Good morning and happy Friday to you! It’s getting to feel a lot like summer here in Texas. If you live someplace with mild summers, I am officially jealous. On the up side, though, we are starting to get butterflies fluttering through the yard, and I picked the first red tomato yesterday from our garden.

Today I want to tell you about the results from last week’s poll for new yarn bases. I also want to show you what I have been dyeing this week, and I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s coming up in the next few weeks while we chat.

Poll Results

Last week, I asked all of you which new yarn base possibilities you were interested in. The overwhelming response was for Alpaca Lace Cloud, so I’ll be bringing that one back next month. The mill changed it around a little bit, so now it has over 400 yards per 50 gram skein, and it has a little more silk. It has all the wonderful fluffy texture of mohair with none of the itch factor. I’m excited to bring that back. Here’s a photo of some colorways from the past that I dyed on Alpaca Lace Cloud:

There was not much interest in the bouclé yarn which honestly surprised me a bit, so I won’t be adding that one for now.

However, there was significant interest in the 100% silk sock-weight yarn, so I’m going to be adding that one too. After lots of brainstorming together, my daughter Mary came up with the idea of calling it Diamond Silk Sock since both silk and diamonds are strong and lustrous. Isn’t that a great name? Here is the sample skein I dyed up on Diamond Silk Sock in Dreams of the Sea:

This is going to be a wonderful yarn base for summer, whether you knit, weave, or crochet. I have also been wanting to add a yarn base that will work well for those who are allergic to or sensitive to wool, so this will do that too. Hurray!

If you have any colorway requests for the first batches of Alpaca Lace Cloud or Diamond Silk Sock, let me know.

Fresh from the Dye Pots

I have been busy dyeing up sets to go with Deborah Bowanko’s upcoming pattern release for Pools of Color, but we’ll talk about that next week. I’m so excited about it that I can hardly wait to tell you.

Meanwhile, though, I dyed up Galadriel’s Gift on all the yarn bases this week. This is one of my personal favorites. It’s based on the gift that Galadriel gives to Sam in The Lord of the Rings.

Here it is on Sparkly Merino Sock:

One of my favorite colorway combos is Galadriel’s Gift with Dreams of the Sea, and I decided to add Crab Nebula as well while I was photographing them. Here they are together on Sparkly Merino Sock:

I have Galadriel’s Gift and Dreams of the Sea available on a multitude of yarn bases right now, and I have Crab Nebula on Sparkly Merino Sock and Super Sport.

I also dyed a new colorway this week that I named Fandango. I had to search far and wide to find a name that didn’t conflict with something I had already used. Of course I’ve had “Bohemian Rhapsody” running through my head ever since!

I dyed this colorway specifically to go with Emerald and Amethyst. It also looks great with Paris and several other colorways. Fandango is similar to Burgundy Rose but a little lighter and brighter–and a little more toward purple and less toward red. I don’t honestly know yet if this will be a regular colorway or not, but here is Fandango on Sock Perfection:

Here are Fandango and Burgundy Rose side by side on Stained Glass Sock so you can see the difference between them:

Which one do you prefer?

I dyed up a fun new mini skein set called Fun at the Beach as well. Here that is:

Last but not least, I dyed up the assigned pooling version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night yesterday. Here it is on Super Sport:

It looks gorgeous knit in Dawn Barker’s Float shawl like this one my friend Natalie made:

I think that’s about everything for this week. Have a lovely cool weekend. I hope you find some time to put your feet up with your favorite project and something nice to drink. See you next week.