Happy Friday to you! Do you think I squeezed enough into the subject line?

I want to tell you about the colorway I dyed up this week and also show you the new top my daughter and I dyed late last week. It was too wet to photograph in time for last week’s newsletter.

I also want to tell you about the June club colorway. Beyond that, I wanted to do something new and invite those of you who have handmade businesses–or any business really–to tell me about it so I can share it in next week’s newsletter. More about that shortly.

Epiphany

Let’s start with Epiphany. I first created this to be the 12th and 14th colorways out of a 25-colorway set for my yarn Advent Calendar from 2 years ago. I loved it so much that I decided to turn it into a regular colorway in my shop.

Here’s a photo of the shawl from that Advent Calendar. Shirley shared this with me for one of the Show and Tell newsletters, and it’s her beautiful knitting.

The pattern is Ambah O’Brien’s Adventurer Scarf and Wrap.

Today I restocked Epiphany in all my summer yarn bases. You can see them here:

I feel like this is a game of Duck, Duck, Goose or the old Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not Like the Others” given that there are 6 different sock-weight bases and one on Squoosh DK.

I put Squiggle Sock in the middle so you can see all of that glorious texture! I’ll be sending out some package samples of Squiggle Sock soon. I really love the way it looks and feels, and I think it would make a great summer top among other things.

Here is the hat I knit using Epiphany to give you an idea of how it can work up:

Hand-Dyed Top

As I mentioned last week, my daughter and I dyed up some new top made of 50% baby alpaca and 50% tussah silk. The undyed color is a light beige, which gives the dyed fiber so much richness. Here’s the whole grouping:

I have already sold out of a few of them, but I still have Carousel Horse, Enchanted Forest, and Earth, Sea, and Sky available. I would recommend these for spinning but not felting, and they would be great for any spinner who is quite comfortable spinning merino. I would consider it a good next step.

Here they are individually:

I have to confess that I took a braid of Carousel Horse for myself. I think I may spin it as fractal yarn.

June Club Colorway

I also wanted to tell you about the inspiration for the upcoming June club colorway. I’m going to be using Van Gogh’s painting entitled, “Still Life with Two Sunflowers.” Like Monet’s painting from last month, this is one of a series of paintings. This particular one with the beautiful blue background was painted by Van Gogh in 1887 and resides at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

I love Van Gogh, but I really chose this particular painting because of the beautiful intense colors. I considered using it for last month’s club colorway but decided to save it for summer, which is now upon us. I believe this was the last of the sunflower series, so I assume that he was happy with his work.

I think this should be a reminder to all of us that everything we do in terms of art and craft is a work in progress. The great masters made multiple versions of a given motif. In Monet’s case, I think it was because he was exploring the nature of light. In Van Gogh’s case, I surmise it was a search for perfection; yet perfection eludes all of us. I think it is really much more important to just keep trying again and again–starting fresh and trying once more. This is true whether we’re talking about the fiber arts or something much larger in life.

An Invitation to Share Your Businesses

That brings me in some vague round-about way to my last topic for today. I really want this newsletter to be about all of you and not just about me and my business.

I have been realizing that many of you have your own businesses, and I would love to share them with all my newsletter subscribers. There’s no cost, and there no strings attached.

If you have a business you would like to share (especially if it is a handmade business), please email me with the name and web address of your business along with a brief description of who you are and what you do. So long as it’s family friendly, I’ll include it in next week’s newsletter.

Please be sure to get me the information by next Wednesday so I have time to put it together.

Until next time, I hope you have a great week filled with the joys of the fiber arts.

Stay well!