Sometimes

Sometimes I get really tired and discouraged, depressed, frustrated. But sometimes, sometimes things click.

This has been a very busy week, and it's not getting any less busy any time soon. I didn't cook dinner tonight because I had to finish updating the shop so I could finish working on my page for the Fiber Cooperative.  14 colorways went up in the shop, I have another dozen or so to photograph yet, and the end of this week is full of dyeing and sample making.  Meanwhile, tomorrow I'll hold another give-away, and then there's the holiday weekend coming up.

I hit 400 sales this month, another little milestone.  Even with a package missing in the mail, even with several lackluster advertising attempts this month and the bills they generated, I look around and feel proud of my accomplishment this week, and it's good to feel good about this and about myself.

And tonight, as I was editing pictures, I got this:

This is the colorway Starry Night and it is the most perfect example of a desire turned into reality that I have ever managed with my yarn.


Immersion dyeing is as limiting as writing in the sonnet form. I can't place the colors exactly where I want them to go and it can take an entire afternoon to dye up a dozen skeins.  Each pass of color is another place something can go wrong with the colorway.  But the satisfaction of pulling something beautiful out of that last dye pot is so very worth it.  To pull out something that is exactly as one hoped? That's better? That's unmatched.

And it's not just the colorway in the skein which surpasses my expectations.  Nor is it that the interval for the bright yellow flashes is the same as Taiga and Promethian Fire so I know it will knit up beautifully.  But also in how perfectly this one skein photographed.  Here it is entire:


I never manage to convey the full beauty of my yarn in photographs. It's a failing of mine, and even this picture is less than perfect. But this time I managed to get close and I fell in love.  I don't even really like blue and yellow. I'm a green, red, brown kind of girl. But this makes me happy.

Sometimes I feel like all I'm getting out of the dye pots are the same handful of colors, and only I will ever notice the tiny differences between them.  And sometimes, well sometimes it's brilliant.