Stripes

December’s Tiger Club started with a lovely fiber I had acquired as a special buy, a blend that contained a good amount of naturally dark brown wool, with ribbons of natural white. It can be a bit of a challenge to decide how to dye it, the brown can take dye, but needs to be quite intense to show, but I preferred to work with it and have bits of color peek out. This picture stood out to me with the colors peeking out in the background bokeh effect. I took the colors from the photograph and added a blue from this second image I had considered to round things out.

The fiber (30% Blue Faced Leicester, 30% Polwarth Wool, 40% UK Alpaca) was wet and layered in my dyepots, with the colors applied randomly to each layer in keeping with the bokeh effect. Here’s how that turned out:

You’ll find this a pretty versatile fiber, it will be quite happy to be spun worsted or woolen, or any version of semi that suits your preferred spinning style and/or end project idea. If you want to keep the marl fairly consistent, I would suggest spinning from the fold to keep the slippery fibers together with the grabbier Polwarth. I do have a couple extra braids of this, ask if you are interested.

Our yarn was a new one, Champagne, a blend of 25% Bio-Nylon, 25% UK Alpaca, 50% SW BFL. While it does have sock yarn specs, it might be lacking a bit in structure to make socks that will spring back after wear. Knit along with a springier wool or perhaps wooly nylon/lycra for more elasticity, or use this for something where more drape is wanted like a cowl, shawlette, etc. The yarn was a nice cream color, so in keeping with the fiber I added a chocolate brown to the color palette, and drizzled them all randomly on the yarn. This resulted in even more colors than I applied through mixing on the yarn itself. This drizzle technique should change up the patterning pretty well, but if you want to be sure to mix things up, you could alternate knitting from both ends of the skein. I do have some extra skeins, do ask!

There are spots open in all clubs currently, and especially if you are interested in Fiber Club I suggest you sign up in January, as I’ll be basing how much I purchase for the next several months of Club from my January subscription levels.

I’m looking at a good foot of snow accumulated on our railing and thinking about getting a round of shoveling done before any wind picks up. Hope you are all safe and warm and have things to look forward to in 2024!

For June’s Tiger Club, I took a bit of owner’s leeway, and celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Our wedding colors were green and purple, and remain favorites to this day, which I’m sure you’ve noticed through the years of Tiger Club! I like to pull in a reference photo, and while I briefly toyed with a ‘Peck of Purple Peppers’ (photographed on a green background), I decided to go with this mushroom pic as it had nearly all the colors within the actual picture and pallete. I did add an additional lighter green.

For yarn, I chose Targhee Sock, 100% American made and so bouncy! I dyed this in the round, one half of the skein being the purple shades, and the other the green. The navy in the purple mix took over a bit, pulling the lighter two purples toward blue, but I think it makes a very nice effect. Interestingly, the navy broke to brown in the dark green section….I originally thought some purple was bleeding through to the green side, but nope….it was making these rich browns on its own, so I embraced the organic nature of it and let it do its thing.

For fiber, I chose Hoof and Leaf, a blend of Llama, Whitefaced Woodland sheep, Ramie, and Bamboo. The two very different protein fibers soak up the acid dye in differing amounts to create subtle color differences and the plant fibers don’t take the dye at all, lending their ribbons of natural white to add texture, silkiness, and shine. To maintain some order to the colors, I decided to create this as a twin-set, one braid of the three green colors, and one braid of the purple. You’ll see some of the green braids had the same breaking to brown of the navy that the yarn did. I’m wondering if it isn’t something in the water, as while I’ve heard of this happening, I’d never experienced it before. We were experiencing quite a drought at the time of dyeing these. (Pardon the ramblings of a dyer who hovers at the junction of art and science!) I’d suggest spinning this in a way that keeps the fibers together…..if worsted be sure to keep moving across the top (you could also rip it down to thinner sections), if you want semi-woolen spinning from the fold or making faux-lags or other such methods are perfect.

I don’t plan to open Tiger Club publicly to new subscriptions until September, and even then it will be limited, however I do have spots open from time to time and I will fill those from the waitlist. Check out the Clubs then use the contact form to let me know which club you are interested in. Thanks for celebrating with us, 25 years is both long and over in an instant! Hope to have 25 more and beyond!

It was time for some light and cheerfulness, and of course we have that in spades in our spring colors. Taking inspiration from our favorite (chocolate) bunny, I mixed up nearly a rainbow of soft, yet not quite pastel colors.

The fiber is Wensleydale, which I knew would take these colors brilliantly, as longwools tend to do. This is dyed to-and-fro, so if you’d like to keep the colors in order you can divide the braid. I also left a good bit of white space to lighten everything up. Wensleydale tends to like to be spun thin with not too much twist, use worsted technique to smooth the ends into the yarn and it will look and feel silky. If you don’t want too much movement/blending of the colors, strip the wool down closer to the width needed for the grist of yarn you are creating so that it will not need to be drafted as much.

The yarn is a new one to TPT, it’s a blend of superfine SW Merino, Tussah Silk, Bamboo rayon, and nylon, coming in at around 410 yards per 4 oz, it’s a thicker fingering weight. I haven’t given it a name yet, as I wanted feedback on whether this is something you’d like me to carry in the regular shop. I think it will be plenty sturdy enough for socks, and yet is wonderfully soft and a nice weight for shawls and light sweaters and such. Be sure to let me know what you think. I wanted the yarn itself to shine, so I left plenty of white space and applied 4 areas of color, spacing them through the width of the yarn to encourage the colors to change up somewhat randomly while knitting, but still have a nice balance of the warm and cool colors with each row. Of course, the proof is in the pudding (mmmm, pudding), or rather swatch.

So here we go! The bottom wider portion is 72 stitches around, and you can see clear signs of this making a nice wide spiral with stripes of colors and stripes of white. Interestingly, I decreased to 64 stitches at the top, and the colors seem more random. It’s still spiraling, but it’s nearly flat, with the color areas and white areas not as well defined. So, if you don’t care for what this yarn is doing in your project, change something up. A subtle change in needle size, stitch count, or pattern can dramatically change what the colors will do for you.

Are you interested in joining the fun? Tiger Club is a month to month club, so no huge commitment. I’m open for new subscriptions through the 15th with Club to ship at the end of the month. Subscribing now will mean you have plenty of time to consider your new yarn and fiber and decide if you want to continue with the club. Thanks for stopping by!