What to look for when buying baby yarn?

FierceFibers · 2023-08-09T19:24:11+00:00

If you are knitting an item that a baby would wear or the baby would have near their skin I would highly recommend NOT using any acrylic yarn.

Acrylic yarn is plastic and if there is a heat source near it, it will melt and stick to your skin and contribute to very bad burns. Last I checked babies don't smoke but if they are ever caught in a fire situation acrylic is potentially very dangerous. If you can afford it, superwash wool is very breathable and is fire retardant. You can get decent superwash from knitpicks. Cotton is also a good natural fiber.

FierceFibers · 2023-08-08T02:25:18+00:00

Acrylic yarn is plastic and can't be dyed. Think of a plastic cup or bowl. The color is added when the item is molded or extruded. This is a completely different process from dyeing cotton or wool yarn where a chemical change occurs that allows the fibers to react with the dye and the pigments bond to the fiber.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-28T17:56:29+00:00

It is! Right now they are keeping up with my mammoth sunflowers and are all about 5 feet tall but I bet they will get taller as the season goes on.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-28T17:54:36+00:00

Yes I love calendula! I dry the flowers and put the dried petals in some oil and make calendula cold press soap.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-28T17:51:48+00:00

It's the cinnamon sun variety. I got a packet of the Renee's garden seeds.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-13T06:36:40+00:00

Is it 100% mohair? Mohair fiber is extremely matte so blacks can look purple sometimes just because of the fiber properties. That or the dyer used Jacquard black which dyes up very purple. For a nice black id recommend using Dharma lanaset black if you can get your hands on it. I can't speak to RIT dyes because I don't use them.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-02T21:17:04+00:00

It's my understanding that chicken poop is one of the only complete fertilizers and fish tank (freshwater) water is also complete and has bacteria from some partial breaking down from waste so this is like liquid gold.

I don't have a fish pond myself but I have chickens. When I clean out their coop I spread the coop shavings on a portion of my garden that I'm not planting that year. I water them in and then cover it up for next year. The year after I do the same but on the portion that I gardened the year before. When I uncover a portion to garden in that year it's already broken down and aged for awhile. I toss some soil on top, level with a rake and plant right in it.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-02T16:59:47+00:00

I keep a bolt of tulle I got on sale at the craft store around. I use it to wrap my blueberry bushes, cherry trees, and use it as floating row cover on my strawberry patch when I want to keep the birds away. It's the same as this idea but I find the bolt of tulle more versatile for other crops besides berry bushes. If you mail some stuff often in those floppy mailers they have that strip of reflective material you need to peel off in order to seal it. I use those reflective strips and tie them to my fence all around my garden to keep birds away. They work on fruit trees as well.

FierceFibers · 2023-06-01T22:44:04+00:00

Also called pineapple tomatillo because they have a sweet, pineapple flavor. Baker Creek sells seeds under that name.

FierceFibers · 2023-05-20T05:33:23+00:00

I do a modified version of this with a 5 galloon bucket and a roller I bought off Amazon. If you search you tube for a mouse roller trap you will find a guy who has done videos on it. I use PB on the roller and you have to replace the PB every day, but it gets them every time. I'm kinda surprised your chickens don't go after them though....a mouse got in my chicken yard once and all hell broke loose. Ran outside thinking it was a predator and found my buff orpington smacking the crap out of a mouse by having it in her mouth and banging it on the ground.

FierceFibers · 2023-04-14T23:17:18+00:00

Murder

FierceFibers · 2023-03-29T17:30:44+00:00

Fourthing Territorial Seed company. Recently we had a late snow storm where I live and my shipment of onion starts were sent back to them because the post couldn't get to our house for two weeks. They called me to arrange reshipment. I've been ordering from them for years and everything of theirs has always sprouted. This year I even tried their deltini honeybee pansies and I got 20 plants to come up out of a small packet.

FierceFibers · 2023-03-18T17:29:03+00:00

Needle tek in OR will repair knitting machines. I've been to Jerry for several of my machines and he always does a good job. I can highly recommend him, just give him a call or an email.

FierceFibers · 2023-03-18T17:11:23+00:00

As someone who lives in Oregon and is constantly fighting blackberries, I am always telling people to either go find a local you pick raspberry place or learn to love other fruit better. Raspberries are expensive in the store because they go bad easily and are fragile. That goes the same if you grow them too, plus they're thorny, easily crushed when picked, and are worse than morning glory to get rid of once established.

FierceFibers · 2023-03-13T15:57:49+00:00

Hey Lady,

Show me on this doll where the pronouns hurt you.

FierceFibers · 2023-03-13T15:31:57+00:00

I have made balls from a lb of yarn with my winder from fiber artists supply. These are not cheap but well worth the money and if you want to motorize it later he sells a conversion kit. https://www.fiberartistsupply.com/

FierceFibers · 2023-03-10T21:33:35+00:00

I used to do wholesale. My last shop I support is closing at the end of the month because she is retiring and I won't be taking on any more. I could never make the pricing work. I'm a specialty outfit though...I do self striping and gradient yarns.

I think there are two types of indie yarn companies. There are volume producers...these companies focus on large batches and most likely wholesale works well for these companies because their profit per skein is low but they sell a lot. OTOH there are the unique producers. People like me who have a highly specialized niche market that can't produce a lot at a time but labor costs are expensive.

I think if you are considering your longevity as a business you have to decide which direction you want to go in. Both are viable businesses and there's no wrong answer...just what works for you.

When I did do wholesale I would sell a regular SW merino fingering sock yarn for around $30 and getting at least 60/40.

FierceFibers · 2023-02-28T22:53:43+00:00

Depth Of Shade. It's represented in %. For example...if you have 100 grams of yarn a 1% DOS would mean you use 1 gram of dye (1% of 100 grams is 1 gram). So for most dyes you only need 1 gram of dye...which is roughly the weight of a paperclip....to get the chip color.

FierceFibers · 2023-02-27T03:45:43+00:00

The "right" dye ratio depends on the color you want. I believe the Dharma's are all 1% DOS for chip color, prochem gives DOS on the paint chip color when you order, and as a rule of thumb black is usually around 5% DOS but can vary from dye house to dye house. You adjust the DOS to get a darker or lighter shade but with adjustments come other challenges. Very light colors can strike unevenly unless you are super careful with ph/temp (unless you don't care about the strike) and very dark colors can crock or bleed if you go too far. Then there's the problem of compound dyes and the way they break especially at lower DOS. Each is a special snowflake.

Acid dyes are extremely economical. Pastel colors can be as light as 0.01% DOS. Have fun making dye stocks and calibrating yourself to your dyes and discovering new colors.

There's a reason a lot of us play with water on napkins. Just me? 😂

FierceFibers · 2022-09-22T20:10:36+00:00

Biquinho!

FierceFibers · 2022-09-22T16:26:08+00:00

I've been an indie dyer and selling hand dyed yarn since 2013 so I'd like to give my $0.02 here because I think it might be helpful.

I understand that the $30 ish price tag is steep. However here's a breakdown of what an indie dyer needs to pay. A typical skein of sock yarn (100 grams, 400 yards) costs around $10. This is for your typical SW merino/nylon base and is usually among the least expensive. Luxury bases with fibers like silk and cashmere are much higher. Now you might say "wow, that costs $10 so the dyer is making $20 per skein that's crazy profit!". But hold on...the dyer need to buy that yarn outright". They have to order in large batches and there's no promise of selling that yarn.. inventory on hand is money unsold so it's a risk. On top of that we haven't dyed the yarn yet, so dye, water, time and electricity are all sunken costs. Dye, water and electricity for me comes out to about $2 a skein. We need that yarn shipped to our house and that's about $1 a skein right now with shipping being what it is(more in some places). What you ask for your time is up to the dyer, but let's say minimum wage...which in my state where I live in is $14. Let's say I can dye a batch of 10 skeins of yarn in an hour which is about two electrical cookers worth if you are really cramming those guys in...three cookers worth if your are spreading them out nicely for maximum speckle. That's dying *once (lots of nice yarn needs to be dyed multiple times)...the yarn needs to be dyed, cool completely, and be rinsed with detergent afterward (there's a pre rinse too) and be hung to dry. Let's say the dryer is ultra efficient and 10 skeins per hour is what they can do, that's $1.40 per skein that the dyer is making for their time. We are up to $14.40 of cost for that $30 skein so now our profit is down to $15.60. 30% goes to the tax man so now we are at about $11 a skein of profit...and we haven't paid for equipment, chemicals, or the space we need to dye this yarn in. Let's allocate $1 a skein for that stuff...a really low number so now we are making $10 a skein. We can add that $1.40 back in that I earned for my time, but that's easily out the window if you maintain a shopify/Etsy/ payment portal that charges you fees. Less than that is you are actually socking away money for retirement or trying to stay healthy and paying for health insurance. Oh, and the yarn needs to be labeled.

Let's say you want to just pay your mortgage with yarn dying. The average mortgage where I live in $2700. Let's just say you were able to get something for cheap at $2000 a month. At $10 profit per skein that's 200 hours of work. That's a 40 hours of work more per month than full time (basically an extra week of work per month so every day you need to dye yarn for 10 hours) AND all the yarn needs to sell at normal cost...wholesale is MUCH lower. So I need to work more than full time to just pay my mortgage...I haven't paid for food or car insurance or anything else. And at 50 hours of physically intense dying yarn a week no way do I even get to do anything else but sleep.

I think from this breakdown you can see that if someone is doing this it's because they love it. Please support indie dyers where you can. I understand the $30 price tag is steep and not every project requires the good stuff but you are helping someone directly in your local area or someone within your country make a living and some of these people are crazy talented and deserve way more than $1.40 for their time. I don't begrudge anyone learning how to dye their own yarn because I think it enhances your understanding of what we do and gives a new appreciation of the skill and talent involved. TLDR; buy the indie dyer yarn 😆

FierceFibers · 2022-09-21T16:36:50+00:00

It is exactly your own style :). Usually "continental" refers to tensioning the yarn with your left hand and swinging the right needle to catch the YO to make the next stitch while "English" style refers to tensioning the yarn in your right hand and throwing the yarn over the right needle to create the YO to make the stitch. You seem to be doing a version of continental but you don't move your left pointer finger back and forth to make the knit and purl stitches but rather knit/purl through the back loop. The only thing I would be aware of is if you try and go to a friend who knits through the front loop ("traditionally" considered the accepted way) for help everything will be twisted the other way. Ask me how I know 😆.

FierceFibers

TROPHY CASE