That gorgeous moment when summer turns to fall
This is a color story about the yarn that's been occupying my dreams, dyepots, and knitting needles lately: Prince Edward Island.
I am not very quick to create new colorways. I think about a new color a lot before I put dyes into water. The whole process, from first glimmer of an idea to final colorway to when it arrives in your mailbox can take up to two months.
As I wrap up the current edition of my Kindred Spirits yarn club, I’d like to share the story of this new colorway, which has now arrived with all of you who are club subscribers.
It’s called Prince Edward Island, and it evokes the feeling of late August and early September, when the trees and world is right on the cusp of turning from summer into fall.
Step 1: Inspiration
These days, I am deeply rooted at home. You’ve heard me talk before about why, and how this is a season of downshifting for me, and that my business is currently about 10 percent of the size it used to be.
I am also the kind of person who is happiest outside. So, I spend a lot of time in our small (but, for San Francisco, generously sized) backyard. I have grown to love watching things grow. It’s slow and hopeful, and deeply satisfying.
I began the color story for Prince Edward Island by thinking about the time period when it would ship (late August). I found myself thinking about and watching the trees in my own backyard as their leaves deepened in color and as the wind and sun started to burnish the edges of the leaves, crisping them, creating a bit of world weariness, but also still containing veins of nourishment and aliveness.
Spiders wove webs. Some leaves fell. Others turned color.
The sun is a little lower in the sky, too, and in the late afternoon, when I sit in my studio (maybe working at the computer, maybe resting with Molly, my beagle), the light shines directly through the leaves and the whole world looks golden.
You’re likely familiar with the side-by-side photos many dyers create (photograph on one side; dyed yarn on the other). Rather than do this and dye the colors I was seeing, hue-for-hue, I wanted to capture the feeling of these colors. The feeling of golden sunlight, the end of a long season of sun and wind, a slight tiredness, but also that quickening of my pulse that autumn brings.
Step 2: Dye, water, and fiber
Once I had settled on a color feeling, I considered which dye technique to use. I knew this particular colorway was going to require many different shades—gold, brown, yellow-green, olive. I also wanted the colors to blend, shift, and mottle when knit, rather than have sharp contrasts. I settled on a dye technique which is a kind of combination of hand-painting, glazing and speckling. I test dyed a few skeins, tweaked colors, and then, once I worked out most of the formula’s kinks (and once the base yarn arrived), I started production dyeing.
The process was more time intensive than my typical yarn dyeing, and this is what I love about this club. My subscribers and I have a creative partnership. You sign up for a surprise colorway; I have a substantial enough set of orders in advance that I can take creative risks; and you receive a colorway that doesn’t have to always be efficient to dye.
I hand-poured colors over steaming hot, but bare, yarn and then glazed it to smooth and meld the colors underneath. I finished by adding the barest hint of speckles, to give that summer-worn leaf look to everything: bits of moss green and brown bark.
Step 3: Dry, reskein, label and ship
Each and every skein gets reskeined.
Reskeining means that I wind each hank of yarn from one vertical swift (or skein winder) to a second one to make sure the yarn flows freely, without tangles or snarls. When dyeing, you see, I often move the yarn around in the pot, and every time the yarn moves, it creates the possibility for snags or snarls. I would rather work those out in my studio and send you a beautifully twisted hank than have you work out the snarls on your at-home swift.
Does this mean everything always winds perfectly and freely? Not always (strands of cashmere like to stick to each other, finely crimped merino can sometimes twist back on itself, and, sometimes, knitters think they’re pulling from the end, but they might be winding from the beginning of the hank). If I reskein your yarn after dyeing it, though, I give you the best chance of a smooth and delightful experience.
This is what the final colorway looks like once. Some skeins lean more gold, some lean green, and some are more murky, just like the leaves and light at the cusp of autumn. I named it for Anne Shirley’s island home and the multi-hued forests that cover it: Prince Edward Island.
You’re invited to join me in the next color story.
I open my club for new subscribers every two months, and you can sign up right now through Thursday, September 15.
I truly believe my subscription yarn club is the loveliest little yarn subscription you’ll ever get, and I invite you to join.
✨ Colors and color stories are inspired by Anne of Green Gables. You don’t have to love the book to love the yarn. But if you *do* love the book, you’ll be extra passionate about the yarn.
✨ Unlike most subscriptions, this one is every other month. So you don’t accumulate yarn faster than you can use it.
✨ It’s $34, with free-to-you shipping, charged when you sign up, and then every two months thereafter.
✨ You can cancel anytime. (But you should also know that I have a really high rate of folks who stick with the club, and lots of knitters who take a break eventually come back—this tells me that knitters really really love this subscription.)
You can learn more (and join the club) here.
A personal note
If you love the Anne of Green Gables books, like me, the older PBS series, or even the newer Netflix series, you’ll know exactly why I named my club for Anne of Green Gables. Like Anne, I draw inspiration from the natural world around me. I use the framework of the books to explore the idea of home and of chosen family, to remind myself that there is always another bend in the road, and that simple things are the ones that make me happiest of all.
I hope this color story finds you deeply rooted in the pleasures of late summer and early fall.
Thank you for sharing your creative process with us, Anne. I am loving each yarn you have created for this collection. They are all so beautiful and luscious!
It fills my heart to read of your inspiration and process. Thank you for sharing. :)