In the spirit of some lemon-lime fresh and light spring cleaning, we’ve added three new colourways to our line. Lettuce Wrap, Creme Brulee and Lemon Curd are all available in all our yarns and fibres at the shop.
We’ve also updated our colourways page with a complete set of all our colourways… finally.
the fibre //
Merino Bamboo Silk. 50% fine merino wool, 25% bamboo, 25% tussah silk. An exquisite blend of merino, bamboo and silk makes this spinning fibre lustrous, elegant and warm.
the yarn //
Tough Love Sock. Our most popular blend of 80% Superwash Merino and 20% nylon for a hardwearing sock yarn that can by dyed in brilliantly vibrant colours.
the colourway & inspiration //
“Hummingbirds” is a collection of my favoured colours, combined in a way that doesn’t create odd contrasts or jarring transitions. Hot magenta and lime, with deep blues and violets. Had the magenta and lime been placed side-by-side, we would have seen muddy browns emerge… but here it’s all clear, clean and vibrant.
I’ve kept a little note by my desk that I hardly ever glance at until just recently. Saved from a Papyrus wedding card, it says,
“Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration. The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest creation.”
Life is rich. Beauty is everywhere. I know I saved this note for a reason. I hope you enjoy and savor every inch of this colourway.
Diane from Alberta sent me a shot of her Navajo-plied yarn, keeping all the colours clear and even.
Here’s also Tamara’s socks that she knit up in the yarn version of the club. I love how the stitch pattern makes these little “hiccups” in the colour movement. Very cool. I like.
And finally, this is a fantastic shot of some unfinished singles by Stine. Let’s see what you made with your fibre/yarn club offerings! We share them on Ravelry on the Sweet SweetGeorgia group.
It’s true, Vancouver is usually pretty grey during the winters — especially February and November (when, I believe, it rained 28 out of 30 days in 2009). So, I’ve sort of avoided dyeing any sort of grey hue. The crisp lighting in the studio encourages me to dye brighter, more saturated colours, but I love and I live in greys and neutrals. Sure, I love a little nervous/awkward chit chat about my shockingly hot pink socks or my hot turquoise hat, but I can relax in a colour like this slate grey…
This pattern, the Vine Yoke Cardigan, is wonderfully written. It’s sort of a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet and so far, the lace pattern seems to be working out just as Ysolda says it will. I’m enjoying the knitting of it as it’s going pretty quickly. Although I won’t finish in the 10 days someone else on Ravelry took to knit this, hopefully it won’t be in my queue for a year… unlike other projects.
So, for Winter, I’m adding this new Slate grey colour to our palette of Dye To Order yarns as well as the Cypress green above. It’s a bit woodsy and murky, a darker and more desaturated teal green. Both these colours will be available in all our yarns, although it might take a bit of time to get it all entered into the online shop. If you don’t see it, just email/txt/twitter.
Another change we’ll be making to the offerings is that our Superwash Worsted and Superwash Sport yarns will be available as larger 4 oz skeins now… more than double the 50g skeins we were doing originally. Hopefully for you sweater knitters, this just means fewer joins and more continuous knitting time. I think we all need more of that. And the opposite is true for the Silk Lamb Lace — we’ve changed the put up to 60g of 625 yards of laceweight goodness. More affordable at this skein size and perfect for the smaller shawl designs that have been popping up!
After a good nights’ sleep, I started Friday morning with a dye workshop with Amy King of Spunky Eclectic. Our dye room was actually one of the beautiful River Lodges with a wonderful view of the golf course. Great natural light lit up our session which was made even more cozy with the fresh hot chocolate and marshmallow break midway through the morning.
We partnered up and dyed BFL and Superwash Merino top with Amy’s oven method and also a cold-pour technique. In the oven method, we wet out the fibre, arranged it in the oven pans and then poured dye in whichever pattern we wanted. Then citric acid solution was poured over the entire pan and the pans were baked at 280 to 300 degrees, held at that temperature for ten minutes and then allowed to cool down. With the cold-pour sample, we put the superwash merino in a pot of cold water and poured dye over top. There’s more water in this method, but since we used superwash, the dye struck pretty quickly so we got splotchy fibre. Unexpected results… but it’s going to be fun to spin up.
It was happy times as I finally got to meet Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit in class this morning. In fact, we partnered up for the dyeing and it was so cool to chat with her. There’s so much to learn from everyone.
Jacey is an absolute sweetheart and she is, at the same time, so confident and also very humble about her achievements. She’s the talent behind the new Sit n’ Spin DVD and teaches the technical skills required to be proficient at making art yarn. She podcasts and she blogs and she’s generally just a productive whirlwind of creativity. Yep, she’s awesome and she’s coming to teach at Madrona Fiber Arts in February 2010 if anyone in Vancouver is interested in really learning the skills to spin art yarn.
My afternoon session was all about drum carding with Deb Menz, a long-time hero of mine. Her book, Color in Spinning, turned me on to nearly everything I do today — dyeing, working with colour, creating colourways, and spinning handpainted yarns. So, of course, seeing Deb do simple things like strip a batt or pull combed fibre off a hackle was … like a celebrity moment for me.
I got her to explain to me her “major key” and “minor key” concepts from the book and I finally got it. Major Key colourways include the entire range of values but in different proportions so the yarn looks a bit more salt-n-peppery. Minor Key colourways include a small set of close values so the yarn looks closer to semi-solid with very little internal contrast. Good to hear it from the source, because that chapter in the book totally confused me.
Our class was about experimenting with the three different properties of colour: hue, value, and saturation. So we started with a single colour of fibre and split it into six portions. With each portion we blended in a smaller portion of another colour to create a variation… so a single colour was shifted warmer and cooler, darker and lighter, duller and brighter. Some of us used drum carders and others used the large hand combs or hackles. I went through all the trouble of packing my electric Fancicard, so I chose to use that for the entire class. Here are my batts:
Feeling very, very blessed, I was lucky enough to finish the day with a couple hours at the spa (a very special and lovely gift) and also a bit of a trip through the spinners’ market. After a test drive on the Schacht-Reeves 30″ saxony wheel and a few lustful glances at the Lendrum Saxony, I treated myself to some 80/20 Polwarth and Bombyx silk blend in a silver colour and some sock yarns from Blue Moon and Abstract Fiber as well as a Sheep 2 Sock kit from Blue Moon. It’s kind of nice to feel like a stash-hungry, wheel-coveting spinner again… at least for a moment.
Back in July, I had the privilege of attending Earthues’ Dealers Conference, a week-long full day and night workshop on handpainting with natural dyes and indigo. I was a bit hesitant at first since it was scheduled to begin on the night of my birthday and it was a bit sad to think I’d be spending my birthday alone in some random hostel with 15 other strangers… but it ended up being such a wonderful, inspiring experience. I don’t know how it could have been better. We spent from 10 am to 5 pm handpainting and dyeing various yarns with Michele’s natural dye colourways, left the Ballard studio for some dinner with the group, then returned each evening for another one or two hour lecture. One evening, Michele and Kathy demonstrated, side-by-side, the difference between their bio/organic indigo and the indigofera guatamalensis. These women know their indigo.
Driven by an obsessive, passionate and often tumultuous relationship with colour, Felicia Lo is the owner of SweetGeorgia Yarns, an artisan yarn company that makes exquisite and luxurious hand-dyed yarns for knitting and fibres for spinning. She writes about all things knitting, spinning, dyeing, and weaving here at sweetgeorgia.
SweetGeorgia Yarns ::: Studio
110-408 East Kent Avenue South,
Vancouver, BC V5X 2X7
between Main and Fraser
We've recently moved and expanded our production dye studio where we dye all our yarns and fibres. It's a treat to see. Knitters and spinners are welcome to get a glimpse into the world of hand-dyed yarn and experience a slice of the sweet life.
We're open to the public by appointment. Just give us a call!
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