June | 2012 | Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

Month: June 2012

‘She Hates to Wear Dresses’ and ‘Abalone’

06.18.12 / Danielle / 9 Comments

Just a quick update. Remember the two skeins I showed you at the end of my last post? Here they are finished. I seriously love them both.

Above is ‘She Hates to Wear Dresses’. I painted two of these at the same time so they’d be the same. Do you want to see the magic that happens when one of them is re-skeined and the colors are all jumbled up? Below is the exact same colorway, only the colors have been redistributed.

It gives you a better idea of what the yarn will look like when it is knitted into something. Here are the two of them together:

I can’t decide which I like better, the skein with the colors chunked up together or the skein with the colors jumbled up.

And the second two skeins I dyed are called ‘Abalone’. Here it is below with the colors still together:

And below you can see them jumbled up:

Again, I can’t decide which I like better.

What do YOU think? Would you rather buy the skeins with the colors left as they are, the way they were painted on in patches of color….or do you like the skeins better when the colors are redistributed, to give a better idea of what they’ll look like knitted? I can’t decide the best way to sell them. Maybe I’ll just have to make the decision per each colorway, whether I think it will look better left as is or re-skeined.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment if you’d like to give your two cents!

Mustard Seed Yarn Lab is going to the fair….

06.10.12 / Danielle / 7 Comments

So remember in my last post how I said I had something exciting and yarny to share with you? I’ve been asked to be a vendor in not one, but TWO fairs! First I’ll be selling my fiber at the Tattersall Farm Day event here in Haverhill. That’s Sunday, September 16th. Then I’ll be a vendor at the Lynn Fall Festival on the Waterfront the weekend after that! WooHoo! I get squeaky excited every time I think of it! And guess what! It gets even better. My sister (fellow dyer, keeper of A Polish Granddaughter blog, and owner of Escape to Evermore) will be sharing the booths with me! My friend Vicki will be hanging out with us too, with her spinning wheel, luring in the fiber enthusiasts. And my mom might even be here from FL to help out! September is going to be one super fun month.

As you can imagine, I’m going to be spending all my time dyeing up yarn and fiber. I’ve started with a few different colorways already. Wanna see?

Morning Crocus

Robot Takeover II

Her Lips

Holy Moly Guacamole!

Favorite Blue Jeans

It’s next to impossible to tell, but Morning Crocus and Favorite Blue Jeans are made with sparkly yarn. It’s a very subtle sparkle, and I can’t seem to pick it up with my camera. All of the above will be in my Etsy shop for now.

And today I hand painted two colorways that just might end up being my favorite ever. Especially this first one….

Above is how it looked before the steaming. Below is afterwards:

Now, both of the pictures are of the wet yarn, and things tend to lighten more than I expect when they dry, but I’m hoping it stays very close to what you see above.

I call it She Hates to Wear Dresses.

And below we have the second one….unnamed as of yet. But I love it too.

Hand painting the yarn as opposed to immersion dyeing is definitely more time-consuming, but I feel like I have so much more room for creativity.

Holy Moly Guacamole and She Hates to Wear Dresses are made from a yarn with a more defined twist than the others, and I think that’s my favorite base yarn. It’s a Superwash Merino.

So that’s what is going on over here in the Yarn Lab. It’s going to be one incredibly busy summer, cranking out skeins of yarn like it’s my job. I’ll still be putting them in my Etsy shop, so you can buy whatever I make until September, and that’s when I’ll put my shop on vacation and sell whatever I have left.

Now it’s time to get in my jammies and curl up with my book. It’s been a long day.

May 2012…A yarn-free post

06.4.12 / Danielle / 4 Comments

May has been the busiest month ever!! Where do I start?

My little man turned 5 years old on May 12th and we had a small party for him. Here he is the morning of his birthday. A brand new 5 year old! (He loves randomly wearing gardening gloves. He thinks they make him look extra cool.)

He got some really great presents, but one of his favorites is this:

The next day was Mother’s Day, and we had a great dinner at Nana and Grandpa’s house. It was a gorgeous weekend, weather-wise, and a perfect Mother’s Day.

The next day I started my new full time job. I really like it! It’s complicated and harder than I had thought it would be, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it and work with really nice people. PATIENT people. It’s a good atmosphere. But I’m still having a hard time getting used to having a job outside of the house again. The days feel so much shorter, and life feels so much busier. I was only there 4 days before we took off and went to FL to see my mom and go to Epcot for Emmet’s birthday. The best part was that my brother Ricky, his wife and grandkids all came too…from CALIFORNIA! Every day was nothing but fun.

Emmet with Grandma:

The little cousins together…it’s hard to believe my brother is a GRANDPA!

And here’s my brother and mom waiting in line with the kids at Epcot:

Hope and Emmet struck up a special friendship. Emmet says he’s going to marry her someday.

Ricky, Sheree, and Emily and Hope…in Morocco!

We got a wheelchair for my mom while at Epcot, because she was worried she wouldn’t be able to handle all the walking. The kids LOVED it. My mom got to use the wheelchair maybe 30% of the time, and the kids took it over the rest of the day. Here we are at the end of the day…notice who’s in the wheelchair?

And this is us on our last morning at the Caribbean Beach Resort. Emmet took this picture:

The next weekend was a long weekend. Do you know why? Are you guessing Memorial Day? Nope! It was my birthday weekend. Some people think they get Monday off because of the national holiday, but it’s really because of my birthday. You’re welcome.

I threw myself a small BBQ and was joined by a few of my favorite people.

Here are Cooper and Emmet riding Emmet’s Gator. Cooper and Emmet were born one day apart.

My second night in the hospital, Mike went into the hospital kitchen to get me something, and came back and told me that there was some dude in there looking for a corkscrew because he’d just had a baby and he and his wife had a bottle of wine to open. I was very jealous, and joked around with Mike about finding their room and asking them to share their wine with us. We met them again a few days later at the pediatrician’s office, when we were taking the boys for their first checkups. After a few more chance meetings, I finally asked for their phone number and made a date to hang out. It was the boys’ first playdate ever! 5 years later, the boys are still great buddies and love playing together.

Here is Tim and Maiya, Cooper’s dad and mom:

They also had another baby 2 years ago, and he’s the happiest, cutest little man I know. His name is Bode:

Wendy, Melissa and Evan were also in attendance at my gathering. They are not only my friends, they are my family. I have the greatest friends in the world.

Tomorrow I celebrate 7 years of being married to the love of my life. I hope for many more years with this wonderful guy:

It’s kind of a weird looking picture of both of us, but I like this one anyway. In real life, we’re each much more super-model-ish. 😉

I will post again soon, as I have many yarny things to show you AND something yarny-exciting to tell you! You’ll have to wait though…this is like a cliff hanger.