Colorway Chronicles: Midnight Ginger Snaps

Someone (Kait!) once asked me which of my colorways do I hate to make and why.

I honestly didn't have to think too hard about the question before I came up with this answer.

"Midnight Ginger Snaps" is the result of a rescue attempt on a bad dye job.

This colorway is one of my earliest creations. I actually love the colorway. I hate making it for a number of reasons. The first reason being that it reminds me of a time that I strove for a particular look and failed. Miserably. All the other reasons are tied to anxieties about trying to recreate accidental perfection from not great notes and the fact that multiple processes have to be worked to achieve it, but I digress...

I LOVE the colors orange and blue together. So much so that on casual Fridays at work, you will often find me in blue jeans and a construction cone, day-glow orange polo shirt. It is my favorite color combination and I set out to make a yarn that captured that.

What I got was a hideous yarn with navy and ugly vibrant burnt orange that was going to pool. It was hideous. I allowed it to dry, hoping the colors would bloom and I would see it differently the next day. It only got worse. Even my very supportive husband inquired "What are you going to do with THAT?

I was very unhappy. I knew it needed a rescue, and so, I over dyed it. From that came some unexpected results.

Working with dyes, strange "not color wheel" things happen. For example, if you apply a light purple over yellow, you get a rich gold color. In this particular case, I applied navy over orange and got a lovely ginger color.

The over dye result was more than a rescue, it was a win. I love the result. It made me reminiscent of a camping trip I had taken with my husband in which we had unwisely packed dry ice on the top of our food cooler and effectively frozen everything solid. Our first dinner on that trip was eaten by flashlight in our navy tent and comprised solely of that which wasn't frozen: corn chips, peanut M&M's and gingersnap cookies. "Midnight Ginger Snaps" resembles the colors in that memory, as well as how making do with what we had became so much more.