The Blue Brick

Kim’s Barn, a retrospective

August 10, 2025

If you’ve followed us for a long time, you know that Kim is a pretty special person to us. She owns a Highland cattle farm out in Niagara on the Lake. The cows are her pets, along (at that time) with the pig (Wilbur), the goat (Diesel), two miniature horses, a dog, a cat, and one big horse (Pete).

Pete was fired from his job as a carriage horse, for his propensity to cross fields to eat other people’s landscaping, and to take the carriage with him. Pete is my hero.

Many colours have come from the colourful, eternally youthful, and certifiably insane person that is my friend Kim. She gave me the OG namesake that led to the Feather colourway. She collected the wild turkey feathers that became Quill. Even Rooster, Kim’s Barn’s direct descendant, comes from her.

My first skeins of Kim’s Barn marked a love of turquoise and golden brown that would thread its way through so many of my later creations. Including (but not limited to) Rooster, Grotto, Mermaid Purse and Unicorn Fish. It got to a point where I would proudly introduce a new colour to Tito and he would stare at it blankly and pronounce “Wow. It looks just like all your other shit.”. Love that guy.

When I first began dyeing, long before I had invented my gradient methods, that photo of Kim’s Barn informed one of my very first colourways;

This baby, and a few other old school colourways, will hit the shop tomorrow morning :) So if you’ve been feeling nostalgic, here you go!
Tariff Update

August 4, 2025

UPDATE

Here’s hoping the above update is correct ;)

—

And the hits keep rolling! In addition to the impact on our material costs and supply chains, the $800 USD minimum for tariffs is no longer valid.

Well over half our business goes to the United States. We’ve spent years building a great community of makers, on both sides of the border. We have to find a way to keep that alive.

What are we doing?

Starting today I’ve introduced a new shipping tier for free shipping over $250 CDN. Also starting today, if you purchase any two skeins of yarn, and then add a pattern to your purchase, the pattern will be free. You do need to add the pattern of your choice first, for the discount to be applied. Finally, these changes should not impact your ability to earn free shipping or to use your puppy points. I’m doing everything I can to reduce the sting of potential duties. Have an idea? Shoot it my way in an email.

What can you do?

Canadian small businesses need to keep our cash flow rolling as smoothly as possible in order to do business, to mitigate the increased material costs, and the unpredictability of the market, and our supply chains. Many of us are already operating with a greatly reduced margin compared to this time last year, so the ability to weather more hits is thin, to say the least.

Regardless of where you live, if you are part of this crafting community we have built, all we ask is that you continue to be part of it. Support us with purchases, or by spreading the word to your friends in your crafting circle. Reach out to your stores to see if they want to stock us (historically we have not relied overmuch on wholesale, but perhaps that needs to change). Share what you make, so we can share inspiration with others. Let’s keep the creativity alive and rolling and not allow what’s happening to destroy what we’ve built, as a company, as a community, or as friends.

Here’s a little creative endeavour to soften the shit news :) I wrote a short story, and I illustrated it. It’s an aspirational autobiography. I would love to die close to the sea, with a little legacy of small kindnesses. Image is Faber Castell Pitt Pastels on Clairfontaine Pastelmat paper.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was a potter, and who lived by the sea. She would make little tiny teacups and leave them on the shore.

When she was gone, everyone knew that she had lived, because all the hermit crabs there had little teacup bums.

The end.
Guyana

July 29, 2025

Above are all us cousins. I’m in a white shirt with a colourful design, back row, looking right at the camera and ROCKING those bangs ;)

Fun fact, I’m half Guyanese, and spent a chunk of my childhood in Guyana, which is in the Amazon :) They think differently there. For example, the houses in our village were built on stilts, so that during the monsoon season the homes don’t flood. This means that in the off season, there is an “up house” and a “down house”, that is, the area under the house where chickens are kept, hammocks hung and so on.

Along with the other things that we stored in our down house was a local Amazonian tribesman who had taken to drinking overmuch, and would sleep it off in our hammock. My mom did what made sense; she made him my nanny, in return for which he got to go on sleeping in the down house and share our meals.

Now… I understand that the idea of taking an indigent person of no fixed address and making him responsible for your child in the jungle seems… unorthodox. Mom was onto something though, he never drank around me, and he became my guide for childhood wanderings in the rain forest. I called him Uncle Quack because I couldn’t understand him, but he made himself understood through gestures. What was good to eat, what was dangerous, where certain animals could be found.

My favourite memory was whenever he took me to see Guyana’s famous “Black Water”. The water is a deep golden colour, due to the tannins that seep into the water from the jungle vegetation that falls into the river as it travels north through the country. It’s magic. And in my memory, the water was sweet. Believe me, I’ve considered dyeing it, but I have yet to get it right.

Here’s something neat, when I was there, there was no electricity in the village (we’re talking 80’s). So to decorate the home, my aunt would fill empty coca cola bottles with water, and a little food colouring. She’d put those bottles in the windows, and when the sunlight came through them it would make beautiful patterns on the walls.

When I got back to Canada, I would start squirreling away little bottles too, and I’d open up my markers and squeeze pigment out of the cartridges to make colours. Then I would mix them to get the ones I wanted and put them on the windowsill in different orders. It was my favourite past-time. I come by dyeing honestly ;)

My Grandmother

Another fun fact of my time there, one night my leg slipped out of the net while I was sleeping and I woke in great pain and covered in bites from a variety of night time creepy crawlies. They took me to the local witch doctor (I can’t make this shit up) because that was the option available at the time. He rubbed coconut oil on my leg and basically wrung it out until … stuff… started flowing out of the bites. Then he bandaged me up.

Last memory. We had to catch the Malali, which was the ferry that crossed the Essequibo river. My mom had to walk there, through the jungle, and she had to carry me because of my leg. I wasn’t small, I was 11. When I woke, it was dawn, and she had carried me all night. When I was trying to have a child of my own, it was that memory that drove me. That desire to give the very best of myself to someone.

These days I celebrate my culture mostly through food, though I remain unable to handle spice (to the embarrassment of my mother and my spicier friends). And of course though music; I listen to a bit of everything (except opera) but at family events it’s all about chutney, soca and reggae. For a few years running I “played mas” in Toronto’s annual Caribbean culture parade (Caribana!). I speak a passable creole, and my heritage on that side is a mixture of the Indians and Africans the British brought over to work the plantations.

Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me :) I have no idea what prompted this, but I’m glad I wrote it all down. I don’t know who I blog for, really, but I love having a place where I’m more authentically me.
The Return of the Ibis

July 28, 2025

Ibis was released in April 2019, along with a pattern to go with it. I had asked Kyle Vey, a super talented local designer, to design wings for me. The entire yarn collection, of which Ibis was only part, was called The Aviary, and it seemed fitting. When he was finally ready to show it to us, it definitely took everyone’s breath away.

That pattern/yarn combo, and these images (aided in no small part by how gorgeous Julie is!), went on to cause quite a kerfuffle in the knitting world, and after all these years I still get requests for it. I’ve decided to make it easier by putting the colour up for pre order again, including extensions. We’ve dyed lots and lots of extensions over the years for folks who ran a little short binding off their Wingspan feathers, so I definitely recommend that you get the extra if you think you might be a little on the loose side and plan to knit a Wingspan.

Click here to shop the Ibis yarns

Today is not about the Wingspan Incident though (though I do appreciate how many of you still come up to me at shows and express wonder that I survived). Today is about the Ibis colourway, the bright, jewel toned gorgeousness that formed the palette for so many beautiful projects.

The Ibis in question is the fellow in the photos above. Tito and I got these images at an aviary in Columbia, and this haughty little bird kept turning his back to the camera. He was so stunning, like a muted rainbow, like an oil slick. Iridescent and saturated, but somehow dark and understated too. I set my mind to dyeing a colour that could do this little guy justice.

Here was the final colour. I went with a muted gold, and rather than include that iridescent green, I allowed the green to be a happy consequence of meeting the gold with a brilliant teal. The space *between* colours became as important as the dyes themselves in creating this effect. That’s one of the things that helps Ibis shine. And speaking of shine, it’s most brilliant on bases that have a sheen to them, a little cashmere or sparkle.

The OG Aviary Collection

These were the colours Ibis originally launched with, most of which were kind of drowned out by Ibis itself (that upper left one is mislabeled, that’s Pictus). I’ve always had a soft spot for Pheasant and Turkey myself. It’s neat to look back on the whole collection, in its original form, as it was meant to be presented.

That’s the story, of this vibrant, oil-slick-rainbow colour, based off a haughty bird. We did get a lot of notes from folks saying that this colour got them back into knitting. It turns out, wings meant a lot of things to a lot of people. The original Wingspan was gifted to someone who was not destined to live long enough to knit her own, and knowing that has always made me happy.

I’ll always be grateful for being the conduit through which yarn that meant so much, to so many, came into this world.

I doubt the Ibis gave a shit though, The truth is, the bird was an asshole.
The Earth Tones Collection

July 20, 2025

Wearable, perfect neutrals

In contrast to last month’s work, which was entirely punchy and hot (literally, it was the hothouse collection) this month’s work is understated and subdued. In a good way.

When I go shopping for yarn for myself, I tend to match what I like to wear. I wear earth tones, naturals and neutrals, I like deep dark blues, light sweet mints, and tones like rust, rose, moss and that colour you see when the papery bark on a birch tree is peeling off.

“A neutral palette is universally appropriate.” – ― Lucy Parker, Battle Royal

Click here to see the collection

I’ve been using art therapy as a way to balance out some of the challenges life has thrown our way lately, and while I knew I would enjoy it, I didn’t think overmuch about how it would impact my dyeing.

This collection, in a way, reflects what I’ve learned. I’ve added a toning “underpainting” to these yarns, and used a limited palette to create my fades. I’ve gone with “less is more” when it came to colour. This is quite a departure from dyeing to match my photography, where I use as many colours as it takes to recreate the tones in the inspiration image.

As a result, I found these calming to make, not just a joy to develop, but relaxing to look at. I hope you’ll find them as easy to style, and to wear, as I’m imagining they’ll be.

“Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain.”
– Henri Matisse

“Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.”
– Paul Gauguin

I agree :) you?
Useless is Subjective

July 18, 2025

Hamilton General Hospital has lousy parking. So every time mom and I go, we have to vie for space in the public lots across the street.

There’s this guy, just shy of five feet maybe, rotund, grumpy, elderly, and he sits in a little booth adjacent to the payment machine. Now I COULD just go to the machine, stick in my card, opt in for some time, and take my ticket, but no.

What I will hear instead is “hold it right there missy.” in a gravelly voice that implies I was about to do something totally, hopelessly, above my pay grade and I had better, gosh darn it, pump my brakes.

So I pause, as I always do. Sometimes I’ll even act confused, you know, lay it on a little thick.

This little dude looks out from inside his booth and sighs dramatically. I’ve ruined his day. I’ve obliged him to get up. He looks pointedly at his watch “another one? Geez”. He eases his way gingerly off his seat, accompanied by all the audible hallmarks of both pain and exasperation, and makes the two-step effort to get to me. He looks up. Oh! you again! Well, now things are marginally better. He straightens up to his full 4 ft 9, grins roguishly and asks me for me card in a thick Italian accent.

I give him my card, bemused but charmed. Then, he puts it in the same machine we’re both standing in front of. He asks in a gruff voice “hospital again, honey?”. I nod, then I sigh, it’s our routine. Maybe I cuss offhandedly. He sighs in solidarity and mutters “be there all fuckin’ day then” in disgust. Like he always does. Then he presses the same button I could have pressed.

Then he removes the card and gives it to me. He takes my parking slip and gives it to me. I say “so long, handsome”. He says “so long, honey”. I wander back to the car.

Basically, this guy is technically a totally unnecessary middleman for the parking machine, but one that adds so much cantankerous charm to my pre-hospital parking experience. And you know what? He’s my hero. It’s the little things (pun intended).
I hate my EV. An Essay.

July 16, 2025

So my uncle loans me this car. A fully electric, bright blue and white, Kia Soul.

I have exactly zero cars at the moment… so a free car sounds kind of amazing, and also my uncle is being super sweet. And I’m a hippie. Electric? Green? Be still my liberal heart.

I should add, I can rock my raybans, wind in my hair, blasting Black Sabbath and literally wearing my black belt and still fail, utterly, to look cool in this car.

The car apparently has a 200km range on it when the battery is full. If you have read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, you may be familiar with the concept of “Bistromatics”. This refers to a number that can only be anything OTHER than what it purports to be. In this case, a 200 km range.

Perhaps it’s 200km on a level road, in good weather, at a constant speed, with no stereo, no climate control, and barely any load excepting, perhaps, a reasonably svelte driver who doesn’t mind carrying on a running dialogue of pep-talking the car.

Otherwise, it’s something like 75k before the car gently and politely starts telling you that you’re utterly fucked in about 25k. It likes to tell you this when it’s >25k from home.

So, I’m on my way home at night when this happens. I have never experienced having to plug in a car. The whole idea is surreal. Is there a dynamo crank? A place to stuff a couple of AA batteries? Does it have a remote control? I have no idea where to go, what it costs, how long it takes. I pull over in downtown Hamilton and go to the dojo at McMaster U, the only place I can think of that will have chargers.

Then I have to work out how to use it. Download an app, create an account, load up some credits, plug in your car like a glorified toy and… sit in it. With no heat and no music. For however long it takes. Longer, presumably, than charging a phone.

I spend a few hours in a foul mood, in the dojo parking lot, at midnight, fuming.

So I crawl in cold and hungry and irate after midnight last night, declaring loudly that this car is not for me. Everyone wants me to love the car. I do not love the car. I do not even have a genial relationship with the car. The capability of the car is one step above an e-bike with a slightly oversized basket.

Tito regales me with all the things I could have done differently to avoid this, while I sit there and protest that I DID do all these things, that I AM smarter than the average bear, that I DO know how to read the gauges. Then I insist on taking my parents civic because fuck-this-YOU-drive-the-thing-since-you’re-so-smart.

This evening he calls me up around 9pm and tells me “I ran out of battery, please come get me”.
Welcome to the old Blue Brick Blog :)

July 14, 2025

We still post here, but the main attraction is our online shop ;)

SOMEONE TOLD ME ONCE…

A million years ago, when I was early in my days of corporate marketing, that every professional should be able to explain what they do, and why it’s special, in the time it would take to ride an elevator. So, here goes :)

We dye gradient yarn, that’s the practical upshot of it. We hand-paint it a yard at a time using a super secret method that we invented. This allows us to create smooth fades on smooth yarns, and also to vary greatly our bases and yardages, because we don’t rely on pre-knitted blanks.

Generally, our colours have been based off our work as photographers, though we do break from that mold once in a while ;)

We offer 5 main yardages, ranging from 300 to 1600 yards. This flexibility means it’s one ball to one shawl, with no need to stripe in skeins. We also craft gradient sweater kits and accessories.

Too long? Has our stop passed? Cool, let the images speak for themselves.
You, again.

July 14, 2025

I’ll be renewing my attention to the blog/blargh =D I know this sounds odd, because my time these days (or lack thereof) means that I respond to emails with a frequency that’s just below luddite, and just (barely) above dead.

However, I have compelling reasons to keep this thing alive, so I’ll be popping in once in a while to let my hair down and blargh on.

This morning I’m sitting in the living room, I’ve just made a cup of tea, the sun is streaming in and….no, wait, that’s wrong. This morning someone banged loudly on the door at a crazy hour to inform me that they were going to tear up the sidewalk, and could I move my car? I plead, of course, my current loaner is an EV that’s basically useless if I can’t plug it in (more on that later).

He shrugs and says “sorry about that”.
Me: “Well, are you going to pour it today?”.
Him: “Yeah, but you can’t put the car back for three days”
Me: “But my EV is useless if I can’t plug it in”
Him: “We piss people off a lot”.

Perhaps I’ll get my ass in gear to direct my posts towards marketing my business, but hey, I never expected to come back to this party. Gimme a few days ;)

Here’s something pretty and new and you should go check out the store.
There, I did it!
August 1st Re Launch

July 31, 2019
We’re getting the store ready to reopen after a three month hiatus taken to move, expand, hire, renovate, innovate, and tackle a massive order list, the likes of which will probably give me the heebie jeebies for years to come ;)

Store update lands on August 1st, at 11am EST

We are *not* fully caught up folks, and for that I apologize. I honestly thought July would be it, but scaling opens a Pandora’s box of problems, all of which take time away from dyeing. We’ve had a roof leak, humidity and yarn drying issues, we had to wait to get internet, hot water, gas lines and electrical upgrades. We spent a lot of time trying to make sure we were as transparent as possible with customers and posting regular updates. But yes, I also kept creating because that’s what I do. It’s like breathing.

Please note a few things:
- New orders will not supercede old orders. If you are waiting on yarn, your place in the queue will not change. These new orders will take 4-6 weeks to fulfill.
- There will be a cap on how much we post of any given thing. When they sell out, they are gone for now but will be restocked every few weeks as we get caught up.
- We ask that, for this first sale, you not ask us to combine shipping with an older order. Just this once, just so we can keep our older orders flowing without a hitch.
Disclaimers done :) Here is what we’re bringing to market!

Sweater Kits! I’m so proud of these. They are crafted specifically for creating gradient sweaters by utilizing a massive body gradient, two sleeve gradients, and “extension skeins” for the top and bottom. At the moment they are best suited to top down, in the round patterns (shown here in Flax Light by Tin Can Knits) and you will need to work to sleeve separation with the main yoke colour before changing to a gradient; to ensure a seamless transition to the sleeves.

Sizes and Pricing will be as follows. As always, all prices are in Canadian dollars:

Sweater Kits will only be available in 6 colours to start:
Feather, Copper Slate, Rose Gold, Nicaragua, Waterfall and the slightly modified Seafoam shown in the sample above.

Next up – Mega Skeins! With the new space and my upgraded equipment I can dye larger than ever. Because I don’t dye from blanks, I can offer almost any yardage or fiber you can think of! Our new offerings are:

DK Weight Wooly Mammoth – 800 yards in one continuous gradient – $75
Aran/Worsted Weight Wooly Mammoth – 600 yards in one continuous gradient – $85

And now…

BEAST MODE – 1200 yards in one continuous gradient – created for the new Wingspan size by Vector Knits.
Killarney Sock: $89
Cashmere Sparkle: $115

DK Mammoth, Aran/Worsted Mammoth and Beast Mode Mammoth will only be available in these colours to start: Feather, Pigeon, Copper Slate, Ibis, Nicaragua, Muscovy, Aurora, Heron, Waterfall and Seafoam.

There is more! We’re having an opening party to celebrate the new space :) Please visit this link to RSVP. Please note that we are capping the party at 100 folks to make sure everyone has a good time with no crowding, and to make sure that we have enough food and drinks :) That means that if you definitely plan to come please mark yourself as “GOING” on facebook. It will be such a good time, with music and giveaways, a ribbon cutting, food, drink and prizes, an opportunity to buy from our heavily discounted seconds skeins, and we will also endeavour to stock some of our popular items so you can do a bit of shopping. My pups will be there, so we ask that you not bring your little ones just this one time, after that little ones are always welcome!

Whew! There is so much more coming in the future folks, I’ve actually trimmed this down and held stuff back so you still have new things to get excited about come fall. We will have “Cup Cakes” which are Killarney sock skeins, caked up, and placed inside of a hand thrown teacup that’s glazed to match. There will be a big sister to that, “Coffee Cakes” which will be giant, comfort sized mugs glazed to match with wooly mammoth cakes inside; perfect for gifting! My kiln and wheel arrive in three weeks or so and I cannot wait to get started bringing new and lovely things to you. There will be resin jewelry, ceramic yarn bowls, and my much overdue Mediterranean Collection. Coming soon after will be a floral colour line, complete with the actual matching flower preserved in resin jewelry. There will be holiday parties and regular knit nights. There will be classes. I am so excited that my creative muscles are in overdrive, and frankly, happy to see that they’ve thrived, despite a very challenging spring and summer.

As for my poor team, they are TROOPERS. Not to mention my poor husband who wryly asked if I wanted him to build a pen in the space next so we could “Just dye the entire bloody sheep and be over with it”. =D

That’s all for now folks!
Love
S.