Neapolitan Revisited

A few weeks ago I created this tasty yarn in honor of the ice cream. It was snatched up from my shop quickly, I think within the same day. I planned to make more of it when my next batch of nude yarn came in. With said batch of yarn I also ordered some proper brown dye. The chocolate toffee in this picture was from a mixture of Kool-Aid I came up with. It wasn't the rich chocolate I imagined but it still looked fantastic.

I worried about the brown dye - in the pot it looks almost plum on the yarn, and while I love purple, it wasn't what I was after. Any worries were soon squashed as I pulled the first hanks out and saw that they were luscious dark chocolate. I immediately set about making another hank of the Neapolitan yarn and ended up with this stunning color. Isn't that amazing? It's so vivid it looks like it might melt in your hands. I almost didn't list it in my shop because I wanted it for myself but I managed to post it. I didn't knit a test swatch because that might have convinced me I should just keep knitting from it! This yarn also was claimed from my shop in quick order and will be leaving my house today. But fear not, because I will be making a few more skeins of it in the next day or so.

I dyed five hanks over the weekend and haven't finished skeining them yet. The above yarn and a very sharp blueberry and orange yarn have already been listed. The blueberry is still available but I'm not sure for how long - I've already had an inquiry or two about it. Also, the picture here doesn't do enough justice to it. This is mostly due to the color contrast. In the shop listing there's a picture of it before I skeined it that shows just how vibrant the colors really are. There's a chocolate and dark turquoise, a purple/red/blue/white blend and one that I can only describe as "summer squash" waiting to be skeined into their show form. If I could get away with it, I would seriously post pictures of the yarn "naked" (meaning still hanked the way I dyed it) and sell it that way. It doesn't look as professional as it does when I take the time to wind it into tight skeins but it's a lot easier on me! It doesn't take too long to wind them up, maybe 15 minutes if I don't run into problems (tangles or distractions). I don't have a yarn swift yet, which is the source of my reluctance to skein them. So right now I wrap the hank around something and wind it around the edge of my desk, which is surprisingly the exact length I need to get a nice and tidy skein!

A swift would make life easier, two swifts and I would be in heaven. I've been working on the idea of a two swift + some sort of automated turner that I could turn on and let it do the work for me but that's a long while off. The swift is on my "to purchase" list, but at over $50 each, I will probably be waiting a bit. Right now my earnings from my shop go into buying more yarn (for the shop, not me!) so that I can try to keep a respectable stock. I'm going to try to keep a few untouched hanks on hand as well in case someone wants a custom order. It won't be a problem once I have a steady amount of orders since I will be able to buy a much larger quantity of yarn at a time instead of the dozen or so every few weeks that I get now.