Challenges

One of the yarn bases I initially ordered was a 70/30 merino/silk blend. I have some silk yarn (a different blend) from another dyer that I quite like. Silk is a gorgeous and luxurious fiber—who wouldn’t want to wear it if given the chance? 70/30 was available from the supplier I had chosen to work with first and I had high hopes. Those hopes were dashed when I received the yarn. The blend didn’t meet my expectations; it didn’t feel like it had any silk in it at all, to be quite honest. The merino/nylon and merino/bamboo blends were both much nicer than the silk blend. Had I been sent the wrong stuff? I double-checked. Nope, I was sent what I ordered. Not only was it just not very nice in the way I expected but when I soaked it for the first time…it was dirty too. You know the milky white water you get from rinsing rice? The water from this yarn was dirty like that. Ew! Maybe I got a bad batch? Either way, even after I washed it, the silk softness I expected just wasn’t there. (I mentioned this to June when I sent her the 70/30 hank to test, and that I wouldn’t be keeping that specific base but it should still be a representative example of my dyeing ability.)

I found a 50/50 silk blend from a different supplier and ordered that instead. Thankfully, this yarn does meet my expectations (and is clean!) so I’ll be keeping the base. But? The first skein I dyed tangled despite having multiple ties in it so now I worry that the other skeins will tangle too. I have a niddy noddy so (after many hours of patience) I was able to re-skein the hank. Problem is, the re-skeined hank isn’t the same size as the original one was, so the colored sections of the yarn no longer line up the way they did when the hank was dyed originally (doesn’t match the product photo for the colorway). That bothers me because a customer might think what they bought and what they received isn’t the same. I decided I’ll have to put a note with that one that it had to be re-skeined, but in general, I’ve started wondering if I should re-skein every hank of yarn I received before I dye it, just in case they’re all tangled (or even if they aren’t but end up tangled during dyeing and I have to re-skein again…they’d still come out looking correct with the same skein size). Truth be told, I’m not keen on the idea because of the extra time it will take to do it. On the other hand, I can’t send tangled yarn to customers either! I’ll need to see if any others from this supplier seem prone to tangling once I’m able to dye more of them.

Another recent challenge: this past weekend, my camera basically kicked the bucket. It had been giving me some problems previously with shutter misfires and things like that while trying to shoot the yarn, but the full shutter failure from this weekend means it’s on its last legs. I did get it functioning again, but for how long? I’m travelling later this week on business to a location that could also prove incredible for potential colorway shots. I actually arranged with my employer to leave early on the trip for exactly that reason (to have extra shooting time). But with my camera in this state I can’t just hope for the best—with my luck I’ll get out there and the thing won’t work at all. That means an expensive trip to the camera store in the next few days…

My biggest challenge since the end of July has been getting the rest of the yarn I have on hand dyed and ready. I had hoped to be able to have the store open by the end of August, but August had other plans for me. I had two weeks of vacation at the start of the month which should have been plenty of time to dye a whole whack of yarn! What happened instead? A few things, much of it Very Important Personal Stuff, but what stood in my way the most was having to take care of the two dogs my parents own (they were more of a handful than I expected), super warm temperatures, and the forest fire smoke from BC getting really bad.

I drive a black car so have been acutely aware of just how much ash has been in our air. It has gotten into everything no matter how careful I’ve been to keep windows closed and such. I worried that smoke particles would become bound to the yarn fibers during the dye process and carry their sooty stench with them. Everything else has smelled like old acrid campfire and it also got into everything—hair, clothes, you name it, so why not the yarn too? Calgary had air quality alerts and some days our eyes were burning (even indoors). Even though rinsing is part of the dye process I just didn’t want to risk it. Nobody wants gross, smelly yarn, so my stuff stayed wrapped up in plastic bags. That put me behind by about two weeks.

The smoke started to clear and the daytime temperatures became more reasonable after I went back to work, so I planned to catch up. But then my mom had a pretty bad accident that left all of us shaken. She’s fine now and mending well, but for another week I needed to concentrate on her. Then suddenly it was month-end, and some other personal things came to the forefront, and work got crazy again. Now it’s the start of the second week of September and I honestly am not really sure where the time went! Even if I do get to take pictures on my trip this month that I can turn into colorways, that’s still time away from actual dyeing. In October I’m travelling again, too.

I have a lot on my plate and a lot of what’s there is really important in ways I can’t talk about just now (but soon™). This Life Stuff has to take precedence over yarn. So, it might be November before the store is open, though if I get a chance to do it (properly!) before then, then I will. Please bear with me! Thanks to everyone for their support, and in the meantime, happy hooking. :)