Mercerized Yarn vs Unmercerized Yarn? — Blog Post
We are often asked if mercerized or unmercerized yarns are better for towels. Our answer is always a resounding…it depends! Mercerized (or Perle) Yarn Mercerization is a process that makes the yarn smooth, stronger and takes dye better. John Mercer, and English textile chemist, developed the technique in 1844 to improve the dye qualities of […]
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Intentions and the Lunar New Year
“Luna” = moon Here at Lunatic Fringe Yarns we have a special love of all things Lunar. “Lunatic” is a word derived from “luna” the Latin word for moon because many people believed insanity was caused by the phases of the moon. We prefer to think of the word “Lunatic” as it relates to creativity […]
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Pantone Color of 2022!
Pantone just released their color of the year for 2022! This coming year’s selection is a brand-new color from Pantone, called Very Peri. Pantone number 17-3938. Pantone chose this color to describe the courage that encourages personal inventiveness and creativity. As they say on their website: “PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri displays a spritely, joyous attitude […]
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Starting and Stopping Colors in your Color Gamp–Split Plies
When you weave a color gamp, you weave weft stripes. And each time you start or stop weaving with one color and are ready for a new color, you have to deal with the weft ends. There are several techniques to do deal with all those weft ends, and one of these techniques is to […]
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Shrinking Your Warp: Part 3
As we talked about in the first two parts of this shrinking your warp series, some warps are straight forward: the repeat is regular and not too big, plus the stripes or colors are regular or nonexistent. Easy-peasy to shrink them down. Some drafts are more complicated, but the same tools are all it takes […]
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LOONatic Mug Rugs
Michele, the Traveling Lunatic, is spending much of her time in Southern California and getting to know the weaving communities there. This blog post and Mug Rug pattern comes from her: I am enjoying being part of the Southern California Handweavers Guild. The energy and creativity of the members is amazing, and mentors and eager […]
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Meet the Master Weavers!
We have partnered with weavers who are “Masters of their Craft” to offer you a series creative and clever kits! Our Master Weavers series is an ongoing project with several highly skilled designers that is designed to get your creative juices flowing. Please take the time to learn more about our current masters by clicking […]
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Springtime Hoppenings
We are so fortunate to be part of an amazing artistic community of weavers. Lunatic Fringe Yarn’s latest kit (Hoppy Spring–Bunny and Towels) is the perfect example of weavers/artists feeding one another’s creative fires. After the fun that we had with the Coral Challenge and the Sweetheart Towels, we were thinking of another seasonally themed […]
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New Chameleon Scarf Blog Post
Weaving a project always leads to plenty of “what if” questions. After weaving the blue-green Chameleon scarf, we started thinking about what other colorways we could use. 3 strands of 10/2 mercerized cotton yarn holds lots of potential for color combinations. Grays came immediately to mind…gray scarves are classic, and we have some lovely shades of gray. We warped the […]
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New Website!
We are so excited to announce our new website is finally ready for viewing. New Pictures We hope you get a chance to look around at all the new pictures of our kits, yarns and projects that we are involved in. Yes, you can even make them bigger by clicking on the pictures! See […]
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