Falling

 

    I can hardly believe Fall and maybe more importantly Fiber Fest season are just around the corner!  I'll be updating the shops lots of the next few weeks.  The first big update is for a yarn I really love and think is pretty special, Rockwell. 

    

Rockwell is a marl yarn. What that means is the yarn is spun with plies of different colors to give a marled effect to the finished project.  The plies can be anything to qualify as a marl, but in the case of Rockwell we use 3 naturally colored shades of wool.  I work with local farmers, collect colored fleeces and then the people at Green Mountain Spinnery & I sort the fleeces by color, from lightest to darkest. We even out the yields and they spin three different shades that we refer to as light, medium and dark.  Each shade is really made up of dozen of colors from the many shades of fleeces. The end result is what you see in the skeins of Naturemade.

 I then overdye some of the skeins to make the rainbow of shades you see at the top of this post.  I love this yarn because it allows for an "even" variegation. The resulting projects have a lot of depth without dissolving stitch patterns the way multicolors can.

Rockwell is great for giving depth to stockinette stitch as well as adding some interest to cabled or textured stitches.  I'm making my Rhinebeck Sweater out of Rockwell and truly loving every second of it. You can check out my progress on Instagram.  Rockwell uses all New England wool and is spun in Vermont which makes me really proud of its environmental footprint.

 I'm wearing an easy granny square poncho made out of Rockwell in this picture with Cal Patch & the ladies of Fancy Tiger Crafts from Rhinebeck last year. I realized this may be the only picture of the poncho (how'd that happen?!) so I'll make sure to get some new shots this year!

You can see some of what others have made with Rockwell on Ravelry.

Have you ever used a marled yarn? What do you think the perfect project for Rockwell would be?