Another Black Beauty

Wow! We're really excited to be adding another incredible yarn to our offering of dark, delicious ultra-black (dyed at the mill) Black Yarns. This time it's 10-056, our 50% Silk 50% Merino Wool 12/3 favourite. This is our most popular knitting yarn for warm, soft pieces that have the lustre of silk and the warmth and loft of merino. It also weaves up into thick, warm, lofty and lustrous piece perfect for this time of year. Customers have been clammoring for Black, and we listened!

So now our offering of Black Black includes:
10-007 100% Silk 20/2
10-073 100% Silk 30/2
30-603 Big Halo Mohair
10-056  50% Silk 50% Merino Wool 12/3 
10-205 96% Silk 4% Elastic

Happy knitting and weaving!

Painted Paper

Sometimes we surprise even ourselves with the loveliness of something we create.
Painted paper yarn is one of these things. The yarn is 30-501, a hemp paper 4mm strip yarn. Its country of origin is Japan, and that country perfected the art of making wearable clothing out of paper many centuries ago. Although it looks delicate, and to some degree is, when handled gently it can be immersed in hot water and subject to the rigours of painting with dyes due to the long staples of the fibres used.

 

Yarns are always beautiful when they're painted, but occasionally a yarn seems to be bigger than the sum of it's parts. 

We're sorry to have to say that these, like all painted yarns, are available only for personal shopping at the Silk Weaving Studio. They're too "limited edition" and variable to represent online. 

 

Joanne Waters is a Vancouver-based fibre artist. She uses this painted paper yarn to create her magical jewellery.  She generously offered to share images of her work with us. Thanks, Joanne!

True Black

There's really nothing as beautiful as a bottomlessly deep true black silk yarn. We can't reach that kind of inky depth with our hand-dyeing, so on occasion we get a mill-dyed black that is deep, rich and truly black. We've added two very important yarn to our True Black offering - first, our 10-007  20/2 Spun Silk. 

 

And second, our luscious  Big Halo Silk Mohair 30-603

 
These two fabulous new additions give you new options in our True Black range:
- 10-007  20/2 Spun Silk
- 10-073  30/2 Spun Silk
- 30-603  60% Mohair 40% Silk
- 10-205  E-Silk

When you're looking for something truly elegant for your latest creative endeavour, consider these lovelies from Sanjo.

ANWG 2017 - Victoria BC

The yarns are packed up, the booth is disassembled, and we're heading for home. What a great time we had at the conference of The Association of Northwest Weavers' Guilds! This year it was held at the University of Victoria, hosted by the Victoria Weavers' Guild. These fabulously organized and good-natured people spoiled us senseless. They helped us unload our cargo (and load it back up at the end of the conference), they brought us drinking water (it was steaming hot the first few days), and they provided us with a means to get the all-important lattes late in the energy-flagging afternoon.

 

We saw lots of our fibre friends there. We reconnected with old friends we haven't seen for a long time. We made lots of new friends.  And we had a chance to introduce our broad, varied selection of silk to people who didn't know about us. 

We were hopping-busy the entire 3 days. Apparently word is out that silk is the new black for weavers and spinners! Thanks go out to all of you for your support and ❤❤❤. We hope you love working with silk as much as we do!

Thank you, Victoria Weavers' Guild, for the great job you did herding all of us fibre-cats. We know that Prince George Guild is already busy-busy preparing for ANWG 2019. Can't wait!

Handpainting Silk Yarn

Hand-Painted Silk Yarn: Here’s What Happens

When it’s time to replenish our handpainted silk yarn offering, we plan a 3-day getaway to our island dye studio. It’s an idyllic waterfront work environment on a beautiful island a few hours from Vancouver on the West Coast of Canada.

OK, now you have absolutely no sympathy for how hard we’re about to work for 3 days….

 

Before we go, we prepare the yarns. Skeins are wound either to pair later with solids for our knit kits, or as individual skeins for our customers to work into their own creative gems.

We begin to plan the colourways. We’re inspired by many things: art, nature, and the world around us. Each time we handpaint yarns, we create new and original colourways; never the same twice.

Once we’re in the dye studio, we soak the yarns to prepare them to accept the dyes. Individual colours are created to achieve the colourways we’ve designed. The colours are tested and tweaked until we’re satisfied that we’ve got what we want. Each colourway has at least 4 colours that are carefully applied and blended on the individual skeins.  It’s a time-consuming process, but very inspiring.

 

The skeins are given time to absorb the dyes and fix the colours. Then we gently wash and rinse them. If we’re lucky, the sun shines on us and the skeins are hung outside in the island sun to dry.

Once we’ve completed the handpainting process we dye solid colours to accompany them in the knit kits. And so marks the completion of another wonderful handpainting session.

Because they’re unique and of such limited production, these lovely handpainted yarns are only available for in-person shopping at the Silk Weaving Studio – Sorry, no online sales for these lovelies. Please come and visit us on Granville Island in Vancouver to see them.