This week I have dyed small batches of lots of colorways. On Sock Perfection, I have dyed After the Rain, Annunciation Blue, Burgundy Rose, and Copper Roof. You can see them all right here:

On Twinkle Sock I dyed Monet’s Cathedral and Monet’s Water Lilies:

…and on Squoosh DK I dyed Visit to Lyme and Monet:

You can see all of these colorways together in the New This Month section of my shop.

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Fresh from the Drum Carder

This week I made an art batt colorway called Snow on the Mountain. It was inspired by a picture in my head of being up at the top of a mountain near sunset. The snow is still bright, but the shadows of far off mountains have turned blue and purple while the sun edges its way toward the horizon. This colorway is made of merino, Polwarth, mulberry silk, and sari silk. Because the sari silk is a recycled product, the colors will vary from batt to batt. Here is Snow on the Mountain:

The Polwarth makes these incredibly fluffy! You can find Snow on the Mountain right here.

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Fresh from the Spinning Wheel

Last Saturday was the end of the Spin Together competition, and it has been such a joy to see what everyone spun up. Right now, everyone is in the process of photographing their yarn and adding it to the competition albums. The goal for this year’s competition was creativity and spinning technique, and lots of competitors worked to improve a variety of skills, myself included. Here’s what I spun up over the course of the week:

From left to right are:

1. A lace-weight skein I spun from silk hankies
2. A really wild skein I spun using two Dance of the Gypsies art batts along with kid mohair locks and silver beads
3. A skein I spun from two art batts I made using Polwarth, merino, mulberry silk, and nebs from a weaving project
4. A skein I spun from two Purple Iris art batts
5. A many-plied chain-plied skein from the leftovers of all of the above

I’m hoping the other members of the Purple Lamb team will be willing to share their beautiful yarn in the next Show and Tell newsletter!

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Fresh from the Loom

This week I finally finished weaving the 2024 Advent calendar yarn. I used the 24 minis as the warp and the suri lace cloud as the weft. It is drying right now:

The total length is about 4 yards! My goal is to make a 4-panel skirt for myself. We’ll see how it goes.

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How Many WIPs Is Enough?

This is a question I have been thinking about for awhile, and I’d like to write an article about it for the newsletter. Would you help me out? How many works in progress (WIPs) do you like to have going at once? Are they all one craft or different crafts? What inspires you to start a new project when you already have lots going on? Is it that you’re tired of the ones you are working on or just the desire to do something new and different? What causes you to put your WIPs in “time out”? What have you found works best for you? Do you like to have different difficulty levels at the same time so you can choose based on your energy and attention? Let me know what works for you!

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Kits and Sets

In case you didn’t happen to see last Friday’s newsletter, this is just a reminder that I’ll have the Eight Days of Easter kits available to preorder until the middle of March. After that I’ll get started dyeing them and have them to you in plenty of time for Easter. Many thanks to everyone who has already ordered one!

Now that spring is finally coming (and going and coming…), I also wanted to remind you about my new kits inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I actually have one complete set in stock on Sock Perfection right now, and I have them available to dye as sets too on all the bases. You can see them right here.

Now I’m off to start dyeing the March club colorways. Happy spring!