Posts from the ‘Rockin’ Sock Club’ Category

Susurrate Shawl

The story of a shawl and the birth of a designer!!

A little over a year ago I got an email from my dear friend Cara ( aka January One) asking me if I was interested in working with her on a design she was had a vision for that she was slightly obsessed with. I am pretty much always game to work on pretty much anything with Cara. I believe in her and we usually have all kinds of fun! Also… I was super intrigued by what she sent me in her email.

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“So I’m trying my hand at designing a brioche shawl. I’ve had this idea in my head for forever and I can’t get it out so I’m putting it to needles and yarn. I’m attaching a picture of what I have so far. I’m using the leftovers from my eyeball shawl. My idea is that it’s a tree, with branches at the top that flow into big leaves then smaller leaves which flows into flowers and buds at the bottom and then a flower-ish border.If you like what I have so far, want to talk about yarn? I want to use lightweight. ❤️❤️❤️❤️”

I was interested. No, that’s not correct, I was hooked. I mean look at that initial photo. Also I know my friend and I knew she would knit her vision into a stunning reality so…of she went.

And Susurrate was born!

I received the first swatch picture in the middle on May and then this finished one on July 3rd. Now it does not look like it in this picture but susurrate is not a small shawl. It uses close to 1620 yards of Sock that Rock Lightweight. And that my friends is a lot of stitches to put together to match a vision. I loved being a part of this process with her, hearing her ideas, thoughts and the challenges. Watching her find what worked and what did not and then how to implement it all. I know from my own creative process that matching your vision to reality is not always an simple or easy process. It takes perseverance, a good deal of patience and often thinking outside of the box. I know for me I will not let go until I know I have achieved exactly what I had in mind. Often (at least for me) that takes going the extra stitch with a fair amount of ripping back and maybe even walking away to gain some perspective. It often means we have to challenge ourselves to step outside of our comfort zone and knowledge base. Take a look at this design and imagine writing the pattern for this.

Based on everything Cara shared with me about her vision and inspiration ( her dear grandmother) I feel like she knocked this out of the park! I am so very proud and excited for my friend.

I was stunned speechless when I saw that first picture of the finished piece. I knew she  would create something wonderful. I did not doubt it for one second. That said the reality of it is breathtakingly magnificent.

Photo Credits to Gale Zucker

Cara, thank you for letting me be a small part of your process. I am thrilled I got to witness all of this creative goodness from the beginning! I can’t wait to see all of the color variations of Susurrate we all knit up!

Enchanted Forest and Empyreal are the colors shown here

We are doing a KAL!! Of course with such and epic knit wonder the needs to be a knit-a-long! Check out Cara’s rav page for the details. The KAL starts on July 19th . We wanted plenty of time for us to get your yarn to you.

We are running a 15% discount until the KAL starts. The coupon code is: susurrate19

We recommend you order your yarn asap!!

You need a fair amount of contrast between the two colors you choose.

Also  please read what Cara writes about yarn usage. Cara used  4 skeins of Socks that Rock Lightweight but did not have a lot left (hardly any) and had already done the swatching so this does not leave a lot of room for swatching so… please keep that in mind.As always I am available for color help selection.

Here are a few. I am going to pick a speckled or multicolorway and then list a few shaded solids that go with, that give what I think is a good amount of contrast to highlight Cara’s tree pattern.

Chintz and Giggles:  Aquarius  * Cariblue * Bluebird of Happiness * Coral * Ophelia * Lover’s Leap * Pistachio * Everyday Grey * Rosebud * Lean Mean Aubergine * Maroon 5 *  There are a whole ot of shaded solids that will work with this on it really is what floats your boat and has enough contrast!

Oola Pikka :  KMBFLA * Bladerunner * Bleck * Ophelia * Smoke on the Water * Pistachio * Copperline * Oscar’s Grouchy Green * Spruced

Plumpy Sun Angle:  Aquarius * Blue Bird of Happiness * Coral Queen * Harold Purple Crayon * Lean Mean Aubergine * Boysenberry * Green Wing * Electric Blue * Chillaxin * Motley Hue * Marron 5 * Forget Me Not Blue * Sun Salutations

Phaedra: Coral Queen * Robin’s Egg Blue * Shoqua * Maroon 5 * Moldy Peaches

Okay more to come…

I need to post this.

We are dyeing and shipping as fast as we can!! Our new dyer shows up at the end of the week !!! Yay!!  I can’t tell you how excited we are.

I am so grateful to Kalia, Sarah and Crystal for being a true team!

Why lots are important.

Okay before we go into why lots are important. I have taken the colorways down I told you I would and put up some of our favorites. A few of these have not been up on the website for awhile. I’m pretty excited to see them.

So as I said in the last post we are having a contest of sorts. The first person that can list all of the colorways I just added wins a Rare Gem skein. You can email your guess to us at info@bluemoonfiberarts.com .

Please put “Colorway Contest” in the subject line of your email. Thanks!

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We all know about dye lots and how important it is to order or purchase enough yarn for your project in the same lot, especially if you are knitting a garment. Well my knitting friends the same is true for yarn lots and here is why.

One LOT of yarn is basically 1 MILL RUN of that yarn. ONE MILL RUN LOT would be made from all the same wool/top and then spun at the same time and plied then also to the specs of that yarn.  Most mills will keep the singles and then ply the yarn as needed. Each time that happens it should be marked as a different lot since the ply could be different. You would think that it would not be different enough to matter but in fact it is. ( Ask me how I know?)

I will never, ever forget when my second big order of Socks that Rock walked in the door. I opened the box, pulled out the skeins buried my face in them and then gave them a squeeze. And to my surprise they felt a little different. The yarn was a little softer than the last shipment we had. I was like okay let’s see what it dyes like. It pretty much dyed the same but it was most definitely the tiniest bit softer with a fraction ( and I mean a fraction) less boing to it. I might have freaked out a wee bit. I called my supplier and told them they had it all wrong and what did they do and so on and so forth.

It was then that I got schooled on different LOTS and how wool is a living growing thing. While we do as much as we can to recreate a yarn to the specs we have for that yarn there is going to be some variation. It might be a variation that most are not going to notice but sometimes it can be a bit more. Which is why each new lot is tested when it walks in our door so we know what we are working with.

As most of you know we recently ran a super Special on our BFL Sport since it was being discontinued. We put a special pricing on it and also decided to a do a KAL with one of our favorite patterns. Midway through dyeing massive amounts of BFL we discovered that we were sent 2 differing lots that were not marked as such. yeah…

Now, the difference between the two was not great. And…unfortunately it was not a difference we could see before it was dyed. If we had an order with 1 skein of each of three differing colors you would not notice either. We had a lots of those orders because that was what the KAL called for. It was when we had a garments worth of the same color that the difference was visible. Say there were 5 skeins all dyed in one color. You could see that 3 were from one lot and 2 were from the other. Now let’s take a moment and think about that and what it might mean production wise on a yarn that was already discounted and we had a ton of orders for. Yeah…I might have shed a tear or two.  So… we took a minute to regroup and problem solve.

The difference was one lot was tighter plied than the other. The end gauge was the same so that was not an issue. Phew!!! The issue was that the color looked just a bit different. Which for sweater knitting is a problem. So we could not ship those out to you.

(You see the difference both in the ply and the color yes?)

What we discovered was if we soaked the yarn, spun it out and then dried it we could see the difference between the lots before dyeing!!! Yay Kalia for coming up with that plan. While we were thrilled to have a plan it did add a whole other step to the process slowing everything down. Adding more labor also adds more cost. Adding another step that delays all orders not just the BFL also adds more customer service for us.

Why am I sharing this with you? I am not sharing to complain. Although, in all honest after the year we have had I did having my whining moment or two with a good friend and a bottle of wine. I have been in this industry for at least 20 years and know these things happen. I will say it does seem to be happening more and more lately. Also, if you run a small business you know that this kind of problem-solving rolling with the punches is just how things can go. Dyers are often the last process/person before it goes to your local yarn store and/or into your hands. Something that is interesting to consider in relationship to the end product and the controls we have.

I am sharing all this with you so we all have a better understanding of what goes into the making and dyeing of the yarn that we create with. There are many steps and people involved from shepherd to yarn store owner. I think it is important to know exactly what goes into what we are working with. When we pick up a skein of yarn off a shelf we are not really considering all that goes into bringing that skein to us.

Okay I have at least 5 more things to do today and it is already 2:00 so off I go.

Thanks for listening!

New Colors!!

Look!!! I made new colors! I know it’s been awhile since I have felt light enough to be color inspired. Getting caught up or close to it certainly helps. I am pretty excited about these.

I was really inspired by this months Super Worm Moon and not in a way I would’ve predicted. I actually was quite stumped as to translate a worm moon into a colorway for yarn and then add the fact that is was a super worm moon. So much pressure!! I think I got it though. The light purple with the brown and gold and then that dark blue black giving it that bruiser of a look. I am pretty smitten with this one. Which I think kind spiraled and reawakened my color mojo. I even created tow new colors to go with out Super Worm Moon to make another Moon Trio.  I don’t think you can see it from this picture but the Grounded colorway has streaks of that purple all throughout those browns and golds and then on the lighter end a more light purple skein (Andalusite) with those golds and browns streaked through it.

As much as I love my full moon wormy earthy hues. I think my favorite of this bunch is Pickled Eggs! My grandmother Winnie always had a jar or two of eggs pickling. She kept them on the attic stairs. They were bright and happy and absolutely delicious. She used beet juice in her picking so they were super bright and a little spicy (cayenne). They looked a lot like these beauties.

I know my skeins are a little pinker then the eggs in this picture but my grans were super pink so I went with what I my visual memory has and my taste buds too. Winnie like her cayenne. My hens are laying like crazy so maybe I need to make up a batch of pickled eggs. Yum!!!

And since I had the hot bright pink out I decided to play with some black and aqua and bam we have Chasing Flamingos which one of our facebook followers named. Such a great name! So thanks for the great name Sophia.

Which brings us to the Delta Blues. And again Winnie plays a small part in this one. Been missing my grandmother so I guess I am channeling her through color which she would love! I am working a lot more on layering colors to creating more complex hues with depth and surprises that you might only see once you start knitting. Grounded most definitely has some crazy layering of color ~ browns, gold, orange and purple. I know! Do you know how much purple and brown love each other?  So… much.

Which bring us to our last new colorway of the weekend Empyreal which means: of or relating to the sky or heavens ~ celestial. Our Cara named it since it is a colorway I made just for her and this crazy cool and stunning design she has been working on. If you have not seen it you are going to love it and be seriously impressed. She uses Socks that Rock Lightweight in Enchanted Forest and Empyreal. When Cara asked me to create this color she told me she wanted Enchanted Forest for the  forest canopy and then she needed that sky that we see through it. I love Cara quite a bit so I thought long and hard about what it needed to be. I am glad I did not rush the process because we are bot so very happy with how it all turned out and I so love the name she chose since it embodies what we were trying to create and is the perfect match for Enchanted Forest!! The pattern is called Sussurate and at this point in it’s creative life it is with the tech editor and test knitters.

Are ya ready??? It’s amazing! I love it so very much and am so proud of my friend for designing her vision in stitches and in brioche no less!

Photo credit: January One (Cara Davis Conomos)

So much color!! It must be Spring!

Okay so a little news. We made serious headway this week and see light at the end of this tunnel so thank you so very very much for hanging in there with us.

We are almost done with all of the BFL Sport and and both sock club shipments. Dyeing all of that BFL was quite a job since they are 8 ounce skeins. Holy moly!! We are working on web orders and Our of the Hue color club along with our LYS orders.

If you have been waiting to purchase Seduction and Panda now is your time for on Monday we will be saying goodbye to both of these yarns. We are also just about out of BFL SPORT so that will also be coming down. Thank you all so very much for helping us give this yarn the send off it deserved. I can honestly say that other then when we were all knitting the Traveling Sweater with Woobu have we had such a successful garment yarn special. It has left me wondering if it was a combination of the pricing special and that the yarn was leaving or just that the yarn was leaving. I am on a mission to make sure we do not loose anymore of our beloved yarns so I am going to be more proactive in making sure we support them so the mill will keep making them for us. I will need you help so stay tuned my fiber loving friends.

Okay so I am posting this blog post and some of the new colorways are not quite up yet. That’s my next job.

Super Worm Moon over Mt Hood!

even if you are a small forest surviving off of moon alone.  your light is extraordinary.

~ reminder

nayyirah.waheed

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 your light is extraordinary!

PS: In honor of our last super moon of the year we are offering all three of our La Luna yarns at 20% off for the next 4 days!

Code: lalunalove