Diversifying the Sources

Anyone who has been around Knitting Instagram* in the past six weeks, or who saw a recent Vox piece, has seen or observed or engaged in a conversation about racism in knitting. I cannot say I was surprised.  I've been friends with designers and dyers long enough to know what gets flung at them should they be marginally different --- so of course race would be part of that as well. The stories are saddening, infuriating, and occasionally boggling -- particularly the ones of people who openly attempt to limit the knitting community to cis straight white fully abled people. This cruelty and stupidity is a nasty wound festering in the knitting world and I hope the light shone on it will move towards more transparency and inclusion. There continues to be much work to do. 

Something it pointed out to me was that I had been lazy in curating my sources for inspiration. It's so easy to default. The same designers, the same yarn dyers, the same stores. And so I consciously began looking at the pages of the dyers who were now newly in my feed and adding some hashtags to catch knitting colleagues who didn't look just like me.  For a starting point, I am particularly indebted to Jeanette Sloan, who did a lot of heavy lifting to compile a list of POC dyers and designers. 

Unsurprisingly, I found myself buying new yarn from these indie dyers I'm just becoming aware of. And there's an inadvertent trend. I've been on a Rainbow Yarn kick for about three years now (I went back to through the archives, it started in 2016). This, however, takes the cake.

Four dyers, five skeins, everything is rainbow. 

(AudioGirl, please chime in and do tell me what the sound effect was upon your seeing that.)

These are four new to me dyers, three of whom are women of color.  These are all deliberately DK or worsted weight. I am trying additionally to break out of my habit of only buying fingering weight. These will make beautiful accessories or accent skeins. Let's see them individually, shall we: 

I got 500 yards of Onyx Fiber Arts' DK base. This is Burst. It's a heavy 115 gram skein.  This took the longest to come because it was a pre-order, but that was very clear on the website and the timeline was just what she'd said it would be. Her colors are the most richly jewel toned of the skeins that I bought this round.  

Next up is this skein from Kim Dyes Yarn. This is also a DK weight and is her Rainbow Connection colorway.  Of the four --this is the most muted, except for that dark blue. It *really* pops.  The other shades have a more olive tint to them --not foreground, there's still plenty of variation, but in the undertones.  

From Knitty and Color I got a splatter rainbow skein.  It's funny, five years ago I would never have bought this and now I think it's stunning. This is also the only worsted weight skein.  I have a feeling this will probably mute the most as it gets knit up, while there are stretches of color, most have the mottling of the splatter and that will tone it down even more.  The pops of teal will keep me going. 

And finally, Wobble Gobble's interpretation of Rainbow! Well, my interpretation of her color selections. It's actually called Witch's Tutu and has that incredibly olive/mustard/yellow section.  Again this is DK.

I have started rummaging through patterns on Ravelry (another place to see about diversifying and finding some new designers!) and while I haven't set my needles on anything yet, a few things are looking like potentials.  

*Library Twitter, Knitting Instagram... it's interesting how these groups coalesce