Knit and Crochet Personal Color Service From Yarn Love

Have you ever stared at a display of yarn looking for the perfect color combination for your Fair Isle yoke?

Or wondered if the colors you’ve chosen for your striped socks will look as amazing as the pattern photo?

Second guessed a color combination that you picked out from an online vendor….will the colors look good together in person?

I know picking out colors can be hard. There are so many pretty ones to choose from and there is also the inevitable wondering about what your project will look like if you stray from the suggested and photographed sample. These difficulties are compounded if you are purchasing your yarn online – due to photography and monitor display settings it’s impossible to know exactly what your yarn will look like prior to its arrival on your doorstep. Which means that your color selection might be brilliant or it might look a little flat.

I am here to help! No, I can’t change the issues of photography and monitor display. (Wouldn’t that be amazing?)  No, I can’t knit your Fair Isle sweater for you. (I have a baby, my knitting time is disgustingly little at the moment.) But what I can do is make sure the colors you purchase provide the most bling for your buck! “How?!?!”, you say?

Simple. I put the colors together before I shipped them off to EatSleepKnit. (Simple + brilliant! Why didn’t I think of this before?) All you need to do is grab your favorite Rainbow Pack and pair it with a pattern.

I named them Rainbow Packs – not because they all contain the traditional rainbow of colors, (Think back to grade school ROYGBIV: red,  orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.) but because I had a rainbow of colors to choose from when I put them together. 14 colors in fact; which is more than double the selection of your traditional rainbow.

Each Rainbow Pack has a different feel and contains a different combination of colors. I carefully selected colors both for overall visual impact and also so that they would provide enough contrast to work well in intricate colorwork.

If you’ve ever worked complex color patterns, you’ll know it’s not an easy thing to do. You must include enough contrast so that the each stitch is clearly visible but with an eye to how all the colors will appear together. If there’s too much contrast you’re garment ends up looking like you randomly selected the component colors without a thought to how the final sweater would turn out. Too little contrast (Hey, all my colors match!) and all the hard work you put into working the intricate pattern fades into the fabric because the individual stitches don’t have enough contrast to draw the eye.

You have two choices in Rainbow Packs from EatSleepKnit: small and large. I like to think of the small one as the “Stripey Sock Pack” because it contains four 1oz skeins, each with lots of contrast. That way you can make the most amazing pair of striped socks you’ve ever seen.

Your second choice is the Large Rainbow Pack; each contains between 5 and 8 full skeins (50 grams each) of Elizabeth Bennet. These are intended for Fair Isle sweaters, hats, or any larger project where 1oz just isn’t enough. The large packs have different moods – some are very bright and cheerful while others are really saturated and regal. All of them are beautiful.

Stop worrying whether your color combination will “turn out” in the end and get yourself a Rainbow Pack. It’s got my dyer (and knitter!) seal of approval.  Your project will look amazing and you will astound your knitting friends and muggles alike with your color genius!

P.S. – Here’s a peek at some of my preliminary color combinations, just in case you’re curious.

Wednesday Morning Randomness

Wednesday Morning Coffee ™

f you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a recurring theme. Every Wednesday morning, I post about what cup of coffee I’m enjoying. Since I am pregnant, I severely curtail caffeine intake. This puts quite a dent in a coffee lover’s drinking habits, as you might imagine. I limit myself to 3 cups of 100% decaf coffee per week. If you’re also a coffee lover you might be thinking, “What’s the point? Decaf coffee has no FLAVOR!!!!” And in most cases you’d be right. Caffeine is a flavor enhancer, and when removed from products (i.e. Coffee, Coke, etc.) a sensitive nose can literally smell the difference.

Thankfully, about a year ago I got into roasting my own coffee. I’m a bit of a food hedonist – I simply love great food – and do a lot of cooking and baking. (Not to mention brewing my own beer, and roasting my own coffee….) I discovered that you can roast your own coffee beans very easily with only a small investment of $$$. All you really need is a cheap air popcorn popper, a little info on what to look for when you’re roasting coffee, and green beans. The taste difference between freshly roasted beans and the ones you buy in the store is incredible. Almost like a completely different product!

If you want to roast your own coffee or just learn more, go see the great folks over at Sweet Maria’s. They have an amazing amount of information on their site, plus everything you need to roast your own coffee.

New Yarn – just shipped

I have a rather sizeable shipment of yarn going out to EatSleepKnit today. It’s a big box full of Elizabeth Bennet loveliness. Erin and her helpers stock every single color I dye on this spectacular base, so if you’re in the mood for an elegant shawl, sinfully decadent socks, or a whisper light cardigan go see their selection.

Elizabeth Bennet: 65% superwash merino/20% bamboo rayon/15% silk. 50 grams, 195 yards. Fingering weight. Recommended needles US 0-3.

I’m off – to an appointment this morning & then back into the studio to dye yarn this afternoon!

Photoshoot!

Yesterday was a photo shoot  for our upcoming Twist Collective ad. I like photo shoots – I really do. They’re always exciting but a little nerve wracking, too. So many questions like “Did I bring everything we’re going to need?” and “Will the shots I’ve dreamed up in my head actually look good?” Of course, having an amazing photographer on hand to do all of the heavy lifting takes a huge load of responsibility off me, the lowly dyer/designer. Fortunately, I have one of those. Sarah (of Sarah Signature Photography, Des Moines)

Some of you may remember way back when, to the Brilliance (That’s a Ravelry link) and the Twinkle Mitts/Cowl – Sarah took those photos. They turned out to be so lovely that we had to repeat the experience. This time, we were photographing 17 brand new semi-solid colors which will be introduced into our regular line up very soon! We’re very excited!

We also took many “beauty shots” of the colors so they look their best for the upcoming 1/2 page ad. Big ad = pretty pictures! I’ll keep you updated about the new colors. I still have to create color cards for shipping out to our wonderful retailers. With all the preparations for the the photo shoot this week I haven’t quite gotten everything I hoped accomplished…..yet.

And in case you were wondering this photo is of the new colors, but isn’t a professional shot. That’s them cooling onmy deck railing in preparations for their final rinse after a productive dye day. Don’t the 50 gram skeins of Elizabeth Bennet look so cute?

We also took shots of the long languishing Grecian Goddess socks! (That’s a Ravelry link, too.) It’s been about a year since I finished the design and sent it off for technical editing. (All that happened right before Sock Sumit & our dye schedule has been a bit frantic since then…) So after many months, Grecian Goddess will soon be released in all her prettily pictured glory. (Sheesh! It’s about time!)

For now, I’ll leave with a couple more shots of photo props and yarn……

Socks….lots and lots of socks.

I’ve been meaning to blog more, but not doing a good job of it for the past several (read 6-9) months. I’m attempting to fix that now, and get back on my Monday blogging schedule again. I have been busy in my off time. If by off time you allow that I’m running a hand dyeing business, branching into designing, teaching dyeing, and prepping to vend at Sock Summit.

I do have pretties to show you. Maybe I won’t post them all now, but snippets….to entice you to come back. (Some of these links will direct you to Ravelry.com. If you’re not a member there yet, you need to be. Don’t fuss, just sign up. You’ll be glad you did!)

I’m going to start with the most recent pattern added to the Katie Franceschi collection. It’s available for purchase (Immediate download, no less! Yay, instant gratification!)

Winding Path Socks

Yarn Love's Elizabeth Bennet yarn in Awakening Earth

Designed especially to accentuate the particular beauty of hand-dyed yarns. No more knitting with the most gorgeous skein ever only to discover that it does wicked, wicked things when you actually knit it. The pattern contains specific guidance for choosing an appropriate yarn. Both examples are knit with high contrast, multi-color yarns. Generally speaking highly saturated colors with high contrast to each other present the largest challenge when knitting with hand dyed/ painted yarns. Ironically, the multi-color skeins are often the ones that catch your eye and draw you in!

The socks are worked toe up, with a generous gusset for a great fit. (The gusset is that triangle along the side of the foot.) The stitch pattern does a great job of breaking up and re-distributing the bold colors – which gives the sock an over all even sprinkling of color. Notice how there aren’t large blotches of any single color anywhere. Those blotches are referred to as pooling or flashing and are usually very distracting. Then I finished off the sock with a simple cable. It’s eye catching and keeps you interested as the knitting progresses. Yes, the pair is asymmetrical. The cable travels up the outside of each sock. You could place the cable on same side for each sock, but it looks….very odd when you wear them!

As a bonus, there are four widths included in the pattern. And instructions for using both fingering weight and sport weight yarns. You can knit these up for practically any adult foot size! The sport weight option makes these a good choice for a fast gift!

Extras

When I’m designing, I usually knit up more than one version of the sock. The first pair is the design template, and the second pair is polished and pristine (Well, mostly pristine.) for photography. You can see the prototype pair for this pattern in my Ravelry Projects. If you keep tabs on my projects at Ravlery, you’ll most likely see my design projects in progress.

Yarn Love's Elizabeth Bennet yarn in Nostalgia

My house smells like spiced pumpkin scones!

Wow. It’s been a while since I blogged, eh? I’ve always had this problem with journaling. If I get out of the habit, it’s months before I get back to it. I must not be very committed to writing down my thoughts.

It was a busy summer. It was an even busier fall. Let’s not even get into what the Thanksgiving and Christmas season are shaping up to be.

Most recently, I returned from Stitches East in Baltimore. Sharon and I were both there with Yarn Love and Three Irish Girls. Our  booth looked beautiful….but I don’t have photos. The camera unfortunately, suffered an injury on the plane which caused LCD screen to die. Technically, you can still take photographs via the viewfinder, but you can’t make adjustments to any settings because those options are always displayed on the screen. It makes for Zen Photography (i.e. Crappy Photos!). Oh well. We are getting a new camera next week. One that’s well rated….and actually inexpensive for the sheer number of favorable reviews about it.

Now, I’m working on getting the above sweater pattern ready for public consumption…including technical editing, photography, and layout. This is all new to me, since my only other published pattern was very simple and edited by the kind people over at Knitty.

Here are few pictures of things I knit over the summer to keep you going until the next time I actually blog:

Boo Socks in Twinkling Pink & Fresh Celery:

NeverMore Socks in Bump in The Night:

Netherfield Hand Knit Socks in Netherfield (Dutchess Dk yarn):

Sensational Colorwork Socks in Cove and Fresh Celery:

(These were by far the most popular sample I took to Stitches!)

Revenge of the Mummies Socks in Robin Hood and Delicate Aquamarine:

That’s not everything, but it’s all I’m going to post right now. Enjoy until another bout of motivation takes hold and I post more!