Dye dye. Love the colours, love the yarn. Dyeing and painting yarn brings such happiness into a home and studio.

Yarn, being a soft, quiet and malleable media sometimes needs to push itself into the forefront with colour. I’m inspired by lots of colour like this although I’ve tried to change to muted softs or dark limited ranges. But this has always led to frustration and dissatisfaction… it almost hurts.  I’ve also tried to work through colour theory books of which Color: A Workshop Approach is the very best I’ve worked with. This book is a real ‘hands on’ applied colour workshop. I must have learnt from it but I still go back to my own intuitive dye mixing style with minimal planning. When hunting for inspiration I regularly go to Colourlovers and Spoonflower, but ideas for print fabrics and graphics are only a spring board for weavers because of the way we mix and organise colour and texture. For me, colour is more about managing proportions and my emotional responses rather than a formula method. You know you can test your acuity to colour with surprising, if not, depressing results. I thought I had my favourite colour purple pretty sorted, but the result proved that this was the colour with my poorest actuity result. Apparently,  I couldn’t tell one shade of purple from another. Love really is b l i n d.

The warps shown here are destined for some designer Saori pre-wound warps,  Taiten shibori on the Saori loom and a woven shibori base for my Toika loom using 8 – 12 shafts for more pattern design complexity.

PS: The word colour divides, and expands, the english speaking world. Search ‘colour‘ or ‘color’.