Hello again, fiber friends! This has been a project years in the making, but it’s finally complete – the fully realized version of my Treegarth Shawl is now available for download. We’d really love to see you give it a heart on Ravelry, but even more we’d love to see you knit it. If you decide to embark on this lace adventure, please share your progress shots & finished shawls! You can do this either by linking the project on Ravelry or by using #treegarthshawl and #cozyhearthyarnworks. You are also welcome to tag our accounts directly on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Come hang out with us on social media! This shawl has been a labor of love for years. If you’re...
Hello, fiber friends. From the bottoms of our hearts, we hope you’re all doing well, but we also know that’s a really big ask right now. We’re safe at home, well stocked, and our state is under a stay-at-home order. We’re also incredibly lucky that our household’s primary income is stable, as we have so many friends and loved ones who’ve suffered sudden and severe economic hardship due to necessary social distancing and quarantine measures. The fiber community has been hit hard, with major festivals and other in-person events cancelled. For many fiber artists, their business is in fact their primary income. Large events can comprise a major part of an artist’s income for a year. If you, too, are lucky enough...
We quite probably could have started with a simpler set of colorways upon launching our yarn line. I’ve certainly dyed simpler things! But this idea latched onto my brain quite early in the process, and I had to see it through. Our Dathanna colorway series is my attempt at translating my understanding of the Irish words for colors via the medium of dye, rather than the medium of English language. As may be apparent from the yarn listings themselves, there isn’t a direct, one-to-one correlation between, say, “green” and “uaine.” One of my favorite things about my stumbling attempts to learn Irish (and my mostly-forgotten efforts at other languages in school) is the process of trying to understand the world from a completely different...
Happy Halloween! Just in time for the spooky season, a project that has engaged most of the household for the entire summer is finished – the Cailleach Shawl. This stunning, witchy, wooly garment is knit in Cozy Hearth Yarn Works hand-dyed Rustic Worsted yarn (Dubh as the primary colorway, with a one-of-a-kind skein providing the accent edging). I dyed up the yarn early in my development work for our Dathanna series, my wife Kai and I worked on the pattern design together, and she knit the entire finished object! While Kai primarily works with Cozy Hearth Yarn Works as a fan, supporter, and frequent knitwear model, she has been working on improving her own knitting skills, and this shawl shows that improvement magnificently....
As promised, I’ve got quite a bit more to elaborate on this topic! Dye bleeding can be a problem with commercial or hand-dyed yarns, but don’t be afraid – it’s a dyer’s responsibility to absolutely minimize dye problems, and it’s easy to check for in your yarns. WHAT’S HAPPENING WHEN DYE BLEEDS? Well, it could be a number of things. Part of our process is rinsing off excess dye, but we’re only human, and sometimes some dye slips through. If your yarn is bleeding a little but not changing color, it’s just extra dye molecules washing off the surface. This is most common with highly saturated yarns, since a strand of yarn can only hold so much dye! In addition,...
