A Yarn Story
Fjordmade is the indie fiber arts studio of a solo operator with an addiction to yarn. No matter what I do as my work in the world, I always spend my free time with yarn — knitting, dyeing, allowing texture color and motion to wrap me up in deep remembered joy from generations? Lifetimes?
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I let dyeing yarn fill the quiet moments of my days at home on the shores of the Salish Sea in rural Washington State. I have a dye bath or two bubbling away in a corner of my garage, and I pop in there like a mad scientist as often as needed to make whatever wants to be born in yarn emerge. I peek on the skeins often, as if they are sleeping children, and when they are done dreaming, I carefully wake them back into the air, squeeze and cleanse them, then hang them to dry.
This is my favorite part — when the hearth is filled with damp loops of freshly dyed yarn, each skein hanging from its clothespin drying into its softness and thinking about what it might become — something even more beautiful in the lap of a creator with an inspiration. What will it be next, after animal, art, and ?
I’m always peripherally aware of the yarn drying there, we silently converse through the heart, wondering about the possible shapes of future creations and bringing more beauty into the world. But it’s exactly what it wants to be for the moment, sharing the light in my gaze and basking in its own reflection in the window superimposed over the giant evergreen trees and the fjord outside.
As a tiny one-person operation, I only dye between 1 and 5 skeins at a time. Down with colorways, I say! Death to replicable results!
I don’t know about you, but I often find that no matter how breathtaking the colors and patterns of variegated yarn look in the skein, the finished result ends up looking kind of meh — when the beauty of the moving colors are stitched into rows, the color pooling can make it look… trapped? Too regimented? More like a digitized camo print than the freeflow of color moods it enchanted with in skein form.I have committed myself in my yarn dyeing to defy that imprisonment!
My yarn babies are dyed with care to produce eye-pleasing end products. I love half and half patterns, which give a visual stripe in a minor key. I love surprises with a scattering of different colored stitches poking their heads out from a monochromatic base color. I love self-striping socks and am willing to put in the physical labor of creating giant loops of yarn, dyeing it in two colors, then rewinding it.
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me in the continuation of what all this yarn is to become.
Merino Wool
Wool is such a magical fiber — sustainable, warm, hearty, dye-able, moisture wicking — those are some of its common glories. But many people find standard wool (if there is such a thing) a bit itchy and therefore difficult to wear next to the skin.
Enter merino wool. Merino wool comes from… merino sheep. Merino sheep’s wool grows in extra fine, soft fibers. Yarn and fabrics made from merino wool are some of the softest and lightest, while still retaining warmth. Merino wool is also excellent at wicking moisture away from the body, it is odor repellent, and anti-bacterial.
Where does it come from? Merino sheep live in many places around the globe. I partner with responsible wool and yarn producers in Peru, where there is a centuries-old tradition of sheep herding and wool and yarn production. The partners I work with in Peru are committed to ethical treatment of their herds and environmentally responsible production practices. (There are some nasty and cruel practices out there for high-volume wool shearing, and there is absolutely none of that here.) I did my research in finding a good source for the materials that become Fjordmade yarn, and I am pleased with the excellent yarn quality and ethically responsible production practices from my current partners.
That being true, it is also my dream to one day be able to source local fibers. I am heartened to see the cottage fiber industry growing here in the Pacific Northwest!
Knitted Goods
I am delighted to offer select knitted goods that feature Fjordmade yarn.
How do I have the time to do this and keep the products affordable, you are wondering? Well, I finally added a circular hand-crank knitting machine to my yarnie tools!!! By using this tool I can offer finished products to folks who admire my yarn but are not (yet) knitters or crocheters.
So then isn’t it not handmade, but machine-made?
No — or at least no more than other crafts that use tools, in my opinion. While my first love will always be hand-knitting, I am beyond excited to find a tool that allows me to more quickly make finished products from Fjordmade yarn — quickly enough that I am able to sell items that I make with my hand-dyed yarn!
The process looks like this — depending on the item I am making, I use different techniques for preparing a skein of yarn to get the right stitch size for the desired fabric weight and tightness, and different ways to feed the yarn onto the 46 needles of the knitting machine (casting on). Once I’ve prepped the yarn and cast it onto the needles, it takes anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes to crank out a knitted tube, making sure the tension stays even and there are no hiccups.
Once the knitted tube is the desired length for the item at hand, I remove each stitch at the end of the fabric tube from the machine with a tapestry needle, and then finish the item by hand using regular ol’ knitting needles, a crochet hook, and/or tapestry needles. Different items require different amounts of cranking and hand-work, and some also require blocking — soaking, wringing out, and air-drying the item.
Using a hand-crank knitting machine has really opened up some possibilities over here! Please keep an eye out for new knitted goods, as I develop more patterns and techniques.
Knitting Patterns
Oh, my heart. My biggest passion: knitting by hand, stitch by stitch. As a several decades long knitter with a nerd-oriented brain, I love to knit from a pattern and follow the step-by-step while learning new ciphers in the secret code of knitting nomenclature. I love watching the blueprint from the brain of some reclusive knitting genius unfold stitch by stitch in my hands.
However — as my love for dyeing yarn began to grow from Personal Hoard Level to This Should Probably Become Something I Can Sell So I Can Justify Continuing Level, the conundrum became — what finished garment will look absolutely gorgeous as a final result in this magical yarn I am dyeing, and what can be made with just one skein, since each one is so uniquely glorious?
I began experimenting with different stitch patterns and dyeing styles to evade the digitized camo look that variegated yarn can so often produce (please see A Yarn Story for more on that). I began testing some of my favorite stitches and styles to create wearable must-haves that only use one skein of Fjordmade yarn. My friends and family, now rich in socks, hats, and scarves can attest to this period of experimentation, as I created many samples of each pattern, to accurately edit and test the instructions.
Encouraged by the bounty of knitting tutorials the internet now blesses us with, I was undaunted to include a few complex knitting moves in my experiments. I lovingly recorded tutorials for all of these, which are included in the patterns by a link to the videos.
The Fjordmade knitting patterns featured here are the result of my nerd-brain experiments and dedication of beauty, clarity, and learning. Fjordmade patterns are here for essential and unique accessories that look absolutely fantastic in one skein of Fjordmade yarn.
I hope you will try one of them out.