My hand dyed yarn | Mustard Seed Yarn Lab

Category: My hand dyed yarn (page 2 of 9)

Cheap Labor

07.29.12 / Danielle / 5 Comments

So much has been going on. Things have been getting done. Mustard Seed Yarn Lab has become a tiny bit more popular this month with 6 Etsy sales! (I typically have been averaging 2 to 3 Etsy sales a month.) I could spend this entire post catching you up on all the goings-on, but I won’t. That just feels too overwhelming to me and I already feel a little overwhelmed with life as it is, so I’ll just tell you a little bit.

I now have a Facebook page for my business! Please head over to www.facebook.com/mustardseedyarnlab to ‘like’ my page if you’d like to know a bit more about what goes on in the lab from day to day (or at least every few days). I’ve been posting all the new yarn creations there as they come into existence. Sometimes I need name ideas and I love getting feedback.

I have 1000 business cards coming my way. They were designed by my husband, as was my logo. And my blog will soon be undergoing some major changes as well. His graphic design talent never ceases to amaze me. And he’s cheap too! (Well, if you’re married to him.) If anyone reading this needs something designed, (business cards, a logo, a website) let me know and I can direct you to him.

So last night my friend came over for dinner and for a little catch up time. I told her I could sit and talk with her but I had to dye yarn while she was here, because I’m still desperately trying to finish 200 skeins before September. She offered her help, and MAN, did she help!

The hardest part of dyeing yarn for me is reskeining the skeins that need to be reskeined. Some I leave as is, because I like the way they look the way they are, but most need to have the colors redistributed to really get a better idea of what they’ll look like knitted into something. This hurts my back. A LOT. To do this you use a niddy noddy and wind the yarn around it a million times. I typically won’t reskein more than one a day. Well, Wendy, my strong, volleyball playing friend, wound 10 SKEINS for me in one night!! And all I did was make her soup! Talk about cheap labor. If a bowl of homemade creamy chicken and rice soup gets me 10 skeins reskeined, next time I’m going to make her filet mignon and see what happens.

‘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.