I've been thinking about hand-dyed yarn a lot lately.

You know the kind. That skein that makes you literally gasp out loud in the yarn shop. The colors feel alive. It's so full of promise and you snatch it right off the shelf!

Maybe something like this?

You take it home, wind it up, start crocheting and... you start to feel disappointed because it just isn't at all like what you imagined.

If that's happened to you before, I want to say something clearly:

You're not doing anything wrong.

Most of us were never taught anything about using hand-dyed yarn—or even anything about different types of yarn and how they behave. We just buy whatever's available to us and crochet with it, right?

Here's my first experimental swatch with that gorgeous green and yellow yarn:

Yikes, right!?

I remember the first time I discovered hand-dyed yarn. I was six months pregnant and walked onto the market floor at my very first big fiber event, Stitches Texas, and my jaw hit that floor!

Never had I ever seen so much gorgeous yarn in all my life!! It was overwhelming and mesmerizing and expensive but it was also wonderful and inspiring and I knew right then and there that I was home.

Well, not with the show because I think that was the only Stitches Texas event they ever did. But with all that yarn that came from artists. I was officially in love.

But it still took me years to feel comfortable actually working with hand-dyed yarn.

And do you know what the first step was?

Just looking at it.

Noticing the colors.
Do they repeat in the skein?
How long are the color segments?
How might this yarn want to play?

That small shift in thinking changed everything for me.

Instead of diving straight into a pattern, I learned to pause and listen to what the yarn was already trying to tell me. It doesn't require color theory. Just a patience and curiosity.

This is a topic that seems to keep coming up recently. Not only in my own projects, but also in conversations with so many of you! And so I've decided to try something new.

I'm hosting a live Color Lab session on Thursday, February 26th at 1:00 pm Pacific / 4:00 pm Eastern time.

We'll spend an hour talking about hand-dyed yarn together, looking at some of my own skeins and projects as examples. We'll discuss how to read it before choosing a pattern, when to change shape instead of stitches, and when you might need to break out the big guns, like I did for this design!

The Color Lab is designed to be relaxed. And small. And a little experimental (for me, too, if I'm honest).

If you have a skein of yarn that's been sitting in your stash for too long because you're just not sure what to do with it, I'd love for you to bring it and explore color with me.

You can find all the details and registration info here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/color-lab-with-148904717​

Whether you join or not, I hope this encourages you to pause before your next project and really look at your yarn. It might already be telling you what it wants to grow up to become!

Happy crocheting, y'all.

-Connie

P.S. I'm almost ready to open a new testing call (remember that green shawl??), so if you're interested either reply to this email or make sure you've joined my testing pool on Yarnpond! I expect to get the pattern back from Tech Editor today or tomorrow. I'll also drop an invitation on Patreon when it opens.

P.P.S. These three kids are still running around collecting grass seeds! 😆