making - slow coreopsis magic

i’ve been spending a lot of time working behind the scenes on the bones and muscles of the biz lately - financial systems and health, operating systems, organizational structures - and while sometimes it hurts my creative artsy brain and my itchy maker’s fingers, i know that slowing things down to focus on the core structures that will help the biz to grow are integral. it’s like working in the garden - do we necessarily want to weed and work in compost and sweat over new beds? maybe not, but damn it feels good when it’s time to harvest. not everything needs to be immediate (remind me i said that next time my aries brain takes over…)

a perfect example of this are the results from my 2020 coreopsis harvest. all summer last year, i diligently deadheaded and dried my coreopsis flowers. by the end of the summer, i had about ¾ of a cup of dried flower heads. it was a small harvest to be sure, fairly typical for my current gardening skills and space, and i knew i didn’t want to waste them on a typical dye bath.

i’ve recently accepted the fact that i can’t wholesale sock yarn, at least not with the current capacity and costs of finding acceptable breeds and fleeces for strong all-natural sock yarn within the prairies and then getting it spun up on mini mill equipment into fingering weight skeins. it’s just not cost-effective for the mini mills to produce the quantity i need for wholesaling even if i could find consistent sock-friendly large flocks. it was a blow to my dream of getting all-natural canadian sock yarn into stores across the country to be sure, but also this does free me up to play with my favourite nerdy fibre adventure - completely traceable small batch sock yarns dyed with locally foraged and homegrown dyes! 

this year’s sock yarn is a deliciously heathered base sourced by kalea the luddite with a blend of three different breeds - north country cheviot, canadian arcott, and a teensy bit of black welsh mountain x charollais for some extra dark flecks of colour. i’ve got a couple dozen skeins to play with (again, certainly not enough to wholesale, but enough for me to run through special more limited dye pots), and i’m designing a pattern for this year’s sock collection with a skein as well. 

coreopsis is one of the rare sources (at least here in the north) of natural oranges, and it did not disappoint on this base! i tossed the full harvest into the dye pot to extract for a little over an hour, then added a skein of the sock yarn and both a white and light grey mini of roots for my local colour palette study. once they were done, i added some ferrous sulphate and put the same quantities of yarn into the pot to exhaust it and see what kind of green i would get. i’m absolutely smitten with both, and very glad i had the forethought to add the minis into the pot so i’ll be less disappointed when these skeins sell in the next shop update! keep an eye on the newsletter so you don’t miss the date.

this is my favourite type of #plantwitch magic, and is the part of the dyeing side of the biz that i’ll always keep my hands fully on. i guess depending on our someday garden space, it could be fun for production assistants to work on their own seasonal colour projects too!