The Birth of a New Yarn
My friends, I present to you, Tip-Toe Sock yarn. It’s fingering/sock weight, 80% washable wool/20% nylon. I’m very happy that I’ve found this lovely stuff and can share it with you (actually, thanks to Rae who helped me find the yarn in the first place).
I’m doubly excited, because for a long time I’ve wanted to do yarns in a dyeing technique called Flammegarn (flame yarn). This is a decades-old method from Scandinavia, where they once tied skeins with reeds and then dyed the skein in either red or blue dye.
You know I can’t be just limited to blue and red, right? I have a wonderful deep blue-purple I call Blueberry pie, and an incredible but hard to describe reddish color that is sort of melon, sort of papaya, persimmon, pale tomato… I am labeling it Ruby Red Grapefruit because it seems almost translucent somehow when light shines on it. I also have a petal pink, lilac and my old favorite, turquoise (which I’ve labeled Lynndy which is the nickname my brother uses for me).
I think flammegarn is a beautiful and versatile method of dyeing. There is a sense of light to the fabric. It shows cables, textures and lace better than a higher-contrast/multicolored colorway might.
I am finding that often I sell out of my mostly-solid colors faster than the multicolors, a real surprise to me until I remember that folks enjoy knitting textures. I am hoping these yarns will appeal to those who have been buying the solids.
I’ll do more flammegarn, I’m sure, but perhaps I will not always repeat the same colors. We’ll see what happens.
Oh, and a thanks to one anonymous blog reader who is a loyal local customer of my Cushy ColorSport yarn (which is a truly wonderful yarn indeed). She was the first one to write me regarding yarns on the yarn preview page I offered mid-day on Tuesday. It’s so gratifying to see someone so enthused about my work! Thanks, anonymous!
Photos: 1) colorful, artful pile of Tip-Toe Sock Flammegarn in four of the five colors now available. 2) Tip-Toe Sock in my most popular colorway, “Seaside.”