Apple Oak Fibre Works Softwool doesn’t scream at you, it Makes You Smile
Softwool from Apple Oak Fibre Works comes in many earthy colours
You can knit pretty much with any fibre. I’ve even heard of knitters in Siberia, where I am from, who knit dog hair into warm mittens and socks fit for a -40C winter fun. I spent my childhood winters in furs because it was so cold, but sadly I never had a pair of dog hair mittens. It might be interesting to shear Lola, my cocker, someday as an experiment, but I am not sure she would approve. Recently we took her to be groomed and she came back looking like a giant black rat. So for now I will stick with wool from sheep.
Wool is so wonderful. I wear clothes made from wool all day and every day. Wool is light, breathable, super warm, and perfect for our slightly damp climate in the west of Ireland. Having said that, I am not someone who hoards and stashed skeins of luxurious fibre under my bed or spends every last penny on expensive yarn. But occasionally, I do have a weakness for gorgeous colours and soft skeins, who doesn’t?
Recently, I spent many weeks looking at, thinking about, and working with Softwool from Apple Oak Fibre Works.
If you are like me, spend a lot of time on Instagram, you see a lot of beautiful yarn, some of it so bright and electric, it’s almost irresistible. It grabs my attention and I get this sudden urge to own it, but if I look away from my screen, the spell is broken, and I forget about it. When I saw Softwool, my first thought was that the colours were rather tame, almost safe, but the more I looked at it and the more I played with it, the more I realised how wrong I was.
When you start designing knitwear your relationship with yarn changes a lot. Every skein too has a kind of life of its own – it bends in its own way, it has a different weight to it, and it likes some colours and dislikes others. And to understand how yarn will behave and look in a particular design you really ought to spend time with it, to get to know it.
Colourwork in particular, I think, requires a deeper interaction. It’s like all those colours are different notes and you need to find the ones that will work together if you want to make a lovely tune.
When I was designing the Meitheal Headband I spent many happy moments getting to know Softwool. I looked at the colours and daydreamed about them before I went to sleep. I arranged and rearranged them on my table to see how the light would play with different shades. I run my fingers through tens of meters of wooly thread to arrive to the finished design. And I found Softwool so perfect for colourwork and for daydreaming.
The shades of Softwool are so earthy and the colours are so very Irish. If I look out of my window, there I see the whole Softwool palette all around me in the damp soil outside and in the bright sunshine reflecting on the iridescent winter gorse. Softwool colours translate so well into designs that are inspired by Irish landscape, they are warm and very real.
Botanical and natural dyes is what makes Apple Oak yarn particularly authentic – carrot scraps, cabbage leaves and all the bits from the garden go into the dye pot, and when it’s all used up the whole lot is composted for later use in the garden. I too compost, reuse and recycle in my garden and in life in general, and it’s great to know that the yarn I design with is made by humans who care for the animals and the land around them.
And just look at the names of Softwool colours - Make You Smile, Thinking Thoughts, Woodsman True, Lou’s Cake, Goldness...
Pure poetry.
The yarn stains a little when you knit with it, but if you are like me, like to have that extra connection with your yarn, you won’t see it as a problem. The dye comes off fingers easily with soap and water. I didn't have a problem with the colours running, and I did use light and dark shades side by side, but if you are worried about them running into each other, then Jennifer and Tristan have written about how to care for your garments made with hand dyed yarn.
Softwool is just the type of yarn that you want to pet and look at all day long, it doesn’t scream at you, but Makes You Smile.
