Each month, we dye a brand new, unique colourway for our Spinning Fibre and Sock Yarn Clubs. We’re getting ready for the April Club right now, so I’d like to share what we did for March:
Colourway // Beginner’s Luck
It seems like just yesterday that I learned to dye, but in fact it was ten years ago to this very month. In March 2005, I picked up a couple packets of Kool-Aid from the grocery story and microwaved it in a glass dish with some Corriedale wool fibre. What a mess I made of the kitchen that day… But as soon as those sweet and fruity Kool-Aid colours transformed the white wool, I was smitten.
Very quickly, I started exploring different methods of dyeing, different dyestuffs (including natural dyes), and simply indulging in the experience of playing with colours. As a graphic designer, dyeing brought out the immediacy of creativity that I craved and I used colour blending and handpainting to express the thoughts that were weighing on my mind. Sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but nearly always saturated.
While SweetGeorgia has transformed and evolved over the past ten years, I am deeply grateful for those successful first few dye experiments. So much of what has happened since those days can be attributed to my Beginner’s Luck with hand-dyeing. Thank you for taking the journey with me.
Yarn + Fibre // Corriedale Sock, Corriedale Cross fibre
For March, I specifically chose the fibre that I first started working with as a beginner. Corriedale is a cross between English Leicester or Lincoln and Merino, so you’ll see characteristics like softness and crimp mixed with medium-long staple and toughness. Combined with nylon for added strength, these characteristics make it well-suited hardwearing socks or other outerwear. Corriedale Cross is great for worsted or semi-worsted spinning, but this fibre can also be easily spun into a woolen yarn.
Just for fun, here are a few snapshots from 2005 when I first started dyeing and what I was obsessed with at that time (and you can read those posts again here and here):
And it’s not too late to join us for April Club, if you like. Come see the Club info here!
