Good day, dear Knitters

hello, fellow yarn dyers! 

Today I would like to show you what a tedious process developing a new hand dyed yarn colorway is, and how many steps and missteps it requires, time and money aside. 

I had this ambitious idea to develop a new color for the Breidagen, a Dutch yarn festival I am visiting in October this year. Like every art lover, I am also a big fan of Dutch painters. I visited Rijksmuseum a couple of times, my jaw dropping in front of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and other titans of the Dutch Golden Age. So I set myself the goal to develop a new colorway based on the Dutch painters for every year of Breidagen I visit! The Milkmaid, I said! One of my favorite Rijsks paintings. The light, the shadows, the colors, the undertones, the composition, the scene. Is there a more beautiful morning in the history of painting? I doubt. But how to approach the challenge? Vermeer was a master of his trade, and I am just an ex-scientist dabbling in yarn dyeing. 

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid 

OK, said I, what do I see? An interplay of light and shadow, milk whites, and shades of greens, browns, and blues, right? I thought maybe it would be a good idea to shade everything with greys, then dye it up in various shades.... but: 

...the grey color just overwhelmed all the others, and I didn't like it 🤷🏻‍♀️

Okay, said I, let's ditch the grey base and play with the rest, but: 

 ... it all became too busy. So I decided to skip the grey all in all. But: 

....the speckles that I used to emphasize the colors of the skirt and the food just went all over the place and did not have any meaning .... so I decided to speckle only the whitish part of the yarn and reduce all the colors to something wearable, adding several shades of green that flow into each other adding to the depth of the colorway. 

 

After I got the colors right, I decided to reduce the speckles to the white part only. 

Et voilà! Many hours pour into developing a harmonious, wearable hand dyed yarn colorway, so I hope you like it! Cannot wait to see your creations with this transposed piece of art. 

The Vermeer colorway will be available on all my bases. 

See you at Breidagen 2023!