Tue 18 Oct 2011
When I gave Anne her fiber, she said lightly “oh, I’ll put it on the blog.” Then she said two words that puzzled me at first, and then sent me scurrying back to the dye studio in a hurry.
She said “be ready.”
It hadn’t really occurred to me that I might end up with a few extra visitors from all this, and that those visitors might like to find something in the shop to look at when they arrive. Gulp.
So, tonight I’m getting ready for visitors. (If you’re new, never, ever feel pressured to buy…I’ve written at length about my thoughts on that here.)
Fortunately, I always have a million color ideas floating around in my head that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I try to spread out the dyeing, so that it’s not all dyeing all the time around here. (I do like to spend some time talking about knitting, after all.) That inevitably means that there are color combinations that end up on the back burner, waiting until the time is right. I spent yesterday evening putting a few of those ideas onto fiber:
It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, as you might imagine. Of course, there are the fall colors, inspired by the beautiful foliage at Rhinebeck:
My favorite of these is yet to come; try as we might, we just couldn’t capture its color without natural light.
I also tried some brown, since I am always fascinated by the colors of fields lying fallow in the fall. There’s that deep, deep brown of the wet earth, mixed with the lighter brown of the fading grass. It’s the perfect backdrop for the fiery fall display.
Then, there were a few bolder colorways. The first reminds me of the sky at sunset:
The second was a bit of a game. Somewhere in conversation over dinner on Saturday, someone suggested the Irish Pirate as a name for a colorway. Since I love to play with suggestions (leave some in the comments, or submit them on the color suggestion page), I decided to give it a try. I ended up with bright, bright Kelly green mixed in with black and golden treasure.
That got me into the mood for green, so I added in this mixture of saturated emerald and black:
I also played around with olive, mixed with purple and gray, in a colorway based on the sage plant growing in my garden.
And then, because one can never have enough purple and gray, I dyed another with those two by themselves.
This is probably my favorite colorway of the day. Teal and black have been jumping out at me all over the place this fall, and I have been dying to put them together on fiber.
I just love the way this one came out. I used both turquoise and teal; the turquoise is lighter, and really pops out and lightens the colors. The teal is a deeper color and makes a more subtle contrast with the black.
There was just a little black dye left over, so I mixed it with deep reds and purples in a colorway I’ve been dreaming of for a long time now. There’s a particular picture of black cherries that I took a year or two ago, and I’ve been wanting to play with some of those shades. I can’t find the picture right off, but this fiber matches the image I have in my minds’ eye.
So that’s that. A big batch of random colorways, pulled from the back burners and neglected shelves of my mind. Things I’ve been wanting to dye, but hadn’t gotten to, for whatever reason. A wide sampling of the colors that we love, but only the smallest bit of all the possibilities out there. If you’re new here, welcome. There’s something for everyone, I hope. They’re all up on Etsy, should you see something that you absolutely must have.
With the next post, we should be back to our regularly scheduled content. I have fallen a bit behind the blogging wagon, so I have some catching up to do. More on that soon!
So many lovely colors! I’m a bit partial to the fall colors myself, but my absolute favorite is the black-cherry inspired one. (Of course, now I want cherries…yum…) It’s almost enough to make me wish I spun!
WOW!!! You *have* been busy! Those are awesome back burner colors and I am glad you brought them out in the light, so to speak. I love the emerald and black, purple and gray, and the browns. Other than not having time, I don’t know how you can not spin them all.
Linda
Arghhh, matey! Just try to be finding that Irish Pirate, now!
…grabbing, running…..
(Maybe it ought to be O’Arghhh?)
LOL! I believe you have come close to nailing that ephemeral dried grass color. I believe it needs to be spun to prove it, but nice job. And Irish Pirate is perfect!
You do such nice work!
Good luck, I hope you have more business than you know what to do with! 🙂 Loving the first Rhinebeck color!