Here's a closer look at the colourways in the first Sägen hand dyed wool tops release!
The first one is called The Radioactive Fawn: a clear, bright chartreuse together with mild shades of sand, fawn and white. The name was one of those that came from seemingly nowhere, an idea from the back waters of the mind, inspired by steampunk, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic stories like Fallout, Tank Girl and La cité des enfants perdu.
Then we have The Rosetta Stone, named because it can be a bridge between all the other colours and tie them together. The real Rosetta stone is a slab from around 196 BC, inscribed with the same text in three languages, which makes it an invaluable source for understanding ancient texts. The colour on The Rosetta Stone is light, calm peach, tan and white, and it's lovely on its own or works very well for a combination spin together with the other colourways.
Next out is The Fox that Flew, a very warm, golden colourway with hints of peach and pinks. It's a lovely combination that somehow manages to be colourful and almost a neutral at the same time. The name came first from the colour and how the braid reminded me of fox pups playing in the evening sun (one of the perks of rural life!), but when I looked into it, there's also a Native American folk tale with this specific name. As always, the fox is a trickster, but in this one he's outsmarted by a bunch of quails...
Moving closer to another element, we have The Earth Whale. This is a nonsense name - we are allowed to rest from our senses at times, to be non-sensical, and I wanted this one to be of both water and earth. The blues in this one is draws on deep waters and the biggest creatures in the history of the world, but it's also rooted in the deep, warm soil. Thus, Earth Whale. This is the darkest of the colourways and brown and blue has always been a true favourite colour combination for me. I gave the finished colourway hints of white to add a little shine, but the general look of this one is moody and on the darker side. It's lighter and more pastel on Rambouillet, and a bit more intense on Corriedale - the skein below is Corriedale!
On the theme of oceans and border lands between water and earth, we have another colourway: The Selkie Song. Those of you who have been knitting with Sägen hand dyed yarns know that Selkie is one of the colourways (actually one of the most popular ones, for all seasons!), and here it is on wool as well. I combined it with a light sand colour and left a lot of open white sections to make the shifts from blue to sand to white take centre stage. Selkie is a creature from Celtic and Norse mythology, a woman who can shape-shift into a seal, and there are many stories about men stealing their skins and forcing them to stay in their woman-form. Somehow the Selkie always finds her way back though...
Last but not least, we have The Mecha Gemstone, a vivid and fun colourway in burnt orange, lilac, light blue, peach and white. This was the hardest one to name, and I finally found what it wanted to be called when I started reading about one of my favourite TV series ever, Neon Genesis Evangelion. NGE is a 1995-1996 Japanese mecha anime series, meaning it features giant robots and other technological innovations. It also draws on themes such as archetypal imagery, Shinto mythology, Kabbalah and Christian mystical traditions and it's a real gem.
Now this was the very first batch of colours - I have a million ideas and can't wait to expand the range in the future! Happy spinning!