How a Colorway is Born

The desert keeps offering earth tones. I keep choosing neon.

Most people assume a colorway starts in the dye studio. It doesn’t. Most of mine start when something catches my attention and refuses to let go.

• A blooming cactus on a trip to Zion.
• The glow of the Strip against a dark sky.
• A cocktail menu.
• A peacock feather.
• A color combination on a stranger’s skirt that stopped me mid-conversation and made me ask if I could take a picture.

That last one is still sitting in my phone. One of dozens of inspiration photos waiting their turn. Because that’s the thing about colorway inspiration. It doesn’t arrive on a schedule. It doesn’t politely announce itself while I’m standing in front of a dye pan. It shows up whenever it wants.

Sometimes on a walk, sometimes in the car (better when I’m a passenger obviously), sometimes halfway through a conversation when my brain suddenly decides that whatever color combination I’m looking at needs to become yarn.

The funny part is that the inspiration is usually the easy part. The hard part is translation.

I live in Las Vegas, which means I’m surrounded by contradictions. Neon and sandstone. Bright lights and desert skies. Cactus blooms and casino signs. The desert keeps trying to teach me to appreciate earth tones. I keep responding with fluorescent fuchsia. Neon is my happy place. Bright, vibrant color is my happy place. If a color looks like it might glow in the dark, there’s a reasonable chance I’m interested.

The challenge is figuring out how to take something I see, or something I feel, and translate it into yarn. Because the cactus isn’t yarn; The cocktail isn’t yarn; The skirt isn’t yarn; The feeling isn’t yarn.

Somewhere between inspiration and finished skein, something has to happen. That’s where the dye studio comes in. And that’s where things get interesting. You would think that if you had a vision and a formula, the outcome would be predictable.

You would be wrong.

Sometimes what comes out of the dye pan looks exactly like what I imagined. Truthfully those days are suspicious. Most of the time, the process feels more like a negotiation. I have opinions. The dye has opinions. The yarn has opinions. The chemistry has opinions. Everyone gets a vote…Occasionally nobody consults me.

Sometimes the inspiration survives the process. Sometimes it doesn’t. I had a picture of a peacock feather in my head. I thought I was chasing the blues and the greens. Then I decided it needed a shock of violet. It was beautiful…so I added more. By the time it dried the peacock was a memory and what I had was richer, deeper, more satisfying. Inspiration is the starting point, not the blueprint.

Then there are all the little variables.

What happens if the skein sits horizontally instead of vertically? What happens if it’s twisted? What happens if it’s knotted? What happens if one color has a few extra minutes to settle before another is added? What happens if I follow the exact same formula and somehow get a slightly different result anyway? Because that happens too. More often than you’d think.

And then there’s the drying: Wet yarn lies.

I’ve learned that colors that seem too bold in the pan often soften when they dry.

I’ve learned that colors that look subtle can suddenly come alive.

I’ve learned that a test strand is not a skein, and a full skein behaves differently than a single strand.

I’ve learned that the yarn will surprise me even when I think I know exactly what it’s going to do.

And I’ve learned that none of those lessons stick permanently because every now and then the yarn finds a new way to humble me.

The funny thing is that even when a colorway works, reproducing it can become its own adventure. I have a colorway inspired by a blooming cactus I saw on a trip to Zion. It exists. People have bought it. I’ve dyed it before, and somehow recreating it exactly remains an ongoing conversation between me, the dye, and the universe.

And then there’s the naming.

Sometimes the yarn tells me what it’s called immediately. Sometimes it absolutely refuses. I ask my family and friends for their suggestions, and usually say no thats not it (rude I know!)

A watermelon-inspired colorway could have been called Watermelon.

Instead it became Unhinged Watermelon

Because it wasn’t really watermelon anymore. It was watermelon if watermelon went to art school and started making questionable life choices.

Another colorway instantly transported me back to standing in front of Arthur in his white ice cream truck when I was a kid, studying the picture menu but already knowing exactly what I wanted.

Nobody needed to explain that one. It was Rocket Pop.

The names matter because they’re often the final layer of interpretation. The inspiration starts somewhere in the real world. The dyeing changes it. The yarn changes it. And eventually it becomes something that belongs entirely to itself.

What I’ve learned is that the best colorways don’t happen because I successfully recreate a cactus or a cocktail or a photograph from my phone.

They happen because I manage to recreate the feeling I had when I first saw them. Not the exact colors. Not the exact object. The feeling. The little spark that made me stop and pay attention in the first place.

And when someone picks up a skein and says, “This reminds me of…” that’s when I know it worked. Not because they saw exactly what I saw. But because something about it connected with them too.

The colorways start with my inspiration. The best ones become part of someone else’s.

Inspired to start your next project?
Whether a skein reminds you of a place, a memory, or a feeling you can't quite name, I hope it becomes part of your story the way it once was part of mine.