About Kaleidotoes

I've been obsessed with fiber since my grandmother taught me to crochet when I was six years old. That love never really left me, it just evolved. I started knitting in college and fell head over heels for it, especially for the challenge of mixing colors and designing garments that were interesting because of how the colors played together.

Fast forward to about ten years ago: I discovered the Erlbacher Speedster Knitting Machine and became completely mesmerized by the idea of machines, crafting, and creativity all in one. The learning curve was steep and involved a lot of swear words, but once I got proficient, I realized something: sock machines are fast. Too fast for the yarn budget of one person. So about seven years ago, I asked someone whose yarn I loved if she'd teach me to dye. She said yes, and I became obsessed.

I was making so many socks using yarn from my stash and yarn I was dyeing myself that I had more than I could ever wear. So I started selling them online. Which meant I needed a name. A friend looked at a pair of my scrappy multi-color socks one day and said they looked like a kaleidoscope. She called them Kaleidotoes, and the name stuck.

The socks were wonderful to create and so much fun to sell, but the real magic to me was in dyeing the yarn itself. My true happy place was in the dye studio, exploring what color combinations I could pull off, what colors could live together, what shouldn't work but somehow did. Eventually my selling focus shifted toward yarn as I realized that's where my passion truly lived. So that's what I do now...hand-dye small batches of yarn in colors that make sense together and colors that absolutely shouldn't, but do."

I'm always chasing a color combination I saw somewhere — a mood, a moment of light hitting something just right, a place that deserves to be yarn. Every colorway tells a story. Every batch is one of a kind. Once they're gone, they're gone.

That's Kaleidotoes. Where color comes to play.
~Heléne~