Yarn Dyeing: Downton Abbey Exploration

As you know, I’ve been part of a Downton Abbey swap via the Subway Knits podcast since the end of January. As such, I knew that I wanted to dye some yarn for my swap partner that was inspired by her favourite character. I happened to have a random undyed skein in one of the yarn weights she likes that I bought at a sale back when I was still just thinking about perhaps getting started in yarn dyeing, so I didn’t even have to acquire anything . . . except dyes.

I’d fairly exhausted my options when it came to the Jacquard acid dyes and while I know now that I can mix many colours to get what I want, I didn’t know that when I started thinking about colourways. Each of the Crawley women has always had their particular colour (or colours in the case of a few) to me and I knew I wanted to represent them as such. So I spent some time on the Dharma Trading Company site, at the recommendation of someone . . . though I couldn’t say who at this point . . . and found that they had the perfect colours for what I wanted to do: A peach, sage green, rose pink, and a lavender purple. I ordered them immediately and began the wait. After shipping issues (caused by my inability to type numbers in the correct order) and a phone call to Dharma by Jonas (in exchange for ice cream, as per our standard agreement) the order was re-placed and sent with newer, more expedited shipping. I received it last Friday and after acquiring new tester yarn last Saturday, I was on my way.

I first used the test yarn to just find out what the colours were when I mixed them straight, then I began building my colourways. I had a vision for all of them and with minimal mixing/effort on my part, I had produced colourways for Lady Edith, Lady Sybil, Countess Cora, Lady Violet, and Lady Rose by the end of Sunday. I had a brilliant time and everything was filled with fun and magic and I wished ever so much that I could just make this my life full time.

It took me a bit longer to get the yarns finally listed on Etsy (they still need better photos and not all of them have example swatches), because I do actually have a real job and a real life that needed handling, but those five (plus another that I’ll write about later) are now available for sale in my new Etsy shop that will be dedicated to my hand-dyed yarns from here on out.

Here’s a few teaser photos to entice you to purchase!