Good morning and happy Friday to you! Today I wanted to talk to you about the often-ignored semi-solids. First though, I want to thank all of you who participated in my Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. It was a big success! I am all caught up with packaging and mailing your squishy mail as of yesterday. Whew!

I was thinking recently about the wonderful versatility of semi-solids and how we (okay, I) tend to sort of take them for granted. I have never written a newsletter about them, and I thought it was about time to feature these lovely workhorses of the yarn world.

They are great for colorwork of every kind, and they go so well with variegated colorways for larger projects. These are all colorways I use in my variegated colors as well, so it’s easy to find matching colorways. If you ever need help figuring out what goes with what, it’s a pleasure to help, so feel free to email me!

This week I dyed up one completely new semi-solid (Regal), one almost new semi-solid (Sage), and many “old friends.” I am making the switch from fall colorways to winter ones, and these really fit the bill.

One thing about my semi-solids is that they tend more toward tonal than solid, and many of them feature coordinating speckles.

Let me show you what I’ve got. I’m going to go in ROYGBIV or rainbow order.

First up is the rich, deep colorway I named The Winedark Sea.

This was named after a frequently repeated phrase in Homer’s Odyssey. The really intriguing thing is that the Greeks apparently had no concept for the color blue! Isn’t that strange and amazing? It always makes me wonder what colors we are completely blind to.

Next up is Burgundy Rose. This is one of my oldest constant colorways, and it goes beautifully with so many variegated skeins.

The next colorway is similar to Burgundy Rose but much, much brighter. If you are looking for a really bright, happy pink, this is it. I called it Cerise, and I have it available on its own and in my new sock sets.

The next colorway is another Homer-inspired semi-solid. This is Rosy-Fingered Dawn.

When I created it, I was thinking of the first colors of dawn as night changes to day. I included brighter speckles for those wafts of color that appear in the early morning.

For the most part, I’m only including colorways I have in stock, but I couldn’t skip over orange entirely, so I’m also including Sunset Orange. This one is available as a dyed to order colorway but isn’t in stock at the moment.

The next colorway is Ochre, which was inspired by a pigment used frequently in Renaissance frescoes.

It’s such a beautiful warm color–perfect for winter.

Next up is a lovely soft yellow that was inspired by and named after Marigolds. It’s yellow with a touch of orange.

I actually came up with this yellow when I was dyeing my Honey Bee colorway and added a little orange to the yellow based on a close examination of bee photos. It was so lovely that I decided it deserved to be a colorway of its own.

Next up is Sage, a soft, warm green with blue and gold speckles that I dyed up just yesterday.

The next colorway is Turquoise, at the cusp of blue and green. It’s a really hard color to photograph. It’s actually a smidge greener than it shows on my screen right now.

Let’s move into the true blues now. I actually have four shades of blue going from lightest to darkest that can be used together.

This first one is called Ice, and it’s about as light and cool as a blue can get.

I’ll show you the next three shades of blue together. Wouldn’t these make a great gradient set?

They are Blue Sky, Renaissance Blue, and Annunciation Blue.

Now let’s move into my favorite color. One of the things I love about purple is that all the lilacs and violets and purples look good together. I think that’s unique among colors, isn’t it?

Here’s Lilac:

As you can see, it has blue and dark purple speckles.

This next colorway is entirely new as of yesterday! It’s called Regal, and it’s a dark purple with blue undertones and some tonal variation.

Next up is another long-standing colorway called Eggplant. While Regal is a bluish purple, Eggplant is a reddish purple. It’s one of my personal favorites.

The last purple is Aubergine. It’s a muted purple and just so elegant.

Now let’s move to neutrals. I have this beautiful Chocolate brown that I started dyeing again for fall and plan to keep through winter.

The last colorway is Little Black Dress, which is black of course.

I should mention that I have dyed a lot of these on Stained Glass Sock as well, which gives them an entirely different look.

Have I mentioned how much I love this new yarn base?

I think that’s everything for today. I’ll be dyeing up my club colorways this coming week. See you next Friday. Stay well!