Preview of Friday's hand dyed yarn update: Bowland 4ply

Here's the second yarn in Friday's update (Friday the 30th of June at 8pm).. this is a yarn that should be very familiar to most of you as BFL Sock. However... it has always bugged me that I never came up with a better name for this yarn. It's daft really because I've had Bowland DK for years, and it never occurred to me that the 4ply version of the same yarn might be Bowland 4ply. Anyway... it is now! 

I've updated it in Ravelry and you can see all the projects made in it over the years HERE.

Moving on to what's in the update - here's one skein of each colourway I've dyed (with the exception of Algae, which wasn't dry in time for pics). The dyelots are ten skeins each.

Here's one of the boxes of yarn..

There are a number of variegated and dappled colourways included this time. The first one is actually a gentle kettle dyed variegated shade which you've seen before as a Cottage Original, but now it has its own name - Reed Bed. It's a combination of sludgy yellow, brown, green(ish) and blue(ish). I knitted it up when I dyed Hayton 4ply in it - I made a Fuss Free Festival Shawl which you can see HERE if you like. This is it hanging on the line last week:

And here it is twisted into skeins:

The next variegated shade is this batch of Cottage Originals (number 2606171144). It's an ash grey base with washes and dapples of a range of other shades.

It reminds me of an oil slick. 

I know it won't be for everyone, but I rather like it.

This next shade is one of our dappled shades which I've not done for far too long - Orkney Seascape. It's a silvery grey with dapples of greys, sea greens and blues.

Of course, to go alongside Orkney Seascape I had to dye a batch of Orkney Landscape. This is a heathery shade with dapples of purple, gold, and greens. It's inspired by a barren but beautiful landscape of grasses, heather, and wildflowers.

This colourway is a properly variegated one. It's a Cottage Originals (number 2606171506) which I'm planning to develop into a named regular colourway. 

You may recognise this next one - it's Starling. A charcoal base with copper and gold running through. I know a lot of people see this as green - you may do too, but to me it looks dark grey shot through with the colours of a starling's feathers.

Right. Moving on. This colourway looks like a dark batch of Wild Orchid, so that's what it's going up as. It was meant to be Black Orchid but I totally mucked it up (was in the Wild Orchid zone, it seems). 

I really love this one - Dale. It's a simple little colourway with a grey base and dapples of fresh buds (lime) and muddy grass (darker brown-green). 

So that's all of those. The rest are all semi-solids. I think it's good to have a combination of both. I'll only show you a few of these - this is Spring Buds; a very light chartreuse.

And this is Dahlia. It's named after my favourite dahlia but I can only show you the foliage of it yet, as it flowers pretty late (but lasts into October). I do love the colour of the leaves alongside this colourway though - you could use Milburn 4ply in Black Tulip in place of those leaves. 

It does happen to be the same colour as this beautiful patio rose though! 

Moving on to some colour combination picks for you!

So, all L-R, starting with these - Thunder, Dahlia, Marigold:

Calamondin, Dale, Spring Buds, and Orkney Landscape:

Reed Bed, Fern, Dale, Spring Buds:

Marigold, Starling, Orkney Landscape, Orkney Seascape:

Cottage Originals, Vintage Ribbon, Wild Orchid (dark):

Thunder, Wild Orchid (dark), Rambling Rose, Oak:

Dahlia, Wild Orchid (dark), Oak:

Reed Bed, Orkney Seascape, Clear Skies, Harbour:

Cottage Originals, Tarn, Bluebell, Thunder:

Calamondin, Cottage Originals, Tarn, Rambling Rose:

Tarn, Cottage Originals, Calamondin, Dale:

 That's all for now! I hope these are helpful for you. As I talked about in my previous post, please remember that update yarns sell out quickly so you may need to checkout quite fast I'm afraid. We are hoping this won't always be the case.

Don't forget as well that you can get free shipping - you need to enter a code on checkout, so for UK orders it's free second class shipping on orders over £50 with code UKSHIP50, and for international orders it's free airmail (or for larger orders we'll send it with a courier) on orders over £100 with code INTSHIP50. We've set a pop-up to remind you of it when you're checking out anyway so I hope that's useful.