Busy month

Along with the increasing summer work load (make hay while the sun shines!) I prepared and did my first ever festival with Reflections Yarn! I went to the Fiber Fiesta in Greenville MI and had a wonderful day. The weather was perfect for on outside booth and I loved that the natural lighting really made the colors come alive. I met great people (I love talking to people at these events - they're so happy and relaxed!) and had a good day of sales. I do have quite a bit of yarn left over that I'll slowly be adding to my Reflections Yarn Etsy Shop

For the show I experiment with speckled dyeing technique. The results are pictured above. I'm loving the way it turned out. Right now I just have it in the Simply Sock yarn.

My yarn arrived today - all 72# of it - gulp! I got a new fiber to play with - a 50/50 silk superwash merino blend. It looks lovely just as a natural yarn - I can't wait to see how it dyes up!

In other news I signed up to be a vendor at the Michigan Fiber Fiesta . It's a new one day event in Greenville MI. I haven't done a festival in a couple of years now and am looking forward to this one!

More yarn is on it's way

I got an email today from my supplier. I've got roughly 70# of ready to dye yarn that should arrive here on Thursday. That will keep me busy for a while!!

Here are the 3 colors I did the day I dyed the Cherry Blossom yarn - they're for sale in my Etsy shop. Only the purple turned out like I envisioned it what I started. With the green I was aiming for light spring grassy and leaf greens. When the initial color turned out darker than I wanted I went ahead and overdyed it all with blue and got beautiful deep, dark forest colors. That's the beauty of dyeing yarns - even something completely different is beautiful!

Not quite cherry blossoms

The trees are starting to blossom here and they're gorgeous! I decided to try a cherry blossom color - white, light pink and a touch of deep pink. But I added to much pink.... The beauty of dyeing is that you can take one color and turn it into something else if you wish. So, with the addition of a bit more pink my cherry blossom yarn became crab apple blossom instead!

It has been an incredibly beautiful week! We had 4 days in a row where the temperature was 70 or above. Incredible for the end of March/beginning of April.

The weather was perfect for drying yarn out on the line! I love seeing the colorful skeins hanging there, feeling the yarn as it is soft and lofty from the breeze and smelling the line dried yarn as I re-skein it.

This week I played around with Blues. I was working on getting a good lakeshore color with the teals/aqua/blues of the lake with a touch of sandy brown. I was pretty pleased with the final result. I also worked to recreate a color a blue/periwinkle/lavender I had done over the winter. It came out really nice, but photographing it to really show the colors is proving a bit more challenging.

So here is a picture of the lakeshore yarn (which is available in my Etsy shop )and I'll post the other when I get the picture that really shows the colors. The first photo is Simply Sock and the second is Classy Sock

Sock blanks

I love the idea of wider bands of color and gradual color changes. Recently I started experimenting with sock blanks. I take my base yarns and knit a skein into a sheet of fabric on my Bond knitting machine. then I apply the dye and steam for 20-30 minutes to set the color.

The first picture is a dyed sock blank using my Simply Sock base yarn. The finished pair was knit from a sock blank made up from my Simply Merino base. I've been very pleased with the results and am looking forward to turning some more base yarns into knitted blanks and branching out to knitting other projects with those blanks!

Flowers are Blooming

Spring flowers provide great inspiration for yarn colors! From top to bottom Crocus, Tulip Time and Daffodil

It's spring!

With the longer days and warmer weather, I've been ready to start dyeing with passion again! I love watching the skeins dry on the clothesline and feel the soft, lofty yarn that has been dried by the gentle spring breeze. And the flowers and leaves are popping out again - that means new inspiration for yarn colors!