We are so happy to welcome Julie Asselin to our blog to share about her color process and her gorgeous yarn Nurtured. Nurtured became a fast favorite in our shop, for its beauty, softness and strength.

Nurtured was launched a little over a year ago. It is the result of our ongoing collaboration with Green Mountain Spinnery (with whom we also make Zetta), an experiment in dyeing that has been very rewarding for us, in that it allowed us to experiment with colors and fleece in ways that are different from when we work with yarn.

 Creating the colors for this yarn was a new process and thinking for us. It was very exciting and inspiring because we got to explore a whole new world and we didn’t know what to expect.

Since we are dyeing the fiber prior to spinning and since we want an heathered look to create dimension, we have to create a combination of individual colors that, together, will create an ‘overall’ color. Sometimes we aim for a more subtle color shift, or we could make some of the individual colors stand on their own throughout the yarn, making for more noticeable flecks of colors. The possibilities are endless!

We love color very much, of course, but we always think about wearability as well; in the sense that we want to focus on practical colors that will complement your wardrobe. That is why we often go for color palettes other than a typical rainbow when choosing colors for a yarn line. It is even more true in the case of Nurtured, because our main goal with it was to showcase and work with the natural color of the fibers we use. We envisioned natural hues taking center stage, helped by the addition of complementing pops, creating a natural landscape of colors.

Since introducing Nurtured we have added 2 new colors to the original 10, building on the lineup, complementing the colors that we already love and…

Now is time for a new one!

We knew we needed another dark color to the mix, but which one? We have a grey, and an olive tone brown already. To go with the pale neutrals and the yellows we decided to go with navy blue.

As a base we always have natural white and medium to dark natural browns, to create light and shades. The varying shades of the undyed fiber are our canvas. To date, we have been exploring the addition of 2 shades of blue, with pops of aqua and an orchid color. 

After playing with those colors a bit, we felt we were onto something - not your typical navy blue, that's for sure, but a navy blue with personality, with beautiful pops here and there, that will blend well together in the spinning process. 

Now that we know what we want to work with we need to figure out what the proportions will be. In the next picture you can see the sample evolving, lighter/darker and +colors/-colors added in.

What is great about seeing this, aside from giving us an idea of what the finished yarn will look like, is that you also see things you didn’t think about. For now, we decided to go with the darker option of course, BUT, we are really drawn to the lighter, brighter one as well and we think it could very much come to life in the future!

Nurtured is a worsted weight, Rambouillet, Targhee & Merino (with the addition of Moorit for this new color! Hello beautiful gloden fleece!) blend that is woolen spun. The wool is from U.S. sheep, dyed in our Coaticook, QC workshop and spun at the Green Mountain Spinnery in VT. While we love working with colors, involvement in the origins and production of yarn itself is just as important to us.