A tale of “two lochs”

6 July

Sometimes when I start dyeing I don’t have a clear picture of what I am going to do, other times the idea manifest itself out of nowhere. Loch Fyne was kind of in between, I didn’t have a clear picture at the beginning but as I was pulling out dyes from the cupboard an image began to form. My hands seemed to have a better recogning than my brains, while I was still trying to make that image clearer my hands had grouped some dyes together, and when I looked at those colours it all made sense. And thus the colourway Loch Fayne was born.

I had a holiday in Scotland many years ago and we stayed in one of the lodges on an estate on Loch Fayne, I guess that must have been the original Airbnb. During our entire stay we didn’t see another soul on the estate, it seemed that we had the entire place all to ourselves. Everyday we collected firewood for the open fireplace (there were firewood provided but it was more fun collecting your own), and while on this errand we came upon a secluded pebble beach. The water stretched in front of us for miles and miles, it blended with the sky and the hills on the horizon. It was so quiet, only the occasional birdsong and the waves gentlely lapping the shores. Given the chance I would return to that scene in a heartbeat.

It was with this in mind that I dyed the Loch Fayne. My usual dyeing process is to do a test dye first then either stay with that recipe or make adjustment. For this colourway the test was perfect and the test spin came out beautifully, so I proceeded to make up the dye stock in quantity, then divided it into equal parts to dye in batches (my dye pan will only hold two braids at a time). It all went well until the last two batches, for some reason the dyes came out darker than the rest. At first I was distraught because I was already under time pressure and I’d used up all the stock in that base. But when dried I realised that this could be another version of the same colourway, like the loch in another weather condition.