2014 Yarn & Fiber Colors – Weeks 21 to 23

Aloha! Here are the colors for Weeks 21-23. Some of these items are still available on the shoppe.

WENDY’S MAPLE LEAVES is a new colorway inspired by fiber friend, Wendy, who sent me this wonderful photo of maple leaves she had raked up into a beautiful pile in the Fall. I kept the photo for months and finally had the right dyes to do it justice. Thank you Wendy for sending me such a beautiful photo and for permission to use it. These pieces are superwash merino fingering yarn, merino/silk lace yarn, merino/bamboo/silk roving and mixed BFL roving.

POISON DART FROG is also a new colorway inspired by this little fella I met while touring the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific a few years ago. He had his own little terrarium since you can’t pet him, but his bright colors were awesome and I added the foliage in the colorway as well. These pieces are merino/nylon fingering yarn, mixed BFL roving and polwarth roving.

CAMO self-striping is one of my first self-striping experiments! I’ll post another blog about my adventures in self-stripe yarn later . . . This is merino/nylon fingering yarn.

PAPAYA PALM was once called Coconut Palm, however some very smart people saw that I had incorrectly identified this tree! So, I’ve corrected the title and these pieces are merino/silk fingering yarn and sw BFL roving.

GLACIER BAY 2 is another experiment in self-striping yarn. This photo was taken back in 2010 while on an Alaskan cruise through Glacier Bay National Park. This yarn is merino/nylon fingering yarn.

I also finished a pair of test socks –  I’m calling this HAWAIIAN QUILT SOCKS: PINEAPPLE. It was a challenging image to design (remember the canvas is 4″ wide) but a fun colorwork pattern and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!

And lastly, my SCI-FI SOCKS Pattern was published on the KnitPick’s website this past week! I’m terribly excited to have another pattern accepted into the program 🙂

Enjoy!

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2014 Yarn & Fiber Colors – Weeks 18 to 20

Aloha! Here are the colors for Weeks 18-20, posted on the shoppe.

A new colorway, PARISIAN SUNSET, was inspired by this photo I took from our hotel room in late Fall 2010. The week long trip was mostly overcast with little bits of sun popping through the clouds. This sunset was amazing and I had to re-create it in yarn and wool.  These pieces are merino/tencel fingering yarn, sparkle fingering yarn sock blank, sparkle lace yarn and a targhee/firestar roving that I plan on spinning!

PACIFIC SEA NETTLE is an oldie-but-goodie colorway in Corriedale Cross roving and superwash merino lace yarn. And yes, the turquoise is from the gentlemen’s shirt in the background!

I don’t do too much cotton dyeing but it’s always interesting how cotton comes out. This colorway came out more muted than I had expected but still pretty! This is FADED DESERT SUNSET in cotton roving.

JILL’S BLANKET is an almost-self-striping merino/nylon fingering yarn that was inspired by my friend Jill’s baby blanket project years ago. Her yarn colors were more pastel but I remembered how pretty the pinks and browns looked together and dyed a variation.

A couple more cotton projects . . . these skeins are both #10 Crochet thread, so a laceweight yarn. The first one is a pretty blue color that when I dyed the first time came out a very pale blue-gray. I overdyed it and got a more saturated color.

This second skein is perfect for summer with bright green and peach-pinks in the yarn.

One of my fiber friends asked me to dye a rainbow yarn. I had never done a rainbow before and the colors are so pretty that I was eager to try. Later I was asked to make it self-striping, which seemed brilliant, but I didn’t have the tools for it so at first I said I wasn’t able to. BUT after thinking and thinking and thinking, I decided to have a go by manually winding the yarn in 6 sections and dyeing them in the appropriate colors. Here is the custom order with both the self-striping and variegated rainbow yarns.

SUGAR CANE SUNSET is a new colorway! This photo was taken on the beautiful island of Maui during our Christmas trip last year. We didn’t know if these fields were sugar cane because of the flowering tops. We later learned those tops meant the sugar cane was ready for harvest! These pieces are merino/cashmere/nylon sock blank, merino/silk roving and merino/nylon fingering yarn.

PATRIOT is a hand-dyed, handspun yarn in merino wool plied with silk thread. I dyed the wool in pieces of red, blue, light blue and turquoise then spun the singles in sequence. Half of the skein is plied with black thread, while the other in off-white! The colors reminded me of modern and vintage American flags that used various shades of blues for the stars section background. 

KIHEI SUNSET is another new colorway (13 new ones so far this year!). This inspirational photo was taken at Maui Hill Resort in Hawaii. My family has been staying there for nearly 3 decades and we spent Christmas there recently. The sun was just about set, with beautiful pinks on the clouds and a gradient blue/green sky when I took the photo. These pieces are superwash merino lambswool roving and superwash merino/nylon fingering yarn.

SWISS CHOCOLATE, an oldie-but-goodie colorway inspired by some wonderful pieces of heaven on a plate. These pieces are merino/cashmere/nylon fingering yarn and a new wool base, merino/yak/silk roving!

And lastly, some sock photos. I’ve been battling tendonitis in my wrists so have had to slow down the knitting a bit which is not at all fun. BUT I was able to finish this wonderful project for myself! The pattern is Mermaid  Anklets & Socks by Debra Garner. She includes a pattern for both the anklets and socks and since I don’t have any handmade anklets, I gave it a go. Pretty simple pattern and it worked up quickly. I memorized the instep pattern so I was able to just knit knit knit!

Some of the inspirational photos are available @ www.society6.com/alohablu. Enjoy!

2013 Yarn & Fiber Colors – Weeks 20 -22

Aloha!

Here are the colors for weeks 20 – 22.

First up, a new colorway TEAPOT STILL LIFE in superwash merino/nylon fingering yarn . . .

. . . in polwarth/silk roving

and baby alpaca/silk lace yarn.

This colorway was inspired by this wonderful painting by my colleague, Aaron Spurgeon.

You can find his work here on etsy and on his blog.

OHIO SNOW in superwash merino fingering yarn – 840 yds/2 skeins

. . . and in mixed BFL roving.

I also had a couple more patterns published on Knitpicks.com! You can find them here: CCES and LV.

And, I’ve been knitting up ballet/pointe shoe bags for the shoppe.

ORANGE (!) in merino/acrylic.

BLACK & WHITE in wool/cotton.

CORAL in acrylic yarn.

And PEACH/BROWN/NATURAL handpun, handknitted entrelac bag in wool.

Enjoy!

2013 Yarn & Fiber Colors – Weeks 18-19

Aloha!

This post will be dedicated to socks – my personal favorite knitting project.

Last Fall KnitPicks.com asked if I would be interested in having them sell one of my sock patterns as part of a kit for their May 2013 catalog. I was completely floored they would ask so of course I said, Heck Yes!

The catalog and kit was released last week. Here are some photos from their site.

This was on the kits & sampler page:

This was on the main page:

And on page 27 of the May 2013 catalog:

Very exciting! The funny part is that I always wanted to own a pair of these socks but never got around to making one! Perhaps I should think about it now. My most favorite color combination is one my Aunt Tina choose for her mom, in purple and black:

I’ve also been trying to find a little time for some pattern testing. Here’s a work-in-progress colorwork pattern using 3 fingering weight yarns. I hand-dyed the main blue/green variegated yarn, while the light green is KP’s Stroll Tonal in Springtime and regular undyed yarn for the white. This is ATRIUM FLOOR SOCKS, inspired by the 3-toned floor pattern on the upcoming Princess Cruiselines ship, the Royal Princess – due to launch in June 2013.

I still have to finish the second sock and this pair will be mine!

Here is a screen grab of the atrium (computer graphics model) with a view of the floor. You can find the entire video here.

DESIREE DIAMOND SOCKS is a pattern I created with simple bead work in mind. Every diamond on the front of the socks has a center glass bead, while the foot and the back of the leg have a solid-outline-solid 3-diamond pattern. These socks were inspired by my childhood best friend, Desiree, who I met at afternoon day care at age 8 and remains to this day, one of my beloved and dearest friends.

More testing, colorwork, yarn and fiber to come!

Enjoy!

Sweetheart Socks Pattern on KnitPicks.com

I haven’t ‘officially’ posted these socks yet on my blog because I was waiting to see if KnitPicks.com would consider adding the pattern to their Independent Designer Program . . . and they did!  You can find the pattern on their site. (GASP!!!!)

These are fun socks that I designed with Valentine’s Day in mind and knitted up one pair with pink and red yarn. The first pair sold on the shoppe so I decided to make another using black yarn and the same pink. I love how the pink pops against the black. This is the colorway I used as my final sample to KP.

This was my first pair – the pink/red version – and here’s what the back and foot bottom look like.

I submitted my proposal to KnitPicks early February and within a week I got a response! I can’t tell you how excited I was to read the email saying they were interested in my design. I was shaking with excitement when I texted the news to my hubby. Needless to say I was on cloud nine the entire week. I submitted my sample and final pattern a couple weeks later and got the official ‘green’ light in early March. I did submit a photo of myself (cringe) and a little bio (smile) so I can no longer hide behind the smiley-face Hawaiian girl caricature done by my former colleague (thank you Katie).

Special thanks to my awesome hubby, Jake, and to the KnitPicks Community for their constant support and encouragement.

Check it out on KnitPicks.com.