The Gearheart

I recently listened to The Gearheart podcast by Alex White. Alex uses a lot of colors in his descriptions. I was so inspired by the colors in this story that it became the first colorway of Balticon 2011. I incourage you to listen to the story. Alex and his wife, Renee are the readers (they do a number of different and wonderful voices/accents for the production) and Alex also composed the score for the production. 

These first photos were taken with my blackberry. I will be taking better images and officially adding the colorway to the separate page for Balticon 2011 in the near future. For now, I just had to share my instantaneous love of these colors with you.

Update

Some of the things I am currently working on at Dyed Bright Here:

I am still dyeing all of the individual colors a little bit at a time. I have at present count 38 individual colors to mix and play with to create my colorways. As of today, I have 19 of them dyed individually and have started the first swatch. I currently call them by the name the dye manufacturer gave each of the dyes. I am thinking of re-naming them. The dye may be called Kelly Green but on my yarn, I see it as "Jealousy". That way, once the project is completed when someone wants to mix their own colorway together it might be a mix of Love, Lust, Hope, and Faith.  

I also have a few colorways in mind that I haven't translated onto the yarn yet. So far the list includes:

Wild Woman--Purple, orange, sky blue, and ?

Brains--Pastel pink and grey

Oh, Baby!--typical baby colors, light blue, pink, lavender, mint green, maybe yellow

Swamp Thing--browns, dark greens, black

And then there's the upcoming LE colorways for Balticon 45 in 2011.

And, finally, some monochromatic colorways. 

The holiday season is currently squashing most of us under its big, green, hairy thumb (myself included). I hope you have a moment to sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy all the wonderful colors of the season. Here's wishing you a safe, happy, healthy, and colorful holiday.  See you in 2011.

Love,

Sue

New Territory

I have decided to venture into some new territory.  I am adding other weights of yarn to my offerings.  I have purchased approximately 20 skeins each of DK, worsted, and bulky weight yarns.  However, I don't have the space (or the cash flow) to dye every yarn in every color at the moment.  So, I will dye to order.  I will be revamping my Etsy listings in the near future. I will post a listing for what I actually have in stock for each weight, a listing for each weight of all the possible colorways (this will be a dyed-to-order listing and so will take longer to get to the customer), and I will also post information in the shop news (maybe separate listings but I am not sure yet) about designing your own colorways.

The design-your-own thing is something that I have been moving towards.  I mentioned earlier that I am going to do mini-skeins in all of my solid colors to go with my hand painted colorways.  One of the reasons for wanting to dye some solids is to use the yarn as a design/idea aid for future creations.  It helps to have the yarn in front of me to see how certain colors work side by side.  And, if I have the colors in front of me, I might as well put them in front of you as well.  

All of the Limited Edition colorways have been created with input from someone else; a shop owner, an author, or a friend.  I have certain colors that I gravitate towards and find that sometimes it is a lot easier to have someone else give me a list of colors rather than have to pick and choose on my own.  So, why not let you in on some of the fun too?

Because it takes the same amount of time to do one skein of yarn as it does to do a full batch of five or six, there will have to be a cost incentive to buying a full batch rather than just one skein.  So, put simply, if you want just one skein I will gladly do that. However, the cost per skein will be more expensive for just one.  

The other consideration is that no matter how much planning you put into this kind of thing, it is extremely difficult to predict what the finished result will look like or how it will knit up.  Thankfully, I am almost always pleasantly surprised.  That said, once the yarn is dyed there is no turning back.  I will give you plenty of opportunity to select your colors and make any special requests beforehand but there has to be a point where it's a done deal.

As you may have figured out by now, there is not a whole lot of method going on around here but a whole lot of madness.  I have no doubt that there will be some minor glitches in this new hair-brained idea of mine.  I also have no doubt that it will be worth it.  Or, at the very least an interesting ride.  So, if you have any thoughts or ideas on any of this, please leave a comment.  Or send an email to me [Dyed Bright Here (all one word) at google mail dot com] or tweet me at Bright Eyed Dyer (again, all one word).