Fun with color

Sometimes things that seem like mistakes actually just give you permission to play.  

This Cotswold yarn was meant to be perfectly smooth, perfectly tensioned, perfectly plied yarn for knitting Sanquhar gloves.  Instead, the moment I dunked it into its post skeining bath, it twisted and shrank as slightly incorrect tension reasserted itself.  Little loops appeared at unpredictable intervals. Everyone has an off day, and this yarn appeared to have been the result.  

Luckily this was a small run of yarn, and I had sent of a run of experimental Scottish Blackface x BFL that came back perfect (find this yarn in kits put together by Beth Brown Reinsel here) so not much was lost.  

And once the pressure of needing to meet someone else’s needs was lifted (Beth had been waiting patiently for more Sanquhar yarn for longer than I care to admit) I could admit that I really liked this yarn in all of it’s wonkiness.  

As a knitter I tend to think of function first.  However intricate the knitting, I want to produce garments that I never have to think twice about wearing in an engine room, or on the deck of a schooner or (more realistically these days) wearing on long walks in the woods, or around the farm on sheering days, and these kinds of garments start with solid yarn.  And now, instead of the solid yarn I was expecting, I have slightly airy, whimsical yarn. 

So I decided to play. 

I wound off large skeins, and worked out how to dye a variegated melding of blues into greens.  

I absurdly pleased with the result.

I sold through most of the original dye lot at the New England Farm & Fiber Marketplace, but more is in the making (and I’m plotting more color ways).   Watch this space.

April 2019: A few skeins are now listed on the page for my fingering weight yarns (scroll to the bottom) or here.

New Colors, and a very silly sachet

New colors of the Bluefaced Leicester - DK weight spun from the luminous fleeces of Two Sisters Farm are now available over on the sale page.  (I may have gotten a bit carried away....).  All profits from the sale of the pink colorways will be donated to the ACLU.

And speaking of getting carried away, a bit of crankyness over having to spend an exorbitant amount of money for a tiny little bottle of bay leaves from the grocery store, rather than the sensible price when buying in bulk from our old co-op in Midcoast Maine, ultimately led to the creation of lovely little sachets full of things that the internet assures me moths dislike.   (Because it turns out that a pound of bay leaves isn't actually that expensive, but what home cook needs a pound of bay leaves? And then the next thing I knew Sam had a design in mind for the stamp, and once one has a stamp in mind, one must make the thing).

And the Dyeing Commences (also, Hello)

Hello to all of the new folks who read about my yarn in the recent Interweave Knits article!  I had a wonderful two days talking about yarn and dyeing with the author of the article (Selma, who in turn keeps a great blog here) but I must admit that it is a little surreal seeing what otherwise felt like a lovely visit with a fellow fiber enthusiast written up in a major knitting publication. 

To all of you stopping by for the first time, I work with small batches of yarns spun from local fleeces.  My stock is a little low at the moment, due in part to the time of year and also because I just recently came home from working on the boat.  I have some dyeing to catch up on.  I have been home for two weeks now, but as I always do (and always tell myself I won't do this time) I lost a week sitting on the couch catching up on dumb TV and knitting (and cuddling with Nell).

This is Nell.  She wishes the snow would go away and the squirrels would come back. In the meantime she wishes that I would stop bugging her with my camera and go back to rubbing her ears. 

But, this last week I braved the snow (and there has been lots of it) to start working with my new 3-Ply Cotswold fingering weight yarn, which very conveniently returned from the spinning mill a little before I returned from the boat. 

The fleece for this yarn comes from Liberty Wool Farm in Palermo Maine.  This is the same flock that in years past provided a lovely group of fleeces from Cotswold Romney crosses.   Last spring there were fewer fleeces from Cotswold Romney crosses, but a lovely group of pure Cotswold fleeces, so, anyone who has been knitting with my 3-Ply Cotswold x Romney fingering weight, please consider using the pure Cotswold version instead.  Hopefully I will have a new batch dyed up in the next week or two. 

Yarn comes from the mill on cones - therefore the first step of dyeing is skeining, and skeining, and skeining, and then building a fort with all of the piles of skeined yarn. 

I am always adding new colors and yarns.  One day I am going to be truly organized and start sending out an email newsletter.  In the meantime, If you would like to be added to my hypothetical email newsletter list, please send me an email at uptonyarns@gmail.com with "newsletter" or similar in the subject line.   I am "uptonyarns" on Instagram, and "puffling" on Ravelry.  Upton Yarns also has a Facebook page, which I am terrible at updating but always resolving to be better about.  I am not terribly consistent in my social media presence, but I am trying to be better about that, and I love hearing about what other people are up to knitting wise. And I love photos!

Happy Knitting,

Sarah 

Yarn! Lots of New Yarn (and now I am back on a boat).

My time at home was lovely and cold and way too short.  It was also very productive (on the yarn front, though not on the blogging front…). I returned home to find the fleeces I sent off to the mill in the fall returned to me in the form of lovely yarn on cones.  A storm of dyeing ensued.  Yarn took over every available surface in the house, the bathtub was pressed into service for drip-drying, and a giant drying rack took up the prime space in front of the woodstove (much to Nell’s annoyance).

I experimented with new colors and dyed new lots of older colors (which sometimes resulted in new colors).

Above, “Light Butternut”, “Rosewood”, and “70% Cacao”.   70% Cacao is actually a fleece from one of Liberty Wool Farm’s Romney rams (he is or will be responsible for the “Romney” portion of the “Cotswold x Romney” yarn).  I had his fleece spun to the same weight as my other 3-Ply fingering weight yarn.

This is “Aspen”, a lovely, lively green, but not quite the “Cress” that I was aiming for. (Natural Dyeing is not an exact science).

I am back at my “day job” on the boat.  Last night we finished our transit of the Panama Canal and currently we are bound for Isla Iguana for a bit of snorkeling.  As my very slow internet connection allows I will be updating the “yarn” section of this site to reflect the work of the last few weeks.  In the meantime, if you would like to order any yarn, please email me at uptonyarns (at) gmail.com.  My internet connection is sometimes a bit spotty on the boat, but I can usually check it at least once a day.  Yarn is being shipped out in my absence.