Author: Nancy Richard

New Colors for Summer

Posted on by Nancy Richard

Check out what’s new at Iyanough Farm this week!

Cape Cod Fiberworks @ Iyanoughfarm.com has added a whole batch of new colorways to our hand dyed knitting yarn collection. Featuring special summer colors, we’ve also added a line of organic cotton fingering in scrumptious shades of pink, blue, and sea glass green for knitting up summer accessories, beach coverups and more.

First off, we dyed up some of our favorite wool/nylon fingering sock yarn in happy shades of geranium pink and summer sky blue. These colorways are reminiscent of long, hot summer days on the Cape and Islands during the halcyon years of my childhood, the 1960s. Back then, life in the summer was slower and full of adventures.

Window boxes on stores overflowing with pink geranium flowers with a smattering of bright green leaves dotted Main Street. Occasionally, a flower would drop to the sidewalk, and my friends and I would fight over who got to stick the blossom into our hair as we cruised past on our bikes.

The whited out blue of a hot summer day’s sky reminds me of many hours spent laying on my back in a meadow near my house watching the birds fly across an endless sky while warming up after a cold swim in the neighborhood pond. After 20 minutes of resting there, making whistles from grass and talking with friends, all of us were ready to run back to the pond and jump in again. Back and forth –  from pond to meadow – the sky followed us as we learned our swimming strokes, ate lunch, and shivered with blue lips until the sun broke the chill again.

The dyeing process for wool is different from that of cotton. Wool requires heat to set the dye, and hand painting has more exactitude than that of hand painted cotton. Cotton yarns must soak in a a cold alkaline bath for several hours to set the dye. Painting can produce shades of color, but the placement of the colors is much less precise, giving the finished skeins a softer and somewhat muter appearance.

Flowers, either wild or cultivated, perfume the Cape in May and June. From the prolific wild white June roses, whose buds are brilliant pink before they open and the thorny yet magnificent Rosa Rugosa that grow on the sand dues at the beach to the nodding heads of columbine on the side of the road and in my perennial garden, our new cotton colors, Beach Roses and Columbine are the result of hours of experimentation to get just the right variegated shades to match these wonderful Cape Cod colors.

The Seaglass colorway in cotton is similar in that there is variegation and striation in the mix. However, its tonal quality comes from only one dye shade rather than several. Darker in some areas, and lighter in other, Seaglass is a gorgeous reminder of days walking along the beach collecting bits of glass to save in a bowl. I told my sister they were emeralds from a pirate ship.

All Cape Cod Fiberworks cotton skeins are 100% organically grown cotton in fingering weight, ready to knit into your favorite summer accessory.

Pink Geraniums

A Whole New Venture

Posted on by Nancy Richard

I’ve always been a knitter . . . 

I created my first project – a rather lumpy scarf at age 8 – and never looked back, eventually learning to spin and weave once my children were grown and I had more time to play. Dyeing yarn to reflect the colors I saw all around me a natural next step as I wanted to enjoy them while knitting and weaving. 

Iyanough Farm has been my home for almost thirty years. Located on the north side of Cape Cod facing Cape Cod Bay, close to the ocean and marshes, we raised our kids here and live our lives surrounded by nature and the bounty the Cape gives us all year round.

Growing up on Cape Cod was magical. So much time was spent outside all year long – a time of endless summer days, swimming in the ponds and the ocean, riding bikes with friends, collecting shells, digging for clams, and making forts in the woods. 

Fall meant jumping into piles of leaves, helping dad with the brush pile, gathering the last beach plums for jelly, and putting on those tight new loafers to go back to school after an entire summer of going barefoot. What agony!

Winters were for sledding and skating on the ponds and cranberry bogs, and along twisting frozen brooks through the scrub and marsh, a fairyland of ice and snow. And when the days turned to sleet and gale-force winds, we curled up with a good book or learned to knit in front of the fire. 

And when the winter loosed its grip, we began foraging in the woods, checking out the newest stands of Lady Slippers, looking for mayflowers, and finding hidden hideouts under leafing branches. 

Finding ways to translate the beauty of my home into fiber has become Cape Cod Fiber Works @ Iyanough Farm –  It’s my way of sharing Cape Cod with you.