A few weeks ago, I wrote about how much I love September and the sense of new beginning that it brings. The other thing that I love about Autumn is the colour of it. All those yellows, rich reds and greens, oranges and browns, purplesand pinks. I often think the garden looks best in autumn as it’s fading away but still has these bright splashes of colours amongst the greens and browns. The effect is created by the lower sun which makes colours seem richer and more saturated – nothing can beat the light of an Autumn morning or evening in my view.
With hindsight I’ve always been fairly obsessed with colour, but since I’ve opened the shop, I feel as if my obsession has moved to a whole different level. We spend our days in the shop immersed in colour, surrounded by the lovely wools that we stock and helping people choose colour combinations for their garments. I have identified that teal and orange are go to colours for me and it takes quite an effort to break away from that. But I really enjoy helping people find the colours that they like so that their projects will make them happy and I have become much bolder about colour combinations, for example blue and green, which I was always let to believe should never be used together, being another of my favourite mixes. I have learned from knitting Shetland Wool Week hats about putting a pop of colour, such as red, or yellow, or white, into colourwork to make it sing and I have decided that working with different colours in my knitting is perhaps the thing I like best (although this might just be because I have recently had a bit of time with a lace knitting project).
Now that I am hand dyeing yarn myself, my enjoyment of colour has increased even more. Recently I’ve spent several happy hours experimenting with the colours that I wanted to reflect this lovely season. I have been taking inspiration from the world around me, mostly here in Norfolk and often when I am walking the dogs – in the woods near my house, on one of the wonderful beaches we are so blessed with here. My garden is my other passion and I find I am looking at it now with new eyes to see what colours there can be translated into yarn. I would like to say that I was a strictly scientific dyer but I’m afraid that what I do is think of an effect I would like to create, line up a load of colours and throw them at the wool and see what happens. It’s an amazing amount of fun.
I am launching my Autumn hand dyed sock yarn range this weekend at the Social Stitchers Seaside Sunday event in Cromer and I very much hope that others recognise in the yarns the colours I am trying to reflect. They will be on the website and in the shop from next week.