Osborn Fiber Studio

It’s time? It’s time? Did she just say it’s time?!

The launching of a brand new yarn is a freakishly exciting thing, especially when you’ve been working on it as long and hard as my dear mother has. If we were a big name brand, we would have a widely published newsletter, a whole team of designers filling pattern booklets out months in advance, and a trio of impossibly skinny models to make everything look extra glamorous. We’re not Berroco, or Lion Brand, or Madelinetosh, and I have a long way to go before my photography looks anything like Brooklyn Tweed’s, but believe you me that Kirby Meritime is going to get all the fanfare I can muster. Because this, folks, is a very real, very cool, and very fabulous addition to Osborn Fiber Studio’s growing line of yarn.

In case you forgot, here’s the deets: 109 yards of Aran weight (4 st./in. on US8s), 50/50 merino/tencel, 12 colors dyed in the hues offered by nature.

Of what fanfare do I speak? Well, if you are surfing Ravelry’s general forums during the next month, you might see this:

That makes me just as pleased as punch; I don’t know about you.

Then of course, there’s the store; you’ll see a link to your left, and scroll down to see close-ups of all the marvelous colors – including three never-before-seen hues, and one brand-new natural dye ingredient that mom will be sharing with us soon.

And what’s a new line of yarn without pattern support? These fun colors go together so delightfully that we can’t help but mix and match them into bunches of different sets – cool and warm, and all different seasons. Mom’s working on a five-color pullover pattern in two colorways (“feverishly” doesn’t quite describe it – when was the last time you knit an adult sweater in eight days?) and I have a hat idea that will use three colors, if I can manage to fit it in between the epiphany and lent offerings.

BUT believe me, each color looks gorgeous on their own, as well. The natural drape of the tencel would make a lacey sweater look particularly gorgeous. If I had time to make myself another sweater, this would be my new pick for the Hampton Cardigan, probably in the dark purple Mystic Mauve. If time and money were no object, what would you make out of Kirby Meritime?