After a year long hiatus, we are back and ready to share our beautiful, locally sourced, and botanically dyed yarns with you again!

While it may have seemed like not much was happening at Oysters & Purls over the past year or so, we were rather busy behind the scenes. There’s been some big changes around here. And while I talked about it at length in a recent newsletter, I felt I needed to also share here. So, here it goes!

The need for change…

When I put Oysters and Purls on pause last year, I had a toddler at home with me full time, I was heavily pregnant, and I had just spent months dyeing large quantities of yarn out of my small kitchen in NYC. If you have ever tried your hand at natural dyeing, you know it’s extremely laborious. First you scour, then you mordant the yarn, before you can proceed with the dyeing (and dyeing itself can be a multistep process for certain colors) and drying. In between each of these steps you also have to thoroughly rinse the yarn, all the while making sure not to damage/felt it. When dyeing more than one or two skeins, you are dealing with heavy pots and hours standing at the sink. When doing all of this from your home kitchen, where you also have to prepare three meals a day for your family, it means cleaning before and after every step of the process (cleaning after cooking, so nothing food related gets on the yarn, and cleaning after the yarn, so no dye substances get on the food).

To say that I was exhausted would be a gross understatement.

With the impending arrival of baby #2, and with my attention diverted fully to my family, Oysters and Purls took a backseat. As I navigated through this self-inflicted maternity leave, it dawned on me that in order for this business to survive and thrive, it had to evolve. In other words, I had to accept the hard truth that my business model had failed me. And, as sad as I am to admit it, I had to let go of dyeing.

This, of course, left me with a tough question. How do you run a botanically hand dyed yarn business without dyeing yarn? Over the course of the year that followed, I went back to the drawing board many times. It took months of soul searching, as many months of research, trials and errors, and many moments of despair. But, it all paid off in the end, because I found exactly what I was looking for.

I found a dye house! A natural dye house!

A few short emails back and forth, a box of undyed yarn that quickly turned into botanically dyed shades of my dreams, me taking too long to pick only a handful from this rainbow of perfection... and, there it was, our Fall 2019 collection was born!

An entire year in the making, and we have a gorgeous lineup of colorways that I am absolutely in love with!

So, what does this mean for Oysters and Purls?

Now that I have revealed the big news, let’s talk about what this really means for us and for you.

Our goal at Oysters and Purls has always been to make beautiful, ethically sourced, minimally processed, and botanically dyed yarns, and we are still very much guided by these same principles. Our search for local yarns has been long, and there have been many ups and downs along the way, but we are so happy and so proud to be where we are today!

All our yarns continue to be sourced locally, and spun for us by our friends at Battenkill Fibers. Mary Jeane and her team work closely with small farms within the Hudson Valley to bring us some of the best the US has to offer!

Working with small farms and a relatively small mill helps us build relationships that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. With the ability to make yarn alongside like-minded individuals, we are able to create a community where we support each other without compromising the livelihood of the animals or that of our planet.

Keeping production local also continues to be important to us. It helps support the local economy, and, by keeping transportation to a minimum, it ensures our greenhouse gas emissions remain as low as possible. This is why it was vital for us to keep the dyeing process within close proximity as well, perhaps another reason we were so thrilled to find Green Matters Natural Dye Company! Located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, it is only a short drive from NYC, assuring all stages of yarn production remain within a close radius!

There are also some additional benefits of having our yarn dyed by a dye house. Equipped with kettles and dye machines that can hold anywhere from 15lbs up to 100lbs of yarn in one dye lot, they can dye up to 450 skeins of yarn at once (they still have to scour and mordant before dyeing, but every step of the process is more efficient). In comparison, my dye pots at home can hold 4-5 skeins each. What this really means is that we can now make larger quantities of yarn faster and with higher consistency in color. Additionally, by using fewer pots, and reusing leftover dye pots to achieve lighter colorways, we are able to cut down our water and energy usage.

In short, more yarn, better color consistency, while still holding true to our core values and our promise to you!

Does this mean I will never dye yarn again?

On the contrary, I am very much hoping that by outsourcing the dyeing process of our yarns, I will have more time to continue my own experimentations with plant dyes. Creating color from nature is unlike anything else, and I miss it tremendously. I’m hoping to get back to my dye pots soon, and, who knows, maybe release small batches of yarn dyed from my own kitchen!