Can you even handle it?

More colorway awesomeness?

New today at Pulling at Strings -- Out to Pasture.

Inspired by the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival -- the largest festival of its kind and the first fiber festival I ever attended.  In springtime, the Maryland countryside is a yarn lover's dream. Pastoral hills roll gently, the bright green grasses nourished with sunshine and rain. Fluffy white lambs dot the landscape, their tiny pink noses making them adorably irresistible.

This colorway is several shades of vibrant green, ivory, and tiny spots of pink. No more than a stitch or two here and there.

Chivalrous, inspired by the regal colors of the Renaissance period.

Claret red, purple, amber, emerald, and jasper.

And Flowering Cherry. There's not a prettier time of year in the Mid-Atlantic than early spring. The flowering trees are dust the walkways with their sweetly scented petals.

Pale blue and daubs of green and brown round out this beauty of a colorway.

All three of these colorways are instock and ready to rock on a variety of yarn bases (and spinning fiber) exclusively at Pulling at Strings. (Click on each yarn type to see which colorways are available.)

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limited edition colorways

Coming soon to The Loopy Ewe... two new, limited edition colorways. Dyed on our Glenhaven Cashmerino Fingering.

Bright fuchsia, violet, chartreuse, and black.

A kettle dyed semi solid of violet with a frosting of black.

You like?

vote for your favorite colorway inspiration!

I have several new, limited edition colorway collections coming out soon! But there's room for one more at the table.

Which is where you come in.

Below are three pictures -- all colorways from previous Carpe Yarnem (one of a kind colorway) stockings. Vote for the one you like best. The one with the most votes will serve as my inspiration for a new colorway. It won't be an exact replica, as I don't have the recipes for these, but I'll make something with a similar feel.

Option #1: Cider House

Warm golden browns, apple greens, hints of gray, amber, and olive.

#2: Meteor Shower

 Salmon and rose pinks, smoky purples, teals, and blacks.

#3:Woodland

Turquoise, teal, hints of purple, pink, brown, and green. Woodland is used in one of the circles in the headers at the top of this page. It's the one right above the word The in The Yarnista.

You choose: Which should I use as inspiration for a new colorway? Feel free to leave a comment telling me which one you picked and why!

One year ago

My hair was still red.

My mother didn't like it.

She would never let me dye my hair as a teenager. "People pay big bucks to have blonde hair like yours!" she told me.

So I paid a lot of money to have the stylist put it back to blonde. It took 200 foils and almost four hours.

Indeed, people do pay big bucks to have blonde hair.

One year ago, I was working on my egg dyeing tutorial:

And then this happened. I got sidetracked.

It's almost done now, and I'll share some of my simple secrets for unique eggs.

Hint: you don't need to buy those egg dyeing kits they sell this time of year. Save your money. You can use it for yarn later.

my bonny fair goodly well-favored sharf

Try using that phrase instead of, say, beautiful.

"My, what a bonny fair goodly well-favored dress you're wearing!"

Everyone will think you're really normal and will try to spend more time with you at parties.

I'm sitting here eating Angie's Kettle Corn, getting crumbs all over my keyboard, and I thought I'd tell you about my shawlscarf.

Sharf?

Scawl?

Regardless, it's bonny.

It's also a version of Virginia.

Knit in fair, goodly Octopus's Garden and Gulf of Mexico.

Here's a little secret that very few people know. Octopus's Garden is a total diva. I have a few colorways that are so very goodly that I can't help but love them.

But they're demanding little buggers, always wanting dressing rooms full of plain green M&Ms, white peonies, half-caff soy vanilla 140-degree lattes, and dots of color applied by hand with a tiny brush.

Will somebody get this kettle corn away from me, please? This is ridiculous. I can -- and will -- eat it all in one sitting if no one intervenes. (The classic flavor, not the caramel.)

I'm trying to talk about yarn and knitting here, and my keyboard is all sticky and full of crumbs. But the kettle corn is so light! Crunchy! Sweet! Salty!

I never knit gauge swatches for scawls. Or sharves. This pattern calls for two skeins of fingering weight yarn. I used one skein of Springvale Worsted and some DK I had on my desk for trim. Who cares! It's a sharf!

You should make your sharfscawl. And you should get your own bag of kettle corn, just so I feel less alone in the world. It's handcrafted in small batches from natural ingredients in the fine state of Minnesota.

Pretty much exactly like our yarn.

P.S. The people at Angie's don't know me. I just happen to like their kettle corn more than I should. My laptop does not thank me.