Author: amy

Turn off the news for a minute. (Or how about forever because honestly, it’s exploitative trash.) Anything you truly need to know can be obtained through other means (text alerts from reputable science agencies, state and local government, etc.)

Get up, open a window or a door and stick your face out for a sec or sit on your steps. Stretch. Breathe. Get yourself a warm drink, a big glass of cold water (or maybe just a G&T I don’t judge). Then come back and read this.

OK good. Let’s talk. I have a lot of news, but most of it is good, so you can exhale.

First things first:

As some of you know, I wasn’t always a production artist and dyer. I have some formal training in studio art, but I chose to give up that road to a fine arts degree when I was offered a science scholarship for college (no regrets). I’ve always had a visual arts practice, but the way I fell into being a full-time production dyer was very random. (Long story for another time)

In my most recent professional life, I’ve worked in Level 1 trauma center teaching hospitals. Prior to now, pretty much nobody besides nurses and doctors knew anything about what I did for a living. Most people still assume I’m a nurse. I’m actually a Registered Respiratory Therapist. It is a very specialized type of role; we treat people with heart and lung conditions, most of which are very ill requiring life support. Their organs need help maintaining basic functions in order to stay alive; physical breathing (inhalation and exhalation), absorption and distribution of oxygen throughout the body, removal of carbon dioxide, and maintaining a certain blood pH level.

These functions are maintained via mechanical ventilation, certain medications and therapies. We insert a breathing tube in the patient’s throat to make the air go in. Respiratory therapists are the ones who facilitate the process and run the technology involved with mechanical ventilators. We work closely with our ICU nurses, physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners to keep people alive, and hopefully enable them to recover so that they can get back to the families and lives. So you can imagine exactly how essential respiratory therapists are to medical teams who manage critically ill patients.

There are very few respiratory therapists relative to the population. There are even fewer of us who have a special higher level adult critical care credential, even fewer who have specialized credentials to work with pediatric and neonatal patients.

I am one of 87 people in the United States who has taken those exams and holds both credentials. There are many others who work in these areas with on the job training with varying degrees of responsibility and knowledge.

After great consideration, I have decided to step away from daily studio production for Vivid Fiber Arts. I feel a deep moral obligation to use my healthcare skills to help during this COVID-19 pandemic. The healthcare crisis that will arise from this virus will be unprecedented. I am a seasoned veteran of the 2010 novel H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic. It was the worst 4 months of my entire professional career. This will be worse. I am 100% certain that I will get my ass handed to me on a daily basis. However, I’m the kind of person who thrives in chaos and crisis. It’s just the way I’m wired from life experience. It will suck. I will likely get sick. I’m OK with it. My husband is a critical care nurse and will be going too. (We don’t have small children at home.)

And you’re probably at this point thinking “like OK so … where exactly is the good news?”

The good news is that I was prepared for this. I knew a few weeks ago that this was going to be a strong possibility. While I was hoping I wouldn’t need to make this decision, I worked my ass off to make sure our customers would be well taken care of. I literally have done nothing but dye and sleep for the past 2 weeks. As a result, the Birdsong pre-order is completely taken care of, all current orders have been dyed, save a few skeins of end yardage. The majority have even shipped out already way ahead of schedule. We value our customer relationships above all else. Customer service is and will always be our #1 priority. I am eternally grateful for their support, encouragement, kind words and notes that make me smile.

Does this mean that Vivid Fiber Arts is closing down? No. In fact, the very opposite.
The very best preparation I made was having the foresight to hire an amazing assistant more than a year ago. Kristin has been with me for more than a year and a half. Kristin came to us with absolutely zero knowledge about yarn or dyeing. However, she had just the most perfect combination of transferable skills and is a quick learner. Kristin has been an essential part of this company, and I would not have been able to make so many customers happy this past year without her hard work. Aside from being smart, conscientious, trustworthy and skilled, she is an absolute gem of a person.

That said, I have zero qualms about leaving Kristin in charge of operations while I’m not in the office. Kristin will continue to fulfill all orders out of our current inventory, and field all customer service issues. I would ask that you bear with us during this transition. Kristin is amazing, but not a robot. Mistakes happen and you can trust that we always will make things right and then some. I would ask that you please treat Kristin with the warmth and grace you have bestowed on me.

I will be dyeing as much yarn as possible before I leave for my assignment. However, I don’t yet know where I will be assigned or for what duration I will be there. This means that Kristin will ship whatever is available, but I don’t know when I will be able to dye more gradients. I’m the only one who can do that right now. (However, I am working towards that not being the case forever).

We remain committed to providing the best customer service in the industry. However, I feel it’s a good time to recalibrate some expectations so that we can continue to operate on an efficient, ethical, sustainable basis that honors the humanity of artisan operations:

1. We will be shipping once or twice a week. The “Amazon two day shipping” mindset needs to die. It is unsustainable for small businesses that employ real people under humane conditions. This does not mean we will be leaving orders hanging out in the order queue for months at a time with no regard or respect for your patronage.

2. Our shipping supplies may temporarily change as some of our suppliers are suffering from global supply chain issues. We will do our best to maintain our legendary unboxing experience.

3. I will be releasing inventory into the shop before I leave. Please join any waitlists for which you want notifications. Please add our email to “safe senders”. Waitlisters get first dibs, then Ravelry VFA group members, then I announce it on social media. Social media is not a reliable source of information and announcements and it is not our priority.

Due to excellent planning and disciplined spending, Vivid Fiber Arts is in good shape for now. However, if you wish to personally show support for me and my family, please feel free to donate to my literal coffee account https://ko-fi.com/teamrooney We will be drinking a lot of it!

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you so much for your concern, interest, and support. I won’t say I’m not scared, because that would be a lie. But I am at peace with my decision, and I have faith that things will go the way they’re supposed to- however that may be. I will provide updates as I’m available. In the meantime, while I’m waiting for my assignment, I’ll be dyeing, cleaning and launching a website to help other dyers . More news on that is forthcoming.

Big hugs to all!

A

Hello friends!

If you are brand new to Vivid Fiber Arts and would like a quick orientation, this post will give you all the information. If you are a returning customer, here’s a quick update if you haven’t been on the website in the past few months.

A very large November pre-order is underway and will be open through Sunday night 11/24 at 10pm EST. Included are all the Fade To Black 2019 colorways. Fade To Blacks are only dyed once a year and the 2019 batches look amazing! We are also adding a bunch of others to this pre-order period which I haven’t dyed in awhile: Pure Blue, 80’s Night, Emerald Isle, Red Hat Lady, and Laguna (all now in laceweight as well!). We have expanded the Fade To Black series adding a new colorway: Solstice. Solstice runs the whole gambit of light to dark. Dramatic but simple, it will look great in any pattern. This pre-order will ship in time to arrive for the holidays in US and Canada. If you are an international customer, we will try our very best to get your order out as soon as possible, but international mail does slow up considerably after Dec 1. If you would like to opt for Priority Mail International so that you have tracking information and an estimated time of arrival, please email us via the Contact Us form so we can get you a quote.

The colorways included in this pre-order are:

Solstice (new!), Allsorts, Bewitched, Blue Moon, Blue Nocturne, Crimson Nocturne, Eventide, Halloween, Haunted Forest, Wicked Witch, Pure Blue, 80’s Night, Laguna, Red Hat Lady, and Emerald Isle. To go to the shop, click here.

Also all the extras from the Greydients 2019 pre-order have been put in the shop under the “In Stock” tab. In stock items are available on a first come, first served basis. If your order contains both Pre-Order and In Stock items, they will all ship together when the pre-order items are ready. If you would like your In Stock items to ship first separately, it’s best to put them on a separate order. We go through and pull out all the In Stock orders first.

Huge thanks to all of our wonderful customers who are, as always, so encouraging and supportive. And a warm welcome to all our new friends who are just joining us now.

Hope you’re having a great day wherever you are-

Amy

Hello friends!

It is cooling off here in far northern NY (and I am not sad about it!). Autumn is on the way and we are ready to kick into high gear. We have been working on so many things for the past 3 months, and I’m happy to bring some progress news about a bunch of them today.

1. The website got a bit of a refresh: it’s easier to read, more organized, offers more guidance on the ordering process and there is now a separate pre-order tab in the shop. If you are brand new to Vivid Fiber Arts and would like a quick orientation, this post will give you all the information. If you are a returning customer, here’s a quick overview of what has changed.

2. The Greydient series pre-order is open through next Sunday night 8/18 at 11pm EST. We have expanded the series adding two new colorways: Rose Quartz and Smokey Topaz. We have also doubled our product line to include the laceweight base yarns. Additionally, Advent and 8 Crazy Nights are available for pre-order for some who want to start early holiday projects. And I also added Pure Purple because … actually purple doesn’t need a reason. 😀 The colorways included in this pre-order are:

Rose Quartz, Smokey Topaz, Moraine, Upstate Grey, Geode, Aventurine, Casco Bay, Blue Steel, Advent, 8 Crazy Nights, Pure Purple. To go to the shop, click here.

3. VFA Maker Team: A few months ago we started informally having samples made up as we dyed colorways. I feel it’s really important not to just see how yarn looks in a product photo, but also how it works up. I design the yarns we make to look great in *projects*, not just in the cake or just to be a pretty skein that sits in your stash. We have two samples made in every colorway- one knit and one crochet. It’s been going really well. We have decided to keep that going and have a pool of VFA customers who can make sample projects when they have time. Big thanks to everyone who has participated so far! If you’re interested in learning more about the VFA Maker Team, see this page here.

4. Giveaways! So we don’t sell our “seconds”. Honestly, at this point, we don’t have a lot of seconds because we are just that damn good very lucky 😀 . But sometimes I’ll have some skeins that are fine, but maybe one too many joins, have a fuzz or a speck of something on it. Stuff that I wouldn’t in good conscience sell because I’m super picky, but stuff that anybody would be happy to have. So I’ve decided to just start giving them away. I’m never going to have time to do anything with them and I hate for them just to sit in a box. So I will be randomly sneaking them into orders as we pack them up. I’m giving away 5 gradients this month and they will be scattered amongst the pre-orders placed this week. So when you get your package, you might have a surprise in there!

5. Rhinebeck: To confirm; we will be at Indie Untangled again this year on Friday October 18th in Saugerties, NY (yes, it’s sold out). I will be teaching gradient dyeing on that Sunday at the festival itself (yes, my class is also sold out). But do not fret! We will be in town all weekend (and Monday bc we are not driving ever again on that Sunday- lesson learned). If you will be at Indie Untangled or the festival stay tuned bc we have some fun things planned for you (that will *not* be sold out) 😀

6. Are you interested in wool? We are. Many of you have been asking for wool for years. The original gradients we tested were all wool. I’ve wanted to do wool for a long time, but ran into big challenges sourcing ethically-produced base yarns in animal fibers. It’s very difficult to trace a supply chain and know that both the animals and the people that help make the base yarns are treated well. Sustainability and human rights are two of the many issues that are important to us as a company. After many many dead ends, we have found a US mill that is using American merino that is ethically-sourced from the western part of the country. We will be trialing their base yarns extensively over the next 4 months. However, we will never compromise our first love which is plant-based yarn, particularly Tencel. We will be sending out a questionnaire and seeking some feedback from you on this in a separate newsletter. So if you are interested, keep your ears and your emails open.

I am really happy to say right now the shop has the most yarn we’ve ever had in stock. We’ve been working really hard over the past year to increase our output, expand the laceweight product range – all without decreasing our quality. Tiny improvements over time have added up quite a bit! I’m enjoying having more things available for people and not instantly being sold out and stressing. We’ve also invested quite a bit in shipping and inventory management, so we’ve been able to keep up with an increasing number of orders.

Huge thanks to all of our wonderful customers who are, as always, so encouraging and supportive. And a warm welcome to all our new friends who are just joining us now. We look forward to a very fun autumn (and spring for our many Southern Hemisphere friends!).

Hope you’re having a great day wherever you are-

Amy

Hi there!

I thought it might be helpful to keep a running update on what we’re working on so we can keep you in the loop.
This will give you an idea of what’s available for waitlist, open for pre-orders, and what we will be dyeing next.
To contact us about a specific order question, please use the Contact Us form on the website.

Most recent news update 3/5/2020

RETURNS/EXCHANGES: We have a 30 day return/exchange policy.  Please check out your order right away when you get it.  We’ll either get you something else more to your liking or arrange for a return/refund. Due to the extremely generous nature of this policy, we adhere strictly to 30 days from delivery date. After that point, please feel free to take advantage of the VFA Ravelry group “ISO/Destash” thread.

Any questions at all, please contact me directly.

Thanks!

Amy & Team VFA

WHY would I want to join the waitlist for something? < Check out this blog post here for more details on the “why”

HOW do I join the waitlist for something I would like?

To join the waitlist for a product, you just have to do three things. The screenshot below might help you:

1. Log in: In the top right hand corner, it should say “Log Out” indicating that you’re already logged in (in green box). If it says “Log In” there, it means you’re not yet logged in. So you would click “Log In” at that point and complete your log in.

2. If you *are* logged in, then you would go to your desired product (in this case Lux Birdsong 150g) pull down the menu to whichever base yarn you are interested in (indicated in the yellow box)

3. For things that are not in stock at the moment and are available for waitlist, it will bring up a grey “Join Waitlist” button (indicated in the red box).

4. If it says “Leave Waitlist” That means you are already on the waitlist for that item  (You can click that thought to leave it if you no longer are interested in that colorway.)

If that doesn’t help out, just send an email through the contact form on the front page of the website, and we will help you out!

 

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People are always asking “Why do your gradients look so smooth while others have more obvious stripes?”

There actually is no one magic ingredient. There are a lot of things that go into making a smooth-looking gradient (If that is indeed a goal, and it doesn’t have to be).

A couple of things contribute to the smoothness of a gradient in which the yarn is dyed (as opposed to where the color is “dyed in the wool” and then spun- a totally different process -think Noro or handspun):

How many different colors (hues) does the gradient contains: A “color change” involves going around the color wheel clockwise or counterclockwise from one color family to another color family e.g. (red to red-orange). The more color changes there are in a fixed length of gradient yarn, the fewer yards that are available for each color to play out and blend. The colors have a limited amount of “room” to blend into each other. That is why you will see the smoothest gradients are usually ombres (no actual color “change” per se, just dilutions of same color/hue), or one-way gradients that have 2-3 main colors depending on the yardage. The longer the yardage, the more room there is for each color to run its course. The idea is that your brain will mix the colors your eyes see over a certain area.

Yardage and weight of the yarn: As an extension of the concept above, you will see a lot of gradients on finer weight yarns- fingering & lace bc there’s lots of yardage in the standard 100g to let the color changes blend and play out; there’s lots of “room to run”. This is also why it is very rare to see a smooth gradient on 100g of bulky weight yarn or on small circumference items like socks- there just isn’t a lot of room to run. It takes a lot of skill to get a smooth gradient on these types of projects.

The contrast of the values of the colors (or lack of): Value = how light or dark something is. When you look at a picture of colors and then make it black & white, it is easy to see what colors are lighter in value than others (e.g. yellow is going to be lighter in value than purple). If you have a large difference in value between adjacent colors, your eye will be drawn there. Big jumps in value contribute to perceived “stripeyness”.

How many different shades of dye are mixed and applied in succession, and how well they are blended once applied to the yarn/fiber:

Let’s say you have 700 yards of yarn and want to dye a rainbow. You decide, OK …
100y red, 100y orange, 100y yellow, 100y green, 100y blue, 100y indigo, 100y purple. BOOM done!
You will have awesome rainbowey yarn, but will be pretty stripey- your colors changes will be very distinct and there will be large jumps between segments.
It looks like this:

This may be what you want and it might look great. Stop there- start your project and enjoy. Done 🙂

However, if you were looking to work towards something smoother looking- you could go up to 14 segments of 50y i.e. 50y red, 50y red-orange, 50y orange, 50y orange-yellow, 50y yellow and so on, and also blend at the junctions a bit more.
It will look like this with 14 hues x 50y each:

The more steps you have, they more they will meld together into a fluid color shift.

Take in mind, it might look smoother, but it’s a lot more work- twice as many colors to mix and twice as many colors to apply and blend.

Take it further- this is 28 colors x 25y each:

This is even smoother bc there are more hues for your eye to mix.

I typically mix anywhere from 24-48 dyes to apply to one skein then apply and blend them in a pattern to make inbetween shades. The more colors I’m trying to “accomplish” in one skein, the more dyes I have to mix i.e. If I’m trying to dye a cobalt ombre I might only need 24 dyes to accomplish a smooth result, a smooth rainbow might take 48 or more. This conceptually would result in at least 47-95 different hues (and then they blend on the yarn to make even more) to get my definition of “smooth enough”. That may be completely impractical/overkill for some, that might not be smooth enough for others. The smoother the gradient, the more time it takes to make. At some point, a dyer has to make a decision of how smooth is “smooth enough”. The human eye is exceptionally sensitive to differences in color and value; you need to decide what is “stripey” for yourself- everyone has different thresholds at which something goes from being smooth to “too stripey”.

The difference between:

and this

is a huge difference in time and expense.

Dyers who dye their yarns in the form of a “blank”, a pre-knitted piece of knit fabric, they can get some of those in between colors by letting the knitted fabric soak up the dye and letting the dye blend in and mix where it meets on the actual yarn. You can smoosh the dye around and make it mingle even more. It’s very fun to see the colors meet up and party! I initially started dyeing gradients in blanks, and it was great. However, there are a few drawbacks to this type of dyeing production-wise and it wasn’t my very favorite end product aesthetically, and that’s why I didn’t choose that method for myself. But there are plenty of gradient dyers who use this method exclusively and are very popular.

But then what’s an Ombre? Isn’t that the same thing?

Not, not exactly. “Ombres” are a subset of gradients. All ombres are gradients, not all gradients are ombres. Ombre is from the French verb “ombrer”, to shade or from Latin umbrare ; from umbra, shade. Without getting too crazy about color theory- ombre is basically the same color but on a progressively lightening (or darkening) scale= dark pink to light pink, but still the very same pink base hue throughout. Most paint chip cards you see at the home improvement store are ombre gradients because they are just increasing concentrations of the color i.e. increasing amounts (grams) of the same pigment will be put into a gallon of white base paint.

Looks like this:

This is pure magenta on the left 100%, followed by 93%, 86%, 78%, 71%, 64%, 57%, 50%, 42%, 35%, 28%, 21%, 14%, 7% dilutions. On your monitor, the balance of the % is white (lack of color). On fiber, with dye which is transparent, the balance is water (lack of color).

Hopefully, this will give you a little insight into the types of things that your eye notices, but you probably didn’t consciously pay attention to.

So next time anyone is wondering “Why are smooth gradients so expensive?” Now you have an idea of what goes into making it smooth. They truly are highly technical works of art. When you take into account the time and skill involved, and then the quality/fiber of base yarn (e.g. superwash wool, vs cashmere/silk), you can make the judgment about whether you are getting fair value for money when you are comparing or evaluating different yarns. Truly, a large number of gradient dyers are underpricing themselves, while a few are labeling yarns and braids “gradient” when their products aren’t gradients at all.

This usually holds true: if it’s something that’s easy to do, a lot of people will do it and the price will be lower because there’s more competition.
And as in all things: generally, you get what you pay for.

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