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Aug 29

A little of this and a little of that.

When I went out into the dye barn this morning, the first thing Paula said (after Good Morning…we are civil) was “Please, oh, please put that list of colorways you are taking down on the blog today.” I’m sorry to both you all and Paula. Truly, I meant to put it up on Tuesday, but this week has completely kicked my butt and gotten away from me.

I can’t believe it’s Thursday. What the hell happened to Wednesday?

I was also going to tell all the Rockin’ Whorlers when we were going we to ship (today), and we all see how well that went. I did send out a newsletter at the end of the week last week with the shipping information in it, but still…

So here I am with my list. This is a hard list for me to post. I’m having deeply saturated psychological autumnal hues letting go issues. It isn’t pretty. As I have most undoubtedly told you many times before, I love this season and all of its turning inward, transformational hues. Because of my autumnal obsession, we have a mega-ton of fall hues, all of which I adore. We have far too many to offer them all at once — much less be able to add in new ones. So…I either have to get over my bad self and let a few rest or…wait, I think I might have an idea. What if we rotate through them all season? What if we offer some for a few weeks and then change them up again? Hmm…just ran this by the team, and they love this idea too. Yay!!

I’m loving this idea quite a bit. A bit of a, “we can have our cake and eat too,” approach to our colorway offerings. Now, if my therapist were sitting here or reading this post, she would have a whole lot to say to me about my ability to let go and what lengths I’m will go to in order not to. Luckily for all of us, she is not sitting here, and if and when she reads this, it will be too late.

When we give this more thought, we’ll let you know our rotation plan/schedule. Until then, here are the colorways that are coming down on Tuesday for a few weeks.

Remember how I told you we were knitting up a sample of Stephen’s Batad in our Marine Silk Fingering as an option to the Worthy?

It’s done!

Meet our very reluctant model, my lovely daughter Sophie.

…in Porcini and Spores. I like this one a lot, but now I want to see it with Porcini as the MC and Spores as the band.

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BFL Fingering Update: I talked to the mill today, and if all goes as planned, our BFL Fingering will be back in stock at the end of next week (unless I just jinxed it by telling you), which is perfect because Shannon has a lovely new design in it that I can’t wait to show you. Yes, this is a teaser!

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Last but least, we are running a Labor Day Special this weekend. We are going to bring back our Trick or Treat and a few of our Winter Wonderland shaded solid kits. I’m going come up with a couple “news” in a few weeks but thought it would be fun to revisit these first. This time they are 250 yd skeins instead of the 210 yd ones, but they are still priced the same so…a bit of a deal. These will be up as long as supplies last.

They are dyed to order, and, as with any special we run, these take us a bit longer due to volume of orders. We will do our very best to get them to you as soon as we can. I see them shipping around September 13th.

We’ll make these live tomorrow, Friday the 30th, around noon Pacific time.

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I have a friend coming, and we are going to go to Art in the Pearl. If you are local, this is a wonderful event in the Northwest park blocks in the Pearl District. So many talented artisans displaying and performing. Inspiring and fun.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

I leave you with a taste of our upcoming new colorways GO Beavs!!

ps We have Blue Mooned Facebook!

Aug 13

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On the color horizon

Can you see it, feel it, smell it in the air? Just that little extra bit of chill in the morning and the barest tinge of brown on the leave, and even a few leaves that have fallen to the ground. You know what that means? FALL is right around corner!! All of us fall people are thrilled and… all of us fall knitters are beyond ourselves.

Since knit season is quickly approaching so we are going to spin our color wheel here at Blue Moon and start moving into the bountiful hues that are Autumn.

Below you will find the list of colorways we are sending to Hue-Spa for a bit of a rest. There send off is next Tuesday the 20th at Noon Pacific time. So if you feel the need for any of the colorways you have a week. In the meantime if you have any of our Fall or Holiday colorways you’d like to se return we will put them all up for about 4 days while I put the finishing touches on the new fall hues. Please put your requests in the comment section of this blog post.

Look at that only took me 10 minutes to make that pretty blue list thing. I am so getting better is this stuff!

I have been working on our color name contest winners yarn. I have three that I am happy enough with to show you and get your feedback. The others I am tweaking. Tweaking color is some serious stuff!

Ok here is Antiquated System which I had a blast with. I felt like there needed to be a fair amount of chaos with some rusty, mossy bits. I love it! It’s right up my alley. I know it’s not going to be up Tamara’s alley but I think it does speak to it’s name.

Next we have Lavender Fields in the Mist. Every single woman in the barn loves this one. It was a challenge to get it lavender enough while still Misty. It is a very Mist-erious skein of yarn.

And then we have High as an Elephant’s Eye which, I don’t mind telling you, I was just a little stumped by. So I walked around the garden and thought about corn and elephants and came up wit this. (I love that sentence.) It’s basically a graduated corn stalk with an elephant’s eye in the middle on the tassle. I was pretty tickled with myself. I am showing you the dye picture because it’s hard to see the elephant’s eye when it is re-skeined. (It looks darker cause it’s wet and not the best picture )

dyeye

Pretty cool eh? I like the darker skein. So, I would adjust to make the colorway look more like the dye shot, but thought I would see what you think.

We are totally going to do this more because it is loads of fun!! Okay I am off to check on my Polwarth, tweak some hues and make lunch for my friend Sivia. We’re going to hatch up some knit fun!

Have a great Tuesday!

Aug 13

Natural Stitches

Meet Yvonne, Anna, Martha, Jenn, Jessica, Jack, Christiana, Kelli, Emily, Zelda and Elise.

Aren’t they adorable!

They are the knitters,crocheters, spinners and weavers who make the local yarn store Natural Stitches the gem that it most certainly is. I am thrilled to be working with such a creative, fun, talented and helpful team of knitters. Natural Stitches has joined our Blue Moon LYS family and I am over the moon about it.

I pretty much knew Natural Stitches would be a good fit for Blue Moon after my research and initial chat with their manager/buyer Yvonne. After my friend Steven sent me a text with this link I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this match was blessed by wool.

I appreciate and value my relationships with the yarn stores that we work with. There is nothing like walking into a well thought out and stocked store run by passionate caring, creative and competent people and the same is true in working with them as a supplier of wooly goodness. That is where I want my yarn!

If you are in Pittsburgh and Natural Stitches is your LYS then lucky you! Look for Blue Moon yarns there soon. we shipped their first order on Monday.

if you are a Natural Stitches regular and would like to sing their praises please leave a comment in support.

Aug 9

Grey Skies and Moss Forests

When you live in the Pacific Northwest you have to make peace with grey. The sky is grey with clouds and the ever threatening promise of rain. The kind of rain that starts as just heavier and damp air, not even a mist at this point. It’s like the clouds are ripe and full of water but not quite ready to let go of it and so just slowly leaks out. Mist comes a few hours or a day later and then turns into a drizzle if… it’s feeling especially spunky. Sometimes and in some places it will actually full on rain, in earnest.

In our rainy season, which is about November to June, the air here is just wet. As with any place one lives there are perks and drawbacks and there certainly are to this prevailing moist air of ours. Like… most of us have some pretty awesome skin and it’s very, very green with the growing of things and… there is moss literally everywhere. There is moss where you want it, gracefully draped over rocks in streams, and where you don’t want it. Which reminds me I need to clean the moss off the roof before summer ends.

One of the best perks in my humble opinion is the Olympic Temperate Rain Forest. ~ See? It really is wet, we even have a rain forest. ~ I love the Olympics they are beautiful and magical and soul restoring. My girls and I were doing some exploring on the other side of Port Angeles recently and we discovered a secluded cove surrounded by rain forest.

Dripping in mystery and magic.

I count my lucky stars that I get to live close enough to enjoy the peace and wonder of it all. I think a grey and mossy color series might be called for.

Aug 9

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WestKnits dyes…

A few months ago I got to do one of my favorite things: play with dye with another color and fiber obsessed soul.

Stephen West came for the day and we had all kinds of fun. We talked yarn, color, pattern, chickens (we had a batch of new chicks that the time), hatched up a plan or two and bonded pretty quickly over my colorway, pond scum. It was quite funny actually. At one point towards the end of that day I had to take the pond scum jar away from him or he would have walked away with mostly pond scum yarn (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) You know, I never, ever, thought I’d encounter another person that loved the scummy goodness of that green as much as myself, but Stephen, well… you’ll see. As I write this I have the same feeling I had then. I was just so tickled that he got it.

Also seriously love the two baster dye approach.

Pond Scum rules baby!

Stephen and I came up with three colorways: Sun Salutations (sun yellow diluted with a dash of…yes you guessed it, pond scum), Greige and Nudie Patootie. All three are on the website right now, two of which are in Stephen’s stunning new shawl/cowl/poncho design, Batad. There are a lot of wonderful things about my job. One of them is working with creative and talented designers. I love watching what happens to my yarns and colors in their hands. I feel my Worthy Fingering (kind of hard to go wrong with cashmere and silk) and our sort of subtle hues, Sun Salutations and Greige, sing in Stephen’s translation of the Batad rice terraces in the Phillipines, where he spends time working with the Ricefield Collective .

Photo Credit to Meredith Ramirez Talusan for the beautiful pictures of Stephen and Batad!

I’m in love with so many elements of this design and I can’t wait to cast mine on. We also think our Marine Silk Fingering would be a nice fit for Batad and a little easier on the budget than Worthy. I am waiting for my yarn to finish drying so I can cast on! I am knitting it in, Pining for Ewe and China Rose. I’ll post pictures when I get it going. I’d say when I am done, but it might be a little while since I am a spinning fool right now.

As always if you’d like color choosing help please don’t hesitate to ask. I love helping you choose your hues! Just email me at info@bluemoonfiberarts.com or comment here.

Thank you Stephen, I really enjoyed our color play!

Aug 7

Blueberry Jammin’

Blueberry Jam with a hint of lime and a few shots of gin right at the very end of things.

I am a jam making fool these days. Jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves… you name it. I just can’t get enough. It’s fun, somehow soothing and in the end tastes really great. And then… there’s the color, while it’s all boiling down and setting its sweet self. This batch of blueberry jam is my favorite so far, such a deep rich hue. Its a bit Smoke on the Water with maybe a hint of boysenberry. It’s going to be grand fun making that color appear on yarn.

Aug 7

Librarian Inspired Knits

What happens when creative meets geek in the stacks of the local library?

The super creative Alex Tinsley , took the dewey decimal call number for knitting books, 746.43, and turned it into a pretty wonderful scarf ~ Meatadata.

Metadata uses our Socks that Rock Lightweight in the followoing colorway combo’s: 1.Cooperline,Spinel and Ponscum. 2. Motley Hue, Deep Unrelenting Gray and Spinel.

Metadata is just one of a series of wonderful designs in Stitching in the Stacks, Librarian Inspired Knits edited by, Sarah Barbour and published by , Shannon Okey and her team, at Cooperative Press . We’re pretty tickled with the whole book. Yay Cooperative Press!! We have to admit though, there’s a special place in our knitterly hearts for Metadata, in all of it’s Dewey Decimal geeky goodness! Makes a knitter want to go find the call number for her favorite book and give it a go.

Photo Credits go to the lovely and talented Caro Sheridan. Pictures for the book were shot at the Cleveland Public Library, one of the highest-circulation libraries in the country.

Here are a few behind the scenes shots from Shannon.

Great job all!

Aug 7

Unofficial Harry Potter Knits

These lovelies are the Narcissa Socks by Rachel Coopey in Interweaves new Unofficial Harry Potter Knits. (Photo credit:Harper Point) Sock that Rock lightweight in Grawk Fledge.

Aug 7

Morning Glory

As the sun starts climbs over the hill, right before it peaks around the giant cedar at the edge of the drive, I head to the garden. My favorite times to be in my garden are, as it awakens with the first light of the day and settles, as that light leaves in the evening.

Mornings are the best though because of the light. Bearing witness, as the sun rises over the cedar and falls almost ray by ray onto each plant ~ a gentle nudge of awakening ~ until the whole garden is awash in sun light and life, is a gift of summer. I can’t think of a better start to the day.

Aug 6

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Good times!

All of us here at Blue Moon want to thank all of you who came to play and shop this weekend. It was such a great time. I hope all of you had as much fun as we did! If all of the smiling faces are any indication I would say a good time was had by all!

We started here:

And quickly filled the space with a whole bunch of fiber-type fun times!

We had beautiful colors together, talked a lot about yarn, knitting, color, spinning, indigo, lichen, gardens, our families and last but not least chickens.

All of you dyers did such a wonderful job on your yarns and fibers. As production dyers, whose main job is to create and follow repeatable recipes, it’s crazy amounts of fun to throw away the book and color outside the lines for a few days. I can’t wait to see everyone’s fibers spun and yarn knit up ~ that’ll be in a couple of weeks right?