sweetgeorgia

Deeper into Colour

The Coquitlam Guild gave me a chance to speak last Thursday about natural dyes and natural fibres, and while I did talk about my experiments with natural dyeing over the past few years, including starting up the Supernatural SweetGeorgia collection of naturally dyed yarns, I think I ended up talking about dyeing and craft and burnout. How do we renew and regenerate ourselves after burnout? Do we even come back to the craft which took us down in the first place? I related this to principles and values that I learned in the completely unrelated activity of surfing and talked about how it gave me back the balance, simplicity and focus, and the appreciation to even attempt to dye things again. I’m not sure my “surfing as metaphor for life” goes over in weaving and knitting circles, but it’s the honest truth about what I believe.

I talked about changing my dye practice from very sharply variegated colourways, requiring a shameful amount of plastic waste, and moving towards a more water- and energy-efficient workflow. That is the reason I have moved more towards kettle-dyeing, semi-solid shade colourways and multiple colour overdyes… so that I could better take advantage of the low-impact benefits of acid dyeing.

Also, I related to the guild members how natural dyeing is not a benefit to the environment for larger scale operations and noted how Lorna’s Laces Green Line ended up being dyed with conventional synthetic dyes.

Regardless of natural vs. synthetic dye sources, I’ve also tried to implement the colour principles that I learned from Michele Whipplinger including the idea of chromatic neutrals. That is, I’m trying to dye more complex browns and greys as opposed to colours that are so obviously… colourful. Colours that are slightly desaturated and more rich in depth.

I’m also working with a new 50/50 silk and merino laceweight base yarn. It’s a slightly heavier laceweight, but so glossy and gorgeous. It’s 765 yards in a 100 g skein and I’m looking forward to knitting up something like a Swallowtail Shawl in it. It has been, so far, taking the colour so well and I’ll be adding it to the online shop soon too.

There are so many things to learn and so many things to explore. I’m happy that I’ll be spending the summer dyeing more of these deeper, richer colours in preparation for the autumn.