Today I shipped off the September shipment of the yarn of the month club. This is pretty exciting for me as it wrapped up the first 3 month yarn club as well. I can’t help but reflect back on the club now that three months have past. Did you want to order the September club? No worries, it’s still available. Just the preorders were shipped. Keep reading for a spoiler of the colorway.
July’s skein was based on the 4th of July as it featured fireworks. I didn’t want it to be a red, white and blue themed though, so I used a picture of nighttime fireworks on a beach. The fireworks were mostly pinks and purples, with some other colors as well. The inspiration picture is below:
What I loved about this photo is that certainly is on the summer July theme, without being too cliche. I knew when I saw this photo that I could turn it into a skein of yarn that I would want to knit with. The most important thing for any colorway that I release into the shop is to love it for myself. If I don’t want to knit with it, why would I expect someone else to?
The yarn came out great and I brought out the dark sky in the contrast skein.
The speckles remind me of the fireworks and while this is certainly a summer colorway, it doesn’t scream 4th of July at you. I loved bringing out the blues and seafoam green that you can see in the picture when you look closely.
So moving into August, I knew I had to have a classic summer color. This year has been a hard one for us all. I know that having that need to escape has overcome me more often than it really should. If I couldn’t get away on a vacation, I wanted to bring the vacation to the crafters through my yarn. I found a beautiful photo that had me feeling relaxed and sunkissed immediately.
I just loved the blues and brights in this photo. I couldn’t wait to dye it up. Before I finalize the inspiration photo and post it in my shop, I make sure I can dye up a skein that I like and does in some ways look like the photo. When I dyed up this sample, I was hooked. It was so bright and cheery that I couldn’t wait to ship out these skeins.
I really tried to bring out the blues and the browns in the trees without making this too dark or muddied. The contrast skein reminds me warm sand and my toes curled up in it.
When I was deciding what to bring out in September, all I could think of was back to school. When I was looking at colleges to decide where I wanted to go, the top item on the list was “what does the library look like.” I grew up an avid reader and I couldn’t wait to go away to college and study in a library. It had to be pretty and quiet and all of the things I’d always imagined.
I have to say that the college I went to did in fact have a beautiful library and I studied there everyday.
This photo is not from my University, which I did try and find a good one from there first, but it does just bring back so many memories. The smell of old books, the quiet in the library and the golden tones they all seem to have. I knew my September colorway had to look like this.
SPOILERS AHEAD! IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THE SEPTEMBER MYSTERY YARN CLUB, LOOK AWAY NOW!
This skein really brings out the gold, brown and gray tones from the photo. It’s a great contrast to the brighter colors that I’ve been offering. You may be wondering about the contrast skein. I did take some artistic liberties here to bring a color that I thought looked nice paired with the skein. As the photo was all browns, blacks and golds and I didn’t want to make any of those the contrast (as I felt it would be too boring with the main colorway), I brought out a color I thought would match. If you look closely at the photo, there’s a dark blue-green book. While I didn’t make the skein super dark, I did use that as my inspiration.
So what did I learn from the first 3 months of the club?
1. It really is fun to create this mystery colorways and base them off of photos. A lot of my inspiration for colors comes from colors I enjoy and so to challenge myself by using a photo has been a lot of fun. I’ve even started to do that more and more with my regular colorways as well.
2. Make sure there is a good contrast skein. I test out the photo for the main colorway, but as September showed, I really need to make sure there’s a good contrast in there too.
3. Keep creating these because they are a lot of fun!
Let me know which colorways are your favorite because I may decide to bring them back to the shop! They are all exclusive to the clubs for 3 months and so you won’t see them for a bit but eventually they may return.
If you like September, it’s available in the shop now through September 15th. There’s also a new 3 month club that starts with September.
All clubs earn you reward points!
Each month, you earn points towards a 10% off discount code. You earn 1 point for every gram of the mystery color you buy and every 100 points earns you the code. So basically, if you order a 100g skein, you’ll receive the coupon code. However, if you only like 50g skeins, then you’ll have to order 2 months worth to get the code. The points accumulate though so you don’t need to order them back to back.
The 3 month clubs come with a code no matter how much you buy. The value of the coupon code is determined by the number of grams of the main colorway that you buy. If you buy the main colorway in 100g skeins, you’ll receive a 30% off coupon code. You can see this post for more details.
If you’re interested in seeing how I dyed up July’s colorway, check out this Dye with Me video from my YouTube channel: