Amy Reader

Posted on: DuoDecember 1, 2021

Why Choose Knomad Yarns?

I fell in love with textiles at a young age. I learned to sew, knit, and crochet before I was ten. Over the years, I’ve tried out a lot of different kinds of yarns. When I was a poor college student, I was working with whatever yarn I could get my hands on. This was primarily a mix of scratchy acrylic yarn in flat colors. Once I started investing in higher quality yarn made of natural fibres and blends, it was a whole new world! The soft textures made for a much more enjoyable experience already, but I was constantly faced with the problem that the colors I had in my head weren’t as easy to find in pre-dyed yarn.

Thus began my journey to dye my own yarn! Working with undyed yarn and fine tuning my colors on each skein leveled up my art and reminded me so much of painting where I could customize each color to match my own vision. This flexibility was what I’d been looking for in my own yarn!

As I started to experiment with dyeing my own yarn, I tried a variety of protein fibres from a mix of suppliers, and Knomad Yarn made the softest yarn of them all. One of my favorite things about working with textiles is the satisfaction of the hand feel of different textures and having something soft, squishy, and gentle in hand is essential.

Wool and other natural fibres sometimes has the reputation of being scratchy on the skin, but Knomad Yarn is so soft and gentle to work with, it quickly became my favorite yarn to use! One of the reasons Knomad Yarn is so soft is the choice of fibre and animal that is used to create the yarn. Merino wool, from Merino sheep, alpaca wool, cashmere, silk, and mohair are all some of the softest fibres out there and you can find all of these fibres, sometimes blended together, in Knomad’s yarns.

I am currently working on a small crocheted cowl for the winter. The fibre from the cowl will be rubbing up against my neck, nose, and mouth during the cold, rainy months and I chose LATTE for that project because of how soft it feels on my skin and the gentle drape it has when it is crocheted. I am using the yarn I dyed for the Ombre Dip Dyed blog post to create this soft and cozy cowl!

Now that I have quite a bit of dyeing experience under my belt, one of the things that makes the entire process easier is yarn that is ready to go right out of the package. Knomad yarn is steam processed so there is no need to prewash the yarn with detergent before dyeing. Each skein also has three figure-eight ties already in place to keep the yarn from tangling in the dye bath. The tag is even attached to the starting point! All of these small details make the dyeing process smooth from start to finish.

The most important thing out of all of these for me is how the fibre takes the dye. Does the fibre absorb the pigment evenly throughout the fibre or is it splotchy? A smoother spin on the yarn and even diameter throughout will create a smoother and more beautiful finished yarn after the dyeing process is complete.

Evenly smooth yarn also creates consistent results from one skein to another making it easy to replicate my dyeing process with the same colors coming out of my dye pot each time. As someone who writes dye tutorials for this blog, I always test a dye and note the steps to try it out before I write a full post so getting the same color and result again and again is essential and something I see first hand every month!

Last but certainly not least, one of the things that makes Knomad Yarn different and special is their transparency and how they create beautiful yarn with the environment in mind. There is an entire behind the scenes blog series showing each step of the process in creating their beautiful yarns. You can virtually explore each step of the process and conceptualize how your skein was created. If you look at the bottom of the pages on the “Yarn by Fibre” tabs and learn more about the different fibres. Personally, I love cute animals and I love seeing the different adorable creatures who kindly grew the fibres I love to use!

We love to see how you use Knomad Yarn. Don’t forget to tag us on social media using #knomadyarn to share your work with us!