My biggest sale of the year starts today! I’m offering 20% off on basically everything that is in stock and ready to ship. That includes over 250 skeins of hand-dyed yarn, silk scarves, stitch markers, silk hankies, hand-dyed top, and my knitting patterns too. You can find everything in the sale right here, and the discount will be applied automatically when you check out.

I decided to start it early this year so you can shop whenever it is convenient, even if you are the main chef for a big Thanksgiving dinner.

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December Club Colorway

Every December I choose a famous painting related to Christmas. Usually I have to break out of the art history sequence to do it, but this year we are just moving into the Renaissance, so I decided to choose a painting by Giotto who is considered the father of Renaissance painting. He was the first to create depth in painting and to use chiaro-scurro to make folds in fabric. There’s a realism in Giotto’s work that marks a huge change from everything that came before him.

I debated long and hard between two paintings of his. The first one, painted around 1310, is considered by many to be the first Renaissance painting, and it is indeed beautiful. It’s called the Ognissanti Madonna (All Saints Madonna), and it’s in the Uffizi Museum in Florence. Here it is:

Here’s a video on SmartHistory comparing it with two other similar paintings that came just before it and how substantial the differences are.

However, in the end I chose a much more intimate and somewhat less famous painting that Giotto made not long after the Ognissanti Madonna. This is a fresco of the Nativity in the lower church in Assisi:

What I love most is the joy on Mary’s face as she gazes at her newborn Son for the first time! I’ll be focusing on the deep blue and gold and rose tones, but I won’t ignore the neutral beiges and creams.

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A Lovely Trio

While I was photographing Telemachus, I put together this trio of Telemachus, Copper Roof, and Turquoise. It’s sort of an addition by subtraction technique where Telemachus has many colors, Copper Roof just has two of the colors in Telemachus, and then Turquoise just has one color from Copper Roof. I think it would make a really lovely and interesting shawl where each colorway is used in its entirety before moving onto the next colorway.

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Fresh from the Dye Pots

This week I dyed up Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Visit to Lyme. And yes, they are included in the sale. Here is Visit to Lyme on Squoosh DK for the first time:

I think that’s everything. I hope you find something you’ll really enjoy from the sale. Have a happy Thanksgiving.