Stripess

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!

For January’s Tiger Club, we took a bit of a journey to a warmer clime.  Imagine grasses and palm trees overlooking the ocean, and you have the idea.

To capture the pale blues and greens, I went with Falkland for our fiber.  It’s a location, rather than a specific breed, and the wool pool on the Falkland Islands is chosen for whiteness and fineness.

Panda is our yarn, a blend of superwash merino, rayonized bamboo, and nylon.  I don’t care for it so much in socks, so I decided to dye it for a shawl, as the yarn drapes beautifully.  The picture below shows the color order….lime to deeper green alternating with pale blue skies deepening to clear blue ocean.  Each color segment is roughly the same length, but honestly, this was eyeballed.

The method used (for the sock yarn AND the fiber) is ‘blended gradient’, which means I let neighboring colors touch, mingle, and make new transition colors.  So when knitted, this will be semi-solid at times, and variegated at others.

I’m looking forward to playing with a few skeins of this myself, I’m thinking of weaving a long vest kind of thing, maybe with a sand color as weft.

Tiger Club is currently full, but you are welcome to drop me a line if you’d like to be on the waiting list.