macro~meadow – june
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Wandering through a meadow is one of my favourite things to do, and we've been lucky enough to live in and amongst meadows for the last twenty or so years. In Suffolk it's very easy to spend most of the time looking up at the huge skies but this year I'm going to focus on exploring what's closer to hand/eye. I'm going to hunt down the amazing micro-palettes in the blades of grass, the berries, the fence posts and field gates, and create shades that show another aspect of the fields all around us. I'm going to be looking at the textures and detail up close but most of all, I'm hunting for fabulous colour combinations to inspire beautiful yarn!
Each month I'll use one photo to create two shades; one variegated ~flash~ shade and a complimentary/contrasting semi-solid. I'll be focussing on fingering/4ply weight yarn and often the two shades will be on the same base but occasionally I might take liberties and dye something fluffy!
June – midsummer means long days, high sun, the grass bleaching to blonde, and the air alive with insects and birdsong. I wandered along the meadow boundary, seeking shade and looking down at the last patches of cow parsley in the margins and I spotted a scorpion fly! Happily feeding on the flowers and unperturbed by my phone I got close enough to pick out the warm teracotta red 'tail' resembling a scorpion's sting. The creamy lemon and soft lime-tinged undercarriage gave me all the inspiration I needed for this month's macro~meadow variegated shade! Picking out the deep earthy green in the shadows to create its semi-solid companion resulted in two shades that work independently or together.
Both shades are dyed on pightle | fingering/4ply, our go-to superwash merino base and I'm imagining soft, floaty shawls and lightweight garments knit with these shades...
There are a couple of batches of each shade in the shop and ready-to-ship right now and if demand is there I may pop another batch or two in the dye pans later this week!
We use professional acid dyes with good light and wash fastness and do our best to exhaust every dye bath and reuse water wherever possible to reduce any further environmental impact. Occasionally a small amount of 'loose' dye may remain in the yarn after rinsing (most likely with deeply saturated shades) and we always recommend hand washing in very cool water and pre-washing your yarn separately if you are intending to mix light and dark shades in a single garment/project.
We recommend hand washing your finished projects in cool water to preserve the vibrancy of the dye and, as with all small-batch, hand-dyed yarn that doesn't have dye lots, we also recommend knitting alternate rows from two skeins when working on larger projects to avoid noticeable changes between skeins.