an armchair traveler - Irish Sea

My order from the Three Irish Girls arrived yesterday and it is beautiful beyond belief! As you all know by this point, I'm a fan of watery, ocean-y colours: greens, blues, green-blue, seafoam, marine with a little bit of seashell tints thrown in. I can appreciate other colours and even love to use them when I'm creating for other people, but the water is what I love best.

The ladies at Three Irish Girls have nailed it. Completely. Here is their new colourway, Irish Sea, which they devised based on my description of what I like best:



The lighter skein on the bottom is Cormac, one of their special monthly colourways. It coordinates beautifully, don't you think?

I ordered three different types of yarn because this was my first experience with the Three Irish Girls and I wanted to know what the types were like to the touch. I need to touch yarn in person to know if I really like it, and ordering variety for small projects when I'm starting out with an online company is very useful.



On the left top you see Adorn, their sock or fingering weight yarn. It is wool with a touch of nylon and a whopping 430 yards - enough for a lace shoulderette shawl or some pretty tall knee-socks. Adorn takes the dye in a more saturated way, so you can expect the colours to be just a bit deeper. This is often the case with sock yarns, in my experience. My skein of Adorn looks quite complex with pale, medium and deep seafoam, light blue, light and deep teal, and medium and deep marine blue. Quite beautiful!

To the right in the photo is the most elegant Wexford Merino Silk (silk 60% and merino 40%). This yarn is similar in hand to the new Manos Silk & Wool. It's very soft to the touch - definitely an 'against the skin' yarn - and in a single ply. This yarn took the dye in a more subtle way, with very pale and medium seafoam colours and very pale teals and blues. I can't wait to use this yarn. I got two skeins of 240 yards each - it should be enough for a summer bolero or shrug.

The Cormac skein is Galenas Merino - 100% merino wool in single ply and 220 yards. It is very very light greens and very very light blues. Galenas Merino is soft the way cotton is soft - almost fluffy. It has a lightness, and in the single ply will blend beautifully. I'm not sure what I'll make with this yardage. I had originally thought I'd use this for a small Bainbridge Scarf, and maybe I'll still do that, even though it's not winter weather any more. In the Northeast, winter is never very far away, even in the midst of Spring!

You can tell I think, that I love my oceany yarns from the Three Irish Girls so much. Their customer service was excellent, even after I complained that I didn't like my first choice of bright chartreuse colours and returned them. Sharon contacted me and offered to dye a colourway that was to my specifications and you see what a precise, artistic and inspired job she did.

It is my dream to go to Ireland someday. When I'm knitting with these, I will be an armchair traveler in earnest, dreaming of the Irish Sea...

emo means potato in Japanese

Today I received my first ever order from an indie company that is new to me. They have a lovely website with pictures of to-die-for colourways and pet-able fibers like Silk and Silk and Merino and Sock.... I tried three different yarns in four different colourways. Due to their misprint of my zip code, the order took exactly one month to arrive.

This is what I ordered: in both the Sock and the Silk and Merino:

This is what I received:


Every skein was a disappointment. Where their website photos had shown subtle, artful combinations of harmonious colours, the skeins themselves were garish, clashing, opposing dyes.

There is no phone number on the website so I began the laborious, embarassing, and difficult task of putting my disappointment and dissatisfaction into words in an email without expressing just how sad and how angry I felt. It was clear that their reply to my clumsy emo email had taken an enormous effort to be professional and gracious, but at least the attempt was there. Of course "differences in monitor calibration" were cited as the culprit. I was offered the choice of replacing the yarn with something else more to my taste (but how can I do that when nothing on the website is as it seems?) or returning the yarn for a refund.

When I was in my 20's I worked as an illustrator for one of the well known NY publishers. I remember the cardinal rule of illustration: consistency of representation. If one of the characters was introduced as half lion, half rose yesterday, it darn better look like a half lion, half rose character today - unless the change of representation was justified by the story.

This, in my book, applies to yarn dying too. If you change your dye-bath or add a fourth colour where before there were only three, or decide to intensify the tones to the point that they become a different colour-set... then frackin change the photos on your website! please. I could just cry. In fact - pardon my emo - but I really think I will.

Edited to Add: The yarn company owner has emailed me twice over-night and is expressing great patience. She's offered to replace the yarn and is being extremely nice in trying to figure out what colours and tones I actually like (sea-greams, sea-foam, light teal, dark teal, aqua, marine blue, deep marine blue....) She said she would even dye yarn up special to meet my wishes - over and above service I think! So, I will post the good outcome when it happens - it will probably take a month to complete this if new dying does happen - and then I'll let you know the name of the company and sing their praises.

Also - someone from Slough, UK visited my blog today! How exciting! Shades of "The Office" indeed... ;)
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