Good morning, and happy Friday to you! I have so many things to tell you about today that it’s hard to know where to start.

First of all, I want to thank you for your prayers and kind words for our daughter. She made it safely to Rome and already got to see Saint Peter’s!

I also want to talk to you about both the January and February club colorways and show you what’s new in the shop this week.

New Colorways

Let’s start with the new colorways. As you may know, I have a list of about 50 colorways that I dye up each season, usually in a loop. I dye some all year long while I change others out for different seasons of the year, and I’m always adding new colorways as I create them.

This week, I dyed After the Rain on almost all of my yarn bases, including Buttery Soft DK for the first time. Here that is:

Buttery Soft DK is such a great yarn base. It’s a non-superwash base that I have recently re-introduced to the shop. It’s made of extra-fine merino, alpaca, and a little bit of silk. It’s great for weaving, knitting, and crochet. Just be aware that it is non-superwash, so it does need to be washed by hand in cold water unless you want to full it.

As a side note, if weaving is not yet part of what you do, it might be good to know that weavers often full the cloth after taking it off the loom so that the threads meld together and tighten up. That’s the magic of non-superwash wool and other protein fibers. They can actually do that whereas silk, cotton, linen, acrylic, and superwash wool cannot.

I also dyed up Annunciation Blue on lots of different yarn bases just yesterday. Here it is on So Silky Sock:

I dyed up Afremov’s Farewell to Anger this week too. This was originally a club colorway of mine that I added to the shop last summer. This time I dyed it on more yarn bases including Stained Glass Sock shown here:

I have already heard from some customers who were hoping to get this but couldn’t before it sold out on the bases they wanted, so I’ll be dyeing up some more this weekend and listing it as soon as it’s ready.

The last colorway I want to show you is something completely new. I’ve been pondering how to create a colorway based on the phial of light that Galadriel gives to Frodo in The Two Towers. Here’s the quote:

“And you, Ring-bearer,’ she said, turning to Frodo. ‘I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.’ She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. ‘In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out. Remember Galadriel and her Mirror!’

—The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

I’ve been struggling a little with this because on the one hand, the light in the phial is white; yet, what makes white light? I bet you all know that white light is made from all the different colors together. Because of that and because I thought it would make more interesting yarn, that’s just what I did. I created a colorway called A Light in Dark Places using a black background and light shades of cerise, orange, yellow, green, blue, and lilac to represent the light.

Here is A Light in Dark Places:

This colorway causes a bit of a kerfuffle among the Tolkien nerds in my family (that would be all of us). Some thought it totally made sense while others thought it was a betrayal of the book to take the white light and use ROYGBIV to make it instead of just using white more directly, but in the end, I already have a colorway of black with white (Objectivity) and a colorway of white with black (Javert), and I wanted to make something really wonderful to go with this section of one of my favorite trilogies. So I went with it in spite of the naysayers. I hope you like it.

I only made 4 skeins A Light in Dark Places to start, but if you all decide you like it, I’ll make more on more yarn bases.

The Making of the January Club Colorway

While I was dyeing the yarn for January’s club colorway, I decided to make a short video walking you through how I take a painting and use it as inspiration for yarn. Now I have to give a SPOILER ALERT. If you are a club member but have not yet gotten and/or opened your January Club Colorway, stop right here. Don’t look at the video. I’d rather that you saw the yarn or art batts in person first.

If you are not a club member or if you have already received your January club colorway (and most of you should have), then go right ahead. Depending on your email account, you may have to click on the link below and watch it on youtube. If all you see is a black square, here’s the link.

February Club Colorway

For February, I really wanted to find a winter scene, but I remembered that many of you said you preferred light or bright colors to counterbalance the darkness of winter, so I found one painting that could do both, and it’s actually a painting by my very favorite artist, Monet.

It’s called “Houses in the Snow,” and he painted it in Norway in the middle of winter where he gained the respect (or at least the curiosity) of the inhabitants by painting outside even in the middle of snowstorms. Here’s the painting:

Another reason I chose this painting is that I so rarely create truly pastel yarn, so I thought this would be a nice change.

If you would like to join one of my yarn or art batt clubs, you can do so right here. The deadline to join in time for the February club colorway is February 1st.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!