Tweed Chronicles Winter 2018

Tweed Chronicles: Golden State (of being)

Published on January 21, 2018May 27, 2024 by Jen6 Comments

oct-2-2016 — photo from archives: Fields Of Gold

A blissful golden sun-glow in the wild & wide open fields of late summer is signature to California, known as the Golden State.

I love when a storm is brewing and there is the quivering sort of gold from the vines…

Golden shades throughout the Autumnal landscape …

jenjoycedesign© Autum Landscapes — photo from archives: November Chill

The sort of dried papery gold, from late summer wild peas…

The magical and beautiful golden rays of sunrise in my kitchen…

But mostly…

photo from archives: Summer Landscape In Morning

Golden fur of Emma’s, my favorite shade…

golden field — photo from archives: Walking In Autumn

So naturally, I would create my own woolly golden too.

A kind of gold that brings together a color-saturated neutral with natural white, amber & gold.

This colorway sings of the mountain in June thru October ~~ it is my “Golden”.

And here is how I made it …

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Techy stuff for Golden…

Began with Primary & Secondary Neutral recipe using approx 2.5g each of light shades of green, purple, and orange OR light shades of blue, red, and yellow, (see Blending For Tweed Simplified) , lift batt, set aside.
Layer 15g natural white with 5g each of amber and mustard, lift batt.

Layer color-saturated neutral batt again.
draw off rolags.

Colorway blend: ” Golden ” .
See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles

Tweed Chronicles: The color of moss…

Published on January 15, 2018April 18, 2026 by Jen9 Comments

Moss is the most complicated color in nature that I can think of. Here in the mountains of Northern California, it is dormant through the dry season (most of the year if not half) during which it shrivels and turns an olive green to brown color. When the rains come, it is fat full of water, it glistens with nearly neon golden tips and has every shade of green present, plus a few other colors in there too …

jenjoycedesign©moss-dripping — photo from archives: Fog & Moss

I could never really quite figure out if real moss in nature is a warm or cool green, so I figure I’d just layer and layer and layer the colors until it seemed right, improvising as I went along …

which spun up to be as complex of a green in yarn form as I thought it should be …

but I do think in hindsight I should have added more dark green, which I didn’t have any of, so if I did, I would have added in the greens.

Anyway, this is how I did my ” moss “…

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Techy stuff for Moss…

Began with Primary & Secondary Neutral recipe using approx 2.5g each of green, purple, and orange, blue, red, and yellow, (or alternately 5g each of primary or secondary triad colors) blended thoroughly on blending board (see Blending For Tweed Simplified)

Lift color saturated neutral batt, layer alternately with 5g each of grass green, leaf green, and olive green.

Lift batt, layer alternately again with 5g each of grass green and mustard yellow.

Lift batt, layer alternately again with 5g each of grass green and mallard teal. (I think next time I will blend in more Mallard teal, perhaps along with the yellow in previous step).

Layer again on blending board and draw off rolags.
Improvement for next time: Add more mallard (teal) with yellow, as well as a dark green.
Colorway blend: ” Moss” .
See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles

Tweed Chronicles: Geological 3

Published on January 13, 2018May 17, 2026 by Jen5 Comments

jenjoycedesignc2a9eroded-waterway — photos in archives: Long Shadows Of January

Last and lightest color in my geological series is the ash layer from volcanic eruptions, and which show up a couple of feet down, seen mostly where there is water erosion in the ditches along side of some of the vineyard roads next door …
jenjoycedesignc2a9eroded-layers-of-ash
It is a stripey design of very light grey to medium grey, depending whether it is wet or dry, so “Ash” perfectly names the light grey color in my Geological colorways.

The bulk of the color is silver — natural grey and natural white fleece — so the range from a warm silver to a cool medium grey is up to the mood, and a thing which invites a lot of personal touch.

In my three geological colors of dark Shale, medium Sandstone, and now light Ash, either natural grey or natural brown can be blended with natural white for the rock tones, because the distinguishing difference is dark-to-light variation more than it is color hue.

The other distinguishing feature of geological colors is that I’m using undyed natural colors for the all-over color, with a splash of the color-saturated neutral showing …

… which by the way, the “color saturated neutral” (primary and/or secondary triad mix) is the unifying element of ALL of my tweedy colorways !

Next time I will use less ratio of the color-saturated neutral, because when one is blending a light wool , like paint, the proportion of pigment actually is very little. Also next time I will use more white in the mix to make the all-over color a lighter silver (noted below). But for the sake of documenting my experiment, here’s what I did…

♣ ♣ ♣

Techy stuff for Ash…

Began with Primary & Secondary Neutral recipe using approx 2.5g each of green, purple, and orange AND blue, red, and yellow, (or alternately 5g each of primary or secondary triad colors) blended thoroughly on blending board (see Blending For Tweed Simplified) , lift batt, set aside.
Layer 15g natural white with 15g natural grey, lift batt. (Note: For lighter grey, blend more white, less grey)
Layer color-saturated neutral batt with white/grey batt alternately.
Lift batt, and for lighter grey layer again with 15g more white.
draw off rolags.
Colorway blend: ” Ash” .
See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles