Stripes

You know I like to treat my club members around the Holidays, and this year is no different. Often early winter is fairly warm here in Iowa, but this year we experienced several very cold days, resulting in a few late starts for school. Hence inspiration for Twenty Below (with a little tongue in cheek of the inspiration picture being a dandelion!!)

The soft and sparkle are handled in fiber by a luscious new blend I got my hands on.  60 percent Polwarth and 40 percent tussah silk.  Oh, the shine!!!  You will have the best luck spinning this from the fold (or going all the way and making rolags).  Besides keeping the wool and silk together, this will lend some loft to the finished yarn.
Not to be outdone, I have a new yarn for sock club, too!  This is simply named “Sparkle”, and is a great 4 ply…three of superwash Merino with a hosiery twist, and one ply of silver toned Lurex.  It lends a great regular sparkle to the yarn without being over the top, and it won’t shed out.  I dyed this yarn for a shawl, and the colors are roughly even, so start with whichever end you like.  The technique used is a ‘blended gradient’, meaning that there are not stark separations between the colors, but they will variegate between the two neighboring colors.  Sea Breeze from January 2016 was also dyed this way….it’s really fun, and I plan to make more of these in various colors for the shop this year.

Thank you for a great year of Tiger Club!  I’m holding on new subscriptions for January, it’s inventory and tax time, so consistency is good for this month!  I will have some new openings on February 1!!
 

Inspiration for November’s club came from the bright berries you see against the snow in winter….red, blue, purple, against rich evergreens and a flash of white snowflakes.

The fiber is Cheviot wool, which is a great all around wool.  It resists felting, so would be great for outer-wear….boot socks, mittens, hats.

The yarn is a new one, Super Single Sock…..100% Merino with enough twist to keep it together in a soft single.  It would make a great scarflet, cowl, or perhaps fingerless mitts.

Thanks for being a part of Tiger Club for November!!!

October had a double inspiration….this picture of Moroccan tiles, and a special fiber that came my way…..

This fiber started out as a blended Merino top….mostly pale blue, but streaked with darker blue, yellow, and red (the pale blue bit on the lower right is close to the original).  I love how over dyes look, it adds such life to the final product.  So, I layered orange and red and turquoise and navy over this Merino, which was a bit crowded and dyed dry so that it could act as a resist in spots, giving many tones of color and peeks of the original.  Want to complete the look and stretch this into a larger project?  Ply with a natural cream merino.

For the yarn, I wanted to have all the color represented, so I went for stripes.  This should make 4-5 row stripes on socks, the colors going back and forth and alternating with the cream.  I can’t wait to see how yours turns out.  If you want to further the mosaic theme, you might like to use this for a Fair Isle project.

I’m looking ahead to November, with December quick on its heels.  If you want these next couple of months, I have a couple of sock and a few fiber spots….sign up here.  I will not be accepting new subscriptions for December unless I have a late cancellation, I need to dye ahead because my family insists I not work during their school break!!  🙂

September’s inspiration came from a last splash of summer….some lime and some cool blues…and even black for contrast.

For fiber, I have this great merino top with black tencel blended in streaks. I added the greens and blues, and love the depth this combination makes. Spin from the fold to keep the two fibers together.

The yarn is Journey, a 4ply Superwash Merino and nylon blend. This has been dyed in two matching striped 50g hanks. I’ve been toying with ways to get the sock blank look without actually knitting the yarn up and making those annoying kinks. Let me know what you think once you’ve knit this up!

October Club just went out the door yesterday (yes, this reveal is soooo tardy….we’ve had a wedding and a funeral and the usual crazy busy fall stuff, so yup, I dropped the ball on the blog. *Sigh*). If you’ve been thinking about joining, November 1 is the time!. I will not be opening the club in December so that I can have it dyed and ready to ship ahead of time….the family likes having me around for Christmas!

We were battling a heat wave during dyeing, so it’s a time for lighter colors, and easy breezy patterning. My yard is full of Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) and other wildflowers, so I distilled it down to three colors….a purple-pink, a refreshing cool blue, and a bright lime green…..then allowed them to wick and blend for interesting colors in-between…that also hint of the Autumn that is soon to come ….a Wildflower Riot!

It’s all American this month, our fiber is Targhee from Montana, perfect for pretty much any clothing item you’d like to make.

The yarn is Tiger Twist, the USA Edition. The patterning is truly random on the yarn, although if you want to be extra sure it won’t pool, you can always mix it up by knitting from both ends. It’ll make fun socks, baby items, shawls, etc.

Tiger Club is not officially open, however do drop me a line if you are interested….I can either find you a spot this month, or next!

Ah, Summertime. The livin’ may not be as easy as the song says, but it’s a time for fun and bright colors, and memories of childhood. I heard Lollipop on road trips with my parents (on 8 track, no less!), and when I needed to find a 5 color inspiration for the new Journey Mini’s I wanted to dye, this picture jumped out at me.

The aforementioned Mini’s are the fantastic 4 ply Journey that is a favorite around here, but in 5 skeins of about 93 yards each. Stripe ’em how you like!

The fiber is cottony soft 19 micron Merino. To stay true to the colors and avoid mud, I dyed these separately, also. Have fun combining them how you like.

Thanks for taking a look! If you are interested in club, be sure to contact me to be on the waitlist!

As mentioned in your Club note, my daughter chose May’s colors. And here’s part of the inspiration….Jay Walker, from the Lego show Ninjago.  As you can see, his power is Lightening, and all the ninjas do the spinning move, called Spinjitsu. (Hey, spinning…we’ll take it, right?!)  She and her brother enjoy this show, and they even dressed as their favorite characters, Jay and Cole, to give out candy last Halloween. Her favorite color is now blue (but preferably an electric or turquoise shade), with a side of black. After the eight color striping craziness of April’s club, I was happy to make something a little more simple.

Dyeing is such a fun thing to do….after a while you learn some neat tricks by accident, and for this club I was able to employ them ‘on purpose’. I used two different blues mixed together (with a tiny shot of yellow for good measure), then used the fiber itself as a resist. The blues split back apart in fun ways, and the black made a nice dappled gray to black effect. The fiber is soft and bouncy Polwarth, and this particular bump is a nice super thick combed top. Split it to make matching plies, do a fractal, make rolags, or spin a thick single!!  Have fun with it!

For yarn, I used up the very last of my supply of Tiger Twist 365. It borders on sport weight so I called it Tiger Twist Sport….feel free to stash it on Ravelry in Tiger Twist, even though the yardage is a bit less….the structure and texture is the same, even though it’s a bit thicker.  I used a dip dye technique, which allowed the blues to split in a different way than they did on fiber.

I think the result is fun and striking. I couldn’t help it, I did a little swatch. Your spiral/pooling will vary depending on your gauge and number of stitches.

For the sake of my sanity, I’ve closed Tiger Club to new subscriptions for the summer….aforementioned daughter is taking Driver’s Education, and hubby is playing gigs for local summerstock productions, so knowing my numbers so I can dye ahead is helpful so I can drop things and have some fun when we are all free! HOWEVER, do contact me if you want to be on the wait list….if someone drops the club you want, it will be no problem to put you in that spot….I’ll probably already have it dyed, even!! 🙂 Enjoy your summer, and keep cool, like Jay!