Oct. update

Thanks for another great update, everyone!  I’ll get packages in the mail Monday morning.  Note that the mail may be slightly slower than usual, as Canada Post is planning some slow-downs as they are in the midst of contract negotiations.  At this point in time, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but do contact me if you have questions.

It’s September [I stand corrected; I am reliably informed that it is in fact OCTOBER.  Sigh.].  Anyway, I have some gobsmackers for you!  (I figured I’d just cut to the chase; we all know why you’re here.)  😉

To claim a gobsmacker, send me an email (gobsmackedyarn@gmail.com) letting me know the name of the cake and the base.  The first person to claim a cake gets it.  Things can be pretty fast and furious at the beginning, but I promise I’ll email you back to let you know whether you got what you wanted.  Once the dust starts to settle a little, I’ll follow up with a PayPal invoice; if you haven’t ordered from me before, please include your mailing address (and phone number, if outside Canada).

Please remember that colours may vary across different devices; if you have any questions or would like a verbal description of colours, just ask.

Four Quarter: Top left: Supernova Spring; Top right: And the Memory Stays…; Front left: Gotta Let It Go; Front right: A Watermelon Wonder

Four Quarter: Top left: The Next Nine (Straight: soft greyed teal with pale greeny blues); Bottom left: Bubble & Trouble; Top right: Lavender Camouflage (lilac to dappled lavender to palest lavender pink); Bottom right: Skybound & Sorrowful (Straight: lightly variegated sky blues)

Four Quarter: Top left: Highlighter Clean-up in Aisle 3! (Straight); Bottom left: Winter’s Dawns Will Come; Top right: The Beautiful Brains of the Zombie; Bottom right: Soft Ain’t Always Sweet (Straight)

Four Quarter: Left: A Tropical State of Mind; Right: Nuclear Neutral (Straight)

Four Quarter: Left: Bluebird Midnight; Right: A Bit of a Badger (Straight)

merino giant: Left: A Sweetness of Time; Right: Night Falls on Iris

Cabra giant: Top: Got That Glow!; Bottom left: Scarper Off & Scoff (navy to dappled turquoise to white); Bottom right: Enouement (turquoise to medium blue to royal purple)

YAK!: The Last Yak

merino/ silk DK double (one long gradient, dyed over two 100g cakes): Keep On Movin’

MCS heavy lace: Flying a Little Past the Sun

camel/ silk lace: Top: Touch Wood & Whistle; Bottom left: My Letter in the Post, Come Quick; Bottom right: The Unicorn Undead

 

Want to learn to dye?

That was fast– the 27 Oct. class is now full!  I’ve added a second class on Tuesday 23 October from 6-8pm.  For more information, please email me.

I’m hosting the first-ever gobsmacked dye class here at my home studio (Peterborough, Ontario) on Saturday 27 October from 1-3pm. We’ll cover the basic dyeing techniques needed to create dappled, gobsmacked-style gradients. Class size will be small (limit of 4), so that everyone has a chance to learn the dye process and to explore creative ideas.

I’ll provide the supplies; all you need is a sense of adventure and an old shirt or apron that you wouldn’t mind getting dye on. No experience necessary!

Fresh new cakes look so lovely!  But you never know what’s lurking inside: perfection, or a mess that’s crying out for a good overdye?

The cost is $40 plus $12 per cake of yarn; depending on how ambitious you’re feeling, you can plan to dye between 1-3 cakes.

If you have any questions or would like to register for the class, send me an email at gobsmackedyarn@gmail.com

Sept. update

Thanks for another great update!  All invoices are now out; I’ll put packages together tomorrow (Sunday) and they’ll be in the mail by Monday morning.  I’ll have the dates of the next several updates posted shortly.

Happy fall, all!  I have lots of DK doubles this time around, as well as 33g Four Quarter minis and Straights (non-gradient dyed Four Quarter).

To claim a gobsmacker, send me an email (gobsmackedyarn@gmail.com) letting me know the name of the cake and the base.  The first person to claim a cake gets it.  Things can be pretty fast and furious at the beginning, but I promise I’ll email you back to let you know whether you got what you wanted.  Once the dust starts to settle a little, I’ll follow up with a PayPal invoice; if you haven’t ordered from me before, please include your mailing address (and phone number, if outside Canada).

Please remember that colours may vary across different devices; if you have any questions or would like a verbal description of colours, just ask.

Four Quarter ($42 gobsmacker; $30 Straight): Left: Pick Up the Sky (sky blue Straight); Top centre: Traditional Mischief; Bottom centre: A Bit of a Grape; Right: Blooming at Midnight (Straight)

 

Four Quarter ($30 Straight; $42 gobsmacker): Top: Platonic (Straight); Bottom: A Cat On Hot Bricks

Four Quarter ($30 Straight; $42 gobsmacker): Top: Ease of Elocution (Straight); Bottom: Getting Lost in the Grapes

Four Quarter ($15 minis, 33g each; $42 gobsmacker): Left: A Little Bit of Sky (mini); Bottom left: A Single Plum (mini); Bottom right: A Fern Frond (mini); Right: Bluebird (mini); Top centre: Come From a Far Country

merino/ silk fingering: Left: Sock It To Me!; Right: Gone Into the Dawn For Dew

merino DK: Left: Mauerbauertraurigkeit; Right: Long-Legged Lurgy

merino DK double (one long gradient over two 100g cakes, $84): Never Nervy

merino DK doubles (one long gradient over two 100g cakes, $84): Top: Some of the Stories You’ve Heard; Bottom: Make a Decision and Move

merino/ silk DK double (one long gradient, over two 100g cakes, $96): Keep On Movin’ (magenta to royal purple dappled with silver & blue to royal blue)

merino/ silk DK doubles (one long gradient, over two 100g cakes; $96): Top: Clear Skies Ahead; Bottom: Full Speed Ahead

silky yak DK double (one long gradient over two 100g cakes, $96): In the Evening, Glory

silky yak DK doubles (one long gradient over two 100g cakes, $96): Top: Sousa Echoes in the Silence; Bottom: Glory & Greenery

BFL/ silk lace: Left: Pinkety, Pinkety, Thumb to Thumb; Right: Watermelon Wonder

minis & Straights

Two new formats of Four Quarter are debuting on-line today: minis and Straights.

Minis (aka gobsmidgeons) ($15) are cute little 33g cakes of Four Quarter that give you about 133 m (144 yd) of gradient to play with. That’s just enough to use as contrast colour in a striped shawl or cowl, or an edging for a shawl.  How about using it as the border stripes for Nim Teasdale’s First, Love?  Or the stripes of Martina Behm’s Endless Rainbow?  Minis would also be an amazing choice for a colourwork hat or sweater yoke.

The Straights ($30) are semi-solid skeins with lively colours that will pair well with your favourite gobsmackers. They are completely one-of-a-kind; I dye them by chucking a skein or two into a dye pot to use up any colour that’s left over in the pots when I’m dyeing gobsmackers, then use them as base colour for gradients later. But some of them are so pretty that I hate to mess with them, so… they’re available for you!  You could use Straights on their own, as a main colour with a mini as a border, or– my favourite so far– paired with a favourite gobsmacker to create stripes that mingle and mix.

For today’s update, I’ve paired Straights and gobsmackers together, as suggestions of fun colour combos.  Those are just ideas– feel free to mix and match and make them your own!

July update

Thanks for another great update, folks!  Your next option to catch some gobsmackers is at indigodragonfly’s Highlands Fibre Fling, just outside Haliburton, Ontario, on 18 August.  Hope to see you there!

This update includes some brand new bases (camel/ silk lace, Cabra giants) and a few real oddballs.  The oddballs are yarn bases that I tested; they’re perfectly lovely yarns, but turned out to be too time-consuming or finicky for my dye process.  So if you’ve been hankering for some alpaca-silk sportweight or the like, better get ’em now!  In honour of the oddballs, the names are inspired by a variety of obscure words, in English and in other languages.  Once you’ve snagged your yarn, try giving the names a quick Google search; you might find something fun.

To claim a gobsmacker, send me an email (gobsmackedyarn@gmail.com) letting me know the name of the cake and the base.  The first person to claim a cake gets it.  Things can be pretty fast and furious at the beginning, but I promise I’ll email you back to let you know whether you got what you wanted.  Once the dust starts to settle a little, I’ll follow up with a PayPal invoice; if you haven’t ordered from me before, please include your mailing address (and phone number, if outside Canada).

Please remember that colours may vary across different devices; if you have any questions or would like a verbal description of colours, just ask.

Four Quarter: Top left: Gezelligheid; Top right: Forelsket; Bottom left: Firgun; Bottom right: Komorebi

Four Quarter: Top left: Iktsuarpok ; Top right: Mangata; Bottom left: Merak; Bottom right: Reaching for a Spruce

Four Quarter: Left: Kilig ; Right: Irusu

merino/ silk fingering (MS-4): Left: Have the Whole Day Off; Right: Give Them a Cake and Let Them Go

merino/ silk fingering (MS-4): Flawed Fruit (Second)

Cabra giant: Yuanfen

Oddball (fingering, 70% alpaca/ 20% silk/ 20% cashmere, 400m/100g) ($44): Exulansis

alpaca/ silk/ linen fingering (ASL): Pond Life

Oddballs (sportweight, 80% alpaca/ 20% silk, 260m/ 100g) ($44): Left: Stow Hooking It!; Right: To Call Arlies

merino DK: Mauerbauertraurigkeit

BFL/ silk lace: Top left: No Vains in the Game; Top right: Ollyoxalls; Bottom centre: I’ve Got My Thumbs Up

BFL/ silk lace double (one long gradient, over two 100g cakes): Stochastic

camel/ silk lace: left: Jouska; right: Chrysalism

 

A tale of two bases

I’m pleased to announce two fabulous new gobsmacked bases:

The first is a beautiful laceweight that’s– are you ready for this?– 50% camel and 50% silk.  With that combination of fibres, it’s hardly a surprise that this is a sleek, slinky lace with a lovely shine that makes me think of copper.

New camel/ silk laceweight.  Look at that shine!

It begins life with a soft camel colour, which gently mutes the dyes to create subtle hues.  Camel/ silk lace is a 2-ply, with 800m (875 yd) per 100g cake; $54 Canadian.

The second newbie is Cabra, a super-soft MCN that really brings out the best of goat (the cashmere kind, that is).

The new Cabra giant, a super-soft MCN.

It’s a 3-ply construction of 80% superwash merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon that soaks up dye to create rich, saturated gradients with a strong dappled/ variegated effect.  Cabra comes in 150g giants and is a replacement for my previous MCN giants (now discontinued).  Cabra is on the heavy side of fingering, with 510m (558 yd) per 150g; $66 Cdn.

I’ll have a few of these new bases available in today’s update, with more appearing in the near future.  I hope you’ll have a chance to give them a try!

Open house!

When I started dyeing, I worked out of my kitchen.  That was fine for a while, until my dye business grew and took over most of the first floor of my house.  It’s hard to cook when the stove’s covered in simmering dyepots, and even harder to have anyone over for dinner when the entire dining room is occupied by swifts and ballwinders and packing supplies and undyed yarn and…  Let’s just say there was a LOT of stuff crammed in there.

Dining room chaos, pre-studio days.

Late last summer, I started eyeing a spare bedroom as a possible dye studio.  I spent a lot of time moving around full-sized cardboard templates of all of the bits and pieces needed for a fully functioning dye studio (stove, dye counter, shipping counter, storage shelves, drying rack, etc.), trying to make sure that everything would fit and be functional.  The space seemed tight but doable, so I took the plunge and, with lots of help from my dad, totally transformed the space.

It’s such a delight to have dedicated space to work in!  I’ve been in the studio for about nine months now, and can report that it is the perfect size (small but mighty!) and the layout is working beautifully.

A brand spankin’ new studio!

It’s high time that I showed it off, don’t you think?

On Saturday, 14 July, I’m hosting the first-ever gobsmacked Open House, 2-5pm at 616 Walkerfield Ave. in Peterborough, Ontario.  Pop in for a quick gander and to snap up a few gobsmackers, or bring your knitting/ crochet and settle in for a chat, a cup of tea, and some sweet snacks.  I’ll have door prizes and loads of yarn available, including some bases that are new and/or not in my regular line-up.  Hope to see you there!

For more information, please check my Ravelry group.