Friday, February 11, 2011

The yarn is here, the yarn is here!

You would think that with all the yarn I work with on a daily basis, I wouldn't get so excited about having some new yarn arrive from the mill.  This year it has been especially exciting because I committed myself to sorting through all of my fleece and getting it processed.  Too many bags of great fleece in the past have sat in the barn too long and acquired unwanted moths or in the basement and gotten damp and moldy.  

Fanci with her baby Fiona
I've been receiving batches all fall, just one or two at a time, but this week, I received the last 4 batches of yarn from the fiber of 2010.  We blended several fleeces for each batch and got some very beautiful mixes this time around.  The first was all our dark brown animals which let's face it, can be boring.  So I added in some white and now we have a tweedy, masculine yarn.  Our second batch was created with a base of Fanci, our girl with every color in her.  Because her base is gray, with some hints of brown, I felt it was safe to add Felippe's black fleece and some of Tootie's pretty light gray fleece.  Again, it looks like a very tweedy dark gray.

My biggest challenge is the medium fawn/light brown group.  There are a lot of animals of that color and I just don't love that much TAN.  So when I saw a huge bag of angelina at the mill, I was all about throwing some of that in.  So it is still tan, but there is a little sparkle in it.  While it's not easy to dye darker colors, you can obtain some of the prettiest results.  So taking this dark fawn yarn, I dyed it in dark blues, greens and purples and the results were fantastic!  While the pictures don't do the glitz justice, it looks great!

Take a closer look at all the yarns that we've had processed this year on our Etsy site, or better yet, take a drive out to the country to see them for yourself!