Colourway // Sweet Embrace
At SweetGeorgia, we are blessed with a truly great team of dyers, including Mariana Frochtengarten, who joined us last year with 20 years of experience as a textile artist and instructor. Mariana has specialized in resist dyeing processes, including batik (wax resist) and itajime shibori (folding and clamping fabrics). Here is her colour story:
This August, I celebrate ten years of life in Canada — a country where I built a family, made many friends, and a place I learned to call home.
I come from Brazil, a country where the weather does not change as dramatically as it does here, where lifestyle does not change too much from one season to another, and where fruits and vegetables are abundant throughout the whole year. In Canada, however, I came to experience a life where the beginning of each season is well-marked and ritualized, where people change their wardrobe contents and projects every few months, and where the summer, when it arrives, is more welcomed than anywhere else I have ever been!
I know the warm season is coming when I start to see my favorite fruits on the outside stalls of the grocery stores. Plums of all kinds, nectarines, apricots, peaches, and berries — they feed me through all my senses! Their colour, texture, taste, and smell are exhilarating and they make me smile. After all this time in Canada, I have learned to appeciate more the present moments and to enjoy what each season has to offer. And more than that, I came to understand how much more valuable things are to us if they are not available all the time.
I dedicate this club colourway, Sweet Embrace, to the beautiful summer season in Canada. I created a colourway that references the beauty of the fruits I get to enjoy at this time of the year, and one that celebrates the warmth I will always find in my own country and have found here, upon completing ten years of immigration.
— Mariana Frochtengarten, precision dyer at SweetGeorgia Yarns (see more of Mariana’s work here)
Yarn // Tough Love Sock
Sweet Embrace // August 2016 Club Colourway // Tough Love Sock
Tough Love Sock is our most popular and best-selling sock yarn, perhaps because of it’s combination of softness and strength or because it takes colour so clearly and vibrantly! Spun from 80% superwash and supersoft fine merino and 20% nylon into a 3-ply yarn, this yarn is so versatile — knit it firmly for hard wearing socks, knit it loosely for drapey shawls, or knit it doubled for a great worsted weight substitute.
Fibre // Superwash BFL
Sweet Embrace // August 2016 Club Colourway // Superwash BFL
Superwash BFL — our beloved Bluefaced Leicester made washable. BFL is one of the softest, glossiest medium-long wools (longer staple length), making it an all-around favourite fibre to spin. Easy to draft, durable fibre texture, and soft enough for next-to-skin wear… the perfect fibre for everything from laceweight to bulky.
Interested in seeing what some of our Club members are making with their yarn and fibre? Check out Rachel’s spinning posts about what she’s been spinning from our monthly fibre. And welcome Katrina, who has been knitting up each month’s yarn into something spectacular!
— Enjoy colour, Felicia
Each month, we dye a brand new, unique colourway for our Spinning Fibre and Sock Yarn Clubs. This post is all about what we sent out to our members in August 2016.