Sky Braids: The Collection
The colorways featured in these yarns and fibers were inspired by views of Colorful Colorado’s skies: sun, storm, clouds, and brightest days. Each palette groups together hand-painted hues of the skyscape. Professional dyes and processes ensure soft fibers, consistent colors, and highly colorfast fabrics.
Braids – options for spinning
- A soft, bulky-weight single will show off the color progressions very well, and would make warm, unique hats and scarves that appeal to both men and women.
- A chain-plied single would create the same type of color separation, for those who like to spin finer-grade singles.
- For more blending, strip the braid into equal portions, spin to the desired weight, then edit the singles as you ply to control the amount of color mixing. Try keeping the “ground” portions separate, but letting the “sky” colors mix randomly.
- Make it completely yours: separate the colors, then spin them in any order you like.
- In addition to full-colorway braids, there are braids painted in just one or two colors of the colorway (for example: just the sky, or just the ground), giving you the option to extend the colors of your project however you like.
Braids – options for felting
Both Targhee and Merino braids are fabulous options for both needle- and wet felting. Since the hues were designed to depict natural sky colors, they’ll be great for any work about nature, while also remaining colorfast during the felting process. Wool/silk braids will also felt, giving a shiny, “fibery” look to your felt projects.
Yarns
Soft yet durable yarns, chosen for next-to-skin comfort, soak up the Sky Braids colors and give life to your yarn crafting. Superwash yarns provide easier-care versatility. Natural wools come with a particular benefit–grown, milled, and dyed entirely within Colorado, washed only with gentle detergent and dyed with vinegar-fixed colorants, their carbon footprint is minimal for a textile. And, these yarns are still soft and springy–they haven’t had the life milled out of them!
The dye patterns are suble tonals or analogous colors, which lend themselves particularly well to showing off your intricate lace or cable patterns, while still delivering the eye candy we yarnies crave! The goal is to consistently offer worsted and fingering weight yarns in both superwash and non-superwash fibers, with breed-specific, small-mill yarns offered as often as possible. These are special yarns you can’t get anywhere else!
Back Yard Sky: Spring Snow
This pic was taken from my back porch on the morning after a snowstorm. One of the many things I love about Colorado weather is that we see a lot of blue sky and sun—and this sky as a backdrop to a snowscape makes me stop in my tracks and say ‘whoa!’ This colorway has delicate sky blues and the slightest hint of purple in the clouds, along with the dark and light in the evergreen, with a layer of white in between.
Sylvan Lake Sunset
Sylvan Lake is a favorite camping spot. On this day, the weather had been spotty: raining off and on, with brief moments of sun. At the end of the day, though, the clouds parted just enough to give us a spectacular sunset. Light like this makes everything glow. It feels almost supernatural, and any moment, some magical creature will come flying out over those clouds. This colorway has greys and deeper blues for the sky; white transitioning to yellow, orange, and salmon for the fiery sunset; and a layer of reddish grey in between. There’s a dark grey for the hillside.
Sylvan Lake Storm
Opposite in the sky from the sunset, we could see another storm cell moving through. At this angle of the sun, the clouds took on deep, saturated colors—just a jaw-dropping display. This colorway has a range of deep purples, blue, and pinks, with a bit of slightest white for the low clouds, and dark grey for the hill.
Crabapple Sky
Flowering crabapple trees grew in everyone’s yards where I grew up in the west Denver ‘burbs, and I hope I always have one where I live. This view shows the beginning of my love of the Colorado sky: intense pink flowers against an equally intense, cloudless, clean, blue. They bloom in April, which means that sometimes, a spring frost will freeze the buds before they bloom. So, I’m grateful for the years in which they survive. This colorway has the pinks of the blooms, the dark green and deep maroon of the leaves, and the one intense sky blue.
