Playing around

We all know how easy it is to get into a rut, even when doing something that is generally considered a creative endeavor.  I don't know that I've been playing with fabric long enough to have found myself in an official "rut," but I did decide it would be fun to try doing some patchwork squares that consisted of smaller pieces sew together, rather than bigger blocks made of a single fabric like I have been doing.  I found some instructions for making wonky nine-patch blocks (oh, you quilters, with your "wonky" and your "scrappy") and gave it a go.

I wasn't able to master the trick of shuffling the blocks around so that each block has one square of every different fabric, but it was still really fun to end up with pieced blocks.  Wonky pieced blocks.  Wonky AND scrappy pieced blocks.

Trying something different with fabric got me thinking the next time I was dyeing yarn.  I have always loved creating really saturated colorways, but lately I have been seeing a lot of yarns featuring more dappled colors, with more variations in how the colors take and more colors peeking through in layers.  I don't know if I'm being clear -- it's hard to verbalize this kind of thing -- but I figured I would play around with some different techniques and see what happened. The last batch of yarns I did (some Superwash Merino Classic Worsted and Cashmerino Sock) includes some of these skeins:

The top photo shows some of the dappled colors, and the peach one what happened when I played with overlapping colors.

These are two of the CashSock colorways that came out especially striking.  These are all in stock in the Black Bunny Fibers on-line shop.

Don't forget: there are still a few more days to participate in the Go Knit In Your Hat Summer-Search Fundraiser! The prizes are wonderful and we're SO VERY CLOSE to my goal of raising a thousand dollars for Summer Search:

See the list of fabulous prizes here..... -- including knitting books! yarn! roving! and other goodies!!!