Good morning and happy Friday to you.

Aran Go Baa

This week I have been dyeing up Aran Go Baa. This Aran-weight yarn is about halfway between a light worsted and a bulky yarn. It’s a good strong 4-ply yarn that comes in big 115 gram or 4 ounce skeins. It’s made of 100% superwash merino, and it has 180 yards per skein. If you have a pattern that calls for heavy worsted, it’s the same thing.

Here are some of the colorways I’ve dyed up:

I have now dyed up all of the Aran Go Baa I had except for a small amount I’m saving for Dyed to Order. After this I’ll be focused on lighter-weight yarns through summer.

There’s always this interesting tension this time of year as I await the coming of spring. Is it that way for you too? Spring is my favorite season, and I love to get started dyeing beautiful pastel spring colors, but I’m also well aware that for many of you, spring is still three or four months away.

During the two years we lived in Michigan, a friend warned me not to expect spring until May, and that really helped me not to lose my mind waiting while living someplace with real winters. All that is to say that my compromise right now is to make spring colors on heavier weight yarn.

I have one more colorway created by my son, Joseph, to share with you. Neither he nor I could come up with the perfect name, so I asked on my Facebook page, and I got so many great responses! We decided to go with the one Katherine came up with, which is Sapphire Dreams. Thank you, Katherine!

Here it is:

Didn’t he do a great job? I was just looking at it alongside the other colorways, and I think it would make a wonderful aran-weight fade (are there any patterns for this?) using Ball at Netherfield, Sapphire Dreams, and Phantom of the Opera. Here they are together:

Hats

You can expect to see a few new sample hats in some of these colorways soon. Here are hats made using After the Rain and Bouquet:

A few weeks back, I mentioned my goal of making hats out of lots of different colorways so you can get a better idea of how the colorways will work up. The caveat is that your pattern, stitch tightness, and the particular dye batch all will make some difference in how the colors combine when you knit or crochet with them. Nonetheless, I think these are great to give you just a sense of how a colorway is likely to work up. As I make the hats, I’m adding them to the listings for that colorway.

February 2021 Club Colorway

The last thing I wanted to mention today is the February club colorway. There’s one painter whose work I really love, yet I have not yet used one of his paintings as inspiration. That’s Rembrandt. I chose his painting, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” for February. Here it is:

I’m excited by the challenge of trying to imitate this astonishing chiaro-scurro painting. I may opt to go a little more toward the chiaro and a little less toward the scurro for the sake of making lovely yarn and art batts.

As a reminder, the deadline for making any changes to club subscriptions is the 1st of February.

Have a wonderful weekend!