systematically speckles with the liquid dye….all while up to a simmer. I’ll admit I appreciate this technique more in winter than summer, but fortunately my dye studio is in the cool basement.
As you can see, even with a system, each skein comes out a bit differently. I had some odds and ends of a different yarn and made myself some…..here is how mine is turning out in a sock tube swatch….
I’m pleased that it’s coming out in a mottled pattern as I had planned. I think this would be fun in socks or shawl or whatever paired with any of the 3 colors in it. I have some coral made up for toes/heels/cuffs for mine. If you want a mini to match, let me know!
Tiger Club is not open for new subscriptions at this time. You are welcome to join the waitlist by sending me a message. Thank you!
Time for a tasty treat! I have a number of macaron pictures saved on my inspiration board, I love the fun colors. I chose this one, but added a darker blue as a 6th colors to keep the whole thing from becoming too sweet (is there such a thing?).
On our fiber, I knew that if I did shorter color runs that the darker shades would bleed into the lighter and pretty much obliterate them. To ensure the color sections would be longer, I created a twinset of our cottony soft 19.5 Merino wool…..one have is the purples and pinks, then other half the blues. I had to show them off unbraided above…..the marbling of colors is cool! Spin them to ply together, or tear them all into color sections and combo spin…or make fun rolags. You can lighten your yarn into pastels by adding a white or pale ply, or make the yarn more dramatic with a black, navy, or deep purple ply. Remember, you are the boss of the yarn you make!
I had the itch to make some stripes….and stripes within the stripes for this yarn. I wound a skein for 3 colors sections with shop favorite Journey Sock Yarn, then variegated each section with the light and dark sections of purple, blue, and pink. The idea was to get the suggestion of stripes of cookie and filling.
I started my swatch with 72 stitches (shown at the bottom), and it made very bold stripes of the two colors with a slow spiral. I reduced the stitch count to 64 (the top half), and you can see how the spiral tightened and become thinner….more like my original vision. Each batch is going to come out a bit different as I don’t exactly measure for variegation, but it should be similar. Play with gauge, stitch number, and even stitch pattern until you find the combination that works the way you want.
I’ve put new subscriptions on hold over the summer (it helps me plan better around spontaneous summer things with the family) however DO contact me to be on the waitlist, I have spots open up from time to time, and I will fill them from the list. Thank you!
While I had a general color theme in mind, along the lines of the vibrancy of the emerging spring, an image search solidified my choice. This is the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone, and it is stunning with the contrasts of blues and rust and green.
I decided to make this variegated pattern more dappled, so I formulated three shades of brown and rust, two shades of blue, and three shades of green from new sprouts to old pines. Then I applied these randomly within their color area on both the yarn and fiber.
The fiber is Falkland type, always a great wool to use for dyeing. I say ‘type’ for this one, as it isn’t wool from the Falkland Islands, but rather follows their selection process for the product. The wool is American, chosen to be a medium fineness and for whiteness. This is a great all-around wool, happy to be spun worsted or woolen, and turned into whatever you like.
The yarn is Zebra Sock, which is a lot like Tiger Twist in construction except there are random grey and black areas in one of the plies, giving a nice barber pole effect and toning the colors in areas. Here’s a close up of the dappled colors within each section.
I finally got a chance to make a swatch (which is why this post is late….sorry!). I wanted to see how the colors and the marling held up against each other…..is it too busy?
I have to say I’m delighted with how it turned out. I tried two different stitch counts, 72 (seen at the top) and 64, both at the same tension (8-9 stitches per inch). It’s interesting the change 8 stitches can make. I’ll be swatching this more when I’m ready to knit my socks to find the ultimate balance between stitch count, tension, and pattern to encourage the yarn to behave how I like, but still fit well. Which of these two stitch counts do you like better?
I’ve done the office work and picked out a color theme for May and will start dyeing tomorrow. If you are interested in joining the fun, check out the Club page in the shop, then jet me a message using the contact form. With the Summer Crazies coming up, I’m filling the club via wait list only until fall.
We were fortunate enough to take our first beach vacation since 2017 a few weeks ago. Here’s the sunrise on our last full day. I couldn’t help but bring the bright, fresh colors of Florida to Tiger Club. I didn’t try to capture this picture, but rather created a fantasy of a Tropical Sunrise, capturing the impressions of the brightly colored homes, and the amazing changeable colors of light and sun and ocean throughout our week.
The yarn is Titanium Tiger Twist, a high twist 2 ply with plenty of yardage, and a good amount of nylon to make it viable for socks. It would be just as lovely in a cowl or scarf. Look up planned pooling if you want to keep the colors more distinct….this will work, but don’t fuss too much keeping each color in line, let it waver. I dyed this pretty much as shown, scrunching the bare yarn, then injecting the lines of color. Each skein is a bit different, as scrunching is less than a scientific process!
I made up a little swatch of this to see what it would look like in a stockinette sock. This cylinder of knitting is 72 stitches around at about 9 stitches per inch. The way your particular skein pools will be different depending on the dyeing, your stitch number, and gauge. I’m going to play with options a bit more before committing this one to a project. I’m wanting some really fun socks, but this would really shine as a woven piece using the faux ikat technique.
The fiber is my favorite of the merino types, Rambouillet. The white color shows off these neon colors beautifully, and the shorter staple will keep them from bleeding into each other as much when spinning. You can strip this down closer to your finished yarn weight to also minimize blending between colors. Or let it go and enjoy the new colors that form at each transition. Ply with a white or navy yarn to make this calmer or to pop the colors respectively, and to stretch this to a longer project…..or try a 2 ply technique to match or barberpole, or 3 ply. Or rip it up and reprocess into the colors you want….so many possibilies!
The gorgeous neon dyes used are not as washfast as my usual Lanaset dyes (ironic, since the brand is Washfast!), however if you use a bit of care and wash these using cool/cold water and a bit of vinegar in your wash and rinse water (and be brief about it….don’t let the water have too much of a chance to bind with the dye) it will look bright for many washes.
I do have spots in Tiger Club for April, but I didn’t turn the buttons on this month as I’ve been a little busier than normal. However, you may join by using that envelope contact form in the header of the main shop site, and I’ll get back to you. Thanks for joining me for March’s Tiger Club reveal!
