Two beautiful options

• Magical (the colourway in your parcel)
• Alchemy (a coordinating colourway)

As you know, when you start a new knitting or crochet project, sometimes it is the pattern that guides you to right yarn and other times it is the yarn that leads you to the right pattern.  It’s the same with dyeing: often times we find a source of inspiration that sparks our creativity and informs our dyeing and, other times, it’s the process of dyeing itself that fuels our imaginations.  No two dye sessions are ever exactly the same – the weather and time of year affect how the dye adheres to the yarn – and no two hands apply the colour in exactly the same way.  Dyeing, just like knitting and crochet, is always a process of adventure.

This yarn was just such an adventure. We knew what colours we wanted to play with and the soft, painterly effect we hoped to achieve, and it was just a matter of performing a little magic.  And I say that because, if you look carefully, your yarn contains washes of beautiful lavenders and lilacs flowing into very cool, almost minty greens: two colours that, if allowed to mingle, will actually produce a rather muddy brown – something that would take careful dyeing to avoid!

So we mixed up our first shade of purple and applied it with a very light, very soft hand so it hit the yarn in a beautifully random way.  Then we lifted the heavy skeins out of the dyebath and rearranged them before adding a very zingy green – and the effect was enchanting: where the yarn was still white, the green stayed true, and where it was already dyed, the colours dulled to an almost ruddy purple tinged warm on the edges. 

And that on its own was beautiful, but we weren’t done, lifting those skeins again to add yet another layer of deeper purple that flows across the first two colours to tie everything together and create amazing depth of shade.  Then at last were the skeins ready for their final heat-setting and here’s where a final bit of magic happens…  When dyebaths are of mixed hues (as green and purple are) and the tones are very light, the heat will often make the individual hues of cyan, yellow, and magenta break away from each other and travel independently along the fibers of the yarn.  It’s absolutely beautiful to watch it happen!  Open up your skein and you may be able to see little spots here and there with that extra bit of dyeing alchemy.

And the result is exactly what we hoped for: soft and flowing, painterly and magical.  The colours blend and morph… and will do wonderful, watercoloury things in your project!  Sometimes it really is worth it to take inspiration from simply standing in the studio and letting a little creative dyeing magic wash over you.