A Grand Adventure with Goosey Fibers
It’s fall, y’all!
Another year, another holiday season. We’ve just wrapped up Thanksgiving, which I celebrate with family. There’ve been some personnel changes in recent years, and a younger generation has stepped up to take on more of the holiday preparation. Time passes, and things change…or don’t. It was heartwarming to take part as we gathered together to make decisions about how we wanted to celebrate the holiday going forward: what existing traditions mattered most to us and coming up with some new ones that are our own. It was all very intentional—we realized that we can make the holiday reflect what matters to us, and what mattered most was honoring our family bond and shared memories.
Recipes have been passed down, sometimes changed (but usually not.) It’s been a few years since new children were added, but they’re all quickly growing and becoming. The old stories get told again, new ones regaled.
“Do you remember when dad…”
“So, what grade are you in this year?”
“Are you still…?”
“So, you gotta hear this…”
On holidays, we can’t help but be acutely aware that another year has passed (hopefully not like a kidney stone, but that’s how it is sometimes,) and that touch of bitterness makes the moments together feel all the more sweet.
It’s fall, y’all.
Here in Texas, the leaves are piling up, a temporary colorful carpet. And the knitters everywhere (in the northern hemisphere, that is) are snuggling in with their yarn.
We worked over the summer to have new handknits ready for when the heat alleviated. We now cast on heartier patterns to fill our laps with warmth as we add rows. Hygge is a trend for a reason, y’all, tapping into our primitive desire to nest through the winter. Cooler weather in itself is cause for celebration—it gives meaning to all these cozy stitches.
For knitters, the excitement is thick as pumpkin pie. And Caitlin of Goosey Fibers seems to have fallen in love with fall as much as anyone.
Talking with Cait, (or “Cat,” if you really want her to like you,) the theme of time and its elusiveness comes back again and again like the seasons. Cait is a woman who knows the value of a passing moment, and that value is behind who she is and all she does. She told me a story of a horrific car accident and how afterward, she became acutely aware of how fleeting time is. Whether a gift or a burden, that awareness makes life more beautiful, and what better way to capture that beauty but in color?
(In the spirit of time and seasonality, you’ll notice that I’m including some images of fall along with yarn…let’s just say that Cait inspired me.)
As I scrolled deep into the Goosey Instagram feed, I noticed a few recurring themes: books (especially Winnie-the-Pooh, which we’ll hear more about in a bit) and what I’ll call (in the spirit of Pooh Bear,) “Grand Adventures,” like sky-diving. In fact, I suggested that she needs a “Grand Adventure” colorway…
“Haha, YES! I am into grand adventures and fully agree that would be a wonderful name! Now I need color. It’s all part of that grasping onto the tenuous while we can. It’s all fleeting, we may as well enjoy it. I also think grand adventures like sky diving, or peering over cliffs, or just riding rollercoasters, help create some really solid memories. Maybe a touch of fear helps dig in deeper neural pathways? Whatever the reason, those moments and memories they create always feel a bit more solid.”
(I’m putting myself on record, taking credit for any future “Grand Adventures” colorway.)
Cait’s grand adventure in dyeing yarn began with a baby on the way. The idea of wrapping her son in handmade love appealed to her nesting instincts, “like I could infuse my baby with love and time through the clickety-clack of needles.” The yarn fumes fill her heart (and fill her bank account just enough to allow Cait to help support her family.)
Goosey Fibers started out with some experiments in sock blanks (very labor intensive) and bright colors (very trendy) and after three-and-a-half years, has settled into a more “nature rustic” style.
“I think a common thing when people start [dyeing] is trying to just go along with trends—and it’s so important to let yourself do that, but also always be on the lookout for what your personal style is. My way of figuring out my own style was really what I chose to knit with. I’d dye a bright color, but then use a much more neutral color for my own projects. I gravitate towards earth/sea colors. So blues, browns, greys, and ochre are what really speak to me.”
I’d describe my style as nature rustic. You'll see me try different things sometimes, but rustic is my happy place, color-wise.
—Cait
In oil painting, you'll see how just in a shadow there's grey and blue and pink and yellow. That's like how I think of making colors. If I want blue, I want it to be a multitude of blue.
—Cait
There’s always a tension in business between what’s personally satisfying and what people will happily throw money at (and I find it endlessly interesting how different dyers deal with it!)
“I know a new color is done and ready to talk about when I see it drying on the rack and I get a rush of excitement to make something with it. If I start spouting off all the projects that I want to make, and oh this would be SO PERFECT in this project, then I know I’ve got a winner.”
You know how when you’re a kid, one of the most important things to know about a person is their favorite color? (Or perhaps their favorite animal is the only more important piece of intel.) When you’re five, these things change every week (or day,) but at some point along the way, we just…settle in. We have the answer we’ve always said and no matter how amazing a movie is, it can’t quite compete with the nostalgia I have for The Princess Bride and my ability to quote the whole thing from memory. That’s The Answer to The Question, I don’t think about it any more, and the fact that it’s been my favorite since my teen years is part of the reason it’s still my favorite and it’s not changing now…
My favorite color? Well, back in high school, I fell in love with a brown dress at a store I worked in and realized for the first time how GORGEOUS neutrals were. And that was the last time my favorite color changed (knocking off the crimson red of my bike, which is now my second-favorite color.)
So, I simply can’t comprehend when Cait says that brown yarns are her hardest sell.
“Though, sometimes the colors I love the best don’t become particularly popular. So, I know when it’s right for me, but am terrible still at predicting what will be right for other people… I have the worst time with brown! I love it so much, and it’s one of my least sold colors.”
Not that it’s always easy to capture a feeling and turn it into a color. Cait told me the story behind “Where the Woozle Wasn’t” in her Hundred Acre Wood collection. It was a “happy little accident…” except it didn’t start so happy…
“Woozle Wasn’t was an absolute accident. I was so angry with the color because I had something in mind and it just. wasn’t. working. Like, I quit that entire day. Throw my hands up, total adult temper tantrum. And the next day I looked at it, assuming I would over dye it with something, and completely fell in love. It’s my color for Piglet, and it’s so sweet and unassuming, like kindness in a color, just like Piglet. Now it’s one of my favorites.
That happens.... more than I’d like to admit. Both the tantrums and then the actually liking of the color on second glance. Some of them turn out perfect, as is, first time around, but so many are happy little accidents. RIP Bob Ross.”
Indeed.
You just never know, I guess. (BTW, ‘Where the Woozle Wasn’t’ is amazing.) But what I love about Cait’s attitude is that her definition of a successful color is not limited to trends or what others think.
Even speckling, I found over time that I don't really enjoy crisp tiny speckles, and prefer...I think of it as like the blur of a train window. I like my colors to look like a bit of nature blurring past as you move.
—Cait
And there we go again with time, with how it passes, and how color can help us dip our fingers into its flow and catch something.
“Have you noticed all the books in my IG pics? I’m obsessed with books. My house is filled to the brim. I’m constantly filling boxes with books to donate, clearing up space, and then filling it back up again. I read a quote years ago (that I have scoured the internet for and can’t for the life of me find) that was something like “Collecting books is an act of extending one’s life. For every book added to the shelf, it’s that much time it would take to read added to your life.” I mean, it’s bogus, I could be gone tomorrow and all these books wouldn’t have done squat for me, but I support the thought.”
Why yes, I have noticed, Cait! The Goosey Fibers feed is saturated not just with yarn, but with books. Physical books, even, and it doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s the tactile aspect of reading real books with real paper and texture and smell that appeals to Cait: “… I just can't escape the physicality of a book in hand. I love it. I love the smell and the feel of the pages. I love how a worn book looks like it could tell a totally different story. I love finding notes in old books. I even like to bend and wrinkle the pages of my own books as I read.”
Fun fact, as part of his marriage vows, my husband vowed to always move my books, no matter where we end up. That's love. Those boxes aren't light.
—Cait
And so we come to ‘Windsday,’ and the Hundred Acre Wood Collection, inspired by A.A. Milne’s stories about his son and his son’s toys, especially the antics of the little stuffed Bear, Winnie the Pooh. (On a practical note, I LOVE that Cait offers half skeins of her sock base, a 75/25 superwash merino/nylon 4-ply. I knit pairs of socks concurrently, and greatly appreciate skipping the step of splitting the skein.)
It’s a blustery day in the Hundred Acre Wood and, despite the Gopher’s warning about the “Winds-Day,” Pooh Bear has a grand time wishing all his neighbors a “Happy Wednesday,” while holding onto the unraveled yarn of Piglet’s scarf, trying to keep the little guy from blowing away. The mild spring zephyr brings rain that comes down in rushing, rising riv’lets, wreaking much havoc on the inhabitants’ little lives, but in the end, they have a Hero Party, as you do.
I think ‘Windsday’ looks like a mostly bare tree, with leaves blowing off in a storm.
—Cait
I don't mind the leaves that are leaving. It's the leaves that are coming.
—Piglet
“Windsday” captures that feeling we get in the fall, when change feels so immanent, when the beauty of the trees in transition lasts only a moment. There’s the lingering green of summer upon a cold brown of winter, with speckles of orange and red—but the speckles are not too crisp: the color is drifting past on the wind. I chose to use a base of reverse stockinette on the top of the foot, with regular stockinette on the bottom/back, and I love getting to appreciate this colorway from both angles, as it were.
“My current favorite fandom, though (yarn wise), is Hundred Acre Woods. It’s all about childhood and kindness, and accepting others for just who they are. Something about that stuffed bear and his friends... I think it touches something deep inside so many of us, that we all want to hold on to. For me, Winnie the Pooh (and the yarns it inspired for me,) is this feeling of looking on the world in wonder, and the absence of fear. That’s the best feeling of childhood, isn’t it?”
It’s fall, y’all, the perfect theme to tie together the fleeting nature of childhood, the uncertainty of life, the passing of years and seasons, and the fact that the only thing constant is change. It is whimsical and nostalgic all at once. And an important part of Cait’s life in Massachusetts.
“I live in Massachusetts, between Boston and the Cape, a few minutes from the shore. It definitely shapes my color sense. It must, right? We moved from Oakland California. If I were still there, I’d probably be dyeing a lot more golden browns and greens. I grew up in Massachusetts, and I missed Autumn, so we moved back when I was 7 months pregnant. Road trip style. In a tiny car. With a large dog and loud cat. I don’t recommend it.”
Sometimes I think I make colors into tangible objects as this way to pause moments of time, maybe. I also just enjoy a good pumpkin on a front stoop, and I think New England does it best.
—Cait
That was the importance of Autumn. Autumn and Winnie the Pooh and childhood and motherhood, it's all so connected. I guess because it's all so beautiful and doubly fleeting.
—Cait
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this far, friend! And if you’re here, you deserve a special treat: 15% at the Goosey Fibers store with the code
yarnscape
Treat yourself to something for the holidays! Coupon code lasts through the end of 2019. (I’ve got my eye on something, Santa!)