Behind the Business: Inspiration

Following on from my post about the dyeing process, I thought I would talk about some of my inspirations for colourways today.

One of the things that always bothered me in the past with buying yarn is...let's be honest here, some of the names are bad. Really bad. I've seen innumerable skeins of purples of varying shades called 'Lavender' and swathes of blue skeins simply named 'Ocean'. Which is fine, but it's not a name you remember is it?

My process starts with an inspiration and a name, and then I choose the colours that match up to the inspiration. I love to dye this way, it not only let's me choose unusual colour combinations that I know will complement each other but it gives me a clear goal. Plus, it gives me the chance to loose some of the geekdom onto the world. Final Fantasy-themed yarn? Check. Studio Ghibli-themed yarn? Check. Robot Unicorn Attack II-themed yarn. CHECK!

 So, let's look at a couple of my colourways and what inspired them.

One of the very first yarns I dyed is called Princess Skylark.

It's a blend of turquoisey greens, purples and pink - and is actually based on my favourite childhood toy. Back in the day, I was obsessed with My Little Pony. I had so many I was actually featured in the official magazine - cool, I know. My absolute favourite of these ponies was Princess Skylark.

Forest Spirit is a blend of red, turquoise, white and brown.

It's inspired by the Studio Ghibli animation Princess Mononoke. The film features a deer god, who guards the forest. I like to take my inspiration from lesser characters in films, games and books, rather than focusing immediately on the main characters. So, rather than chose Ashitaka or San - I turned my attentions to the beautifully coloured forest god.

The first line of yarns I introduced into my shop were Robot Unicorn Attack 2-themed. Among them is Celestial Resonator.

This is actually one of my kettle-dyed yarns and is a blend of different pinks, blues and purples inspired by a customisable unicorn from the RUA 2 game.

And finally, one of the latest yarns up in the shop is Ifrit.

Ifrit is a blend of fiery colours, reds, yellows, oranges and peach all inspired by the summon from the Final Fantasy series. I used the FF8 incarnation, because it's my favourite of the series. And that's saying something because I LOVE all Final Fantasy games. Except FFX-2, that one was bad. Very bad.

So, you probably see a lot of my colourways are inspired by, rather than a carbon copy of. I hope you found this interesting!