Indigo Blue is an Antidote at Sheepscot Harbor Yarns
Color her blue… and it colors her happy! In these dire pandemic days, we hear so much about the facts - the black and the white - and then grey areas seep in to haunt us with the unknown. To counter this, fiber artist Linda M. Perry of Sheepscot Harbor Yarns has an antidote for herself, and it is color. Needless to say, she have been on a month long natural dyeing frenzy!
Although a lifelong knitter and fiber artist, her focus has been on indigo yarn dyeing for the past ten years. She fell in love with the magical process of indigo: a true chemistry experiment of exploding color resulting in the emergence of a divine and heavenly blue. The tranquil, calming blue - hues of the sky and sea - offer her feelings of hope that peaceful days will soon return.
Having dyed a mountain of blue skeins of wool over the years, you might say Linda is obsessed. At one point, a few years ago, she traversed the globe to the hinterlands of Morocco in search of the indigo holy grail. Long story short, she was mugged and beaten up, and hospitalized for several days… yet she made it back home with some precious indigo nuggets. Now, she lives a quiet and low key life on a tiny Maine island, with her studio overlooking the blue harbor and into the azure skies. It’s a satisfying, creative existence: nature and a boat load of blue yarn.
In quarantine these days, Linda is in her kitchen experimenting with natural dyes by using any produce she can get her hands on: beets, onion skins, red cabbage, grapes, avocado pits, to name a few. She is very unscientific about it. To her it is all about play - like having your own solitary party. And when things turn out well, it is one heck of a good time!
In conjunction with her dyeing habit, she has lately been sourcing breed specific yarn from Maine farms. Although there is so much still to learn and experiment with, Linda cherishes all of the wonderful, talented, and creative special people she has met through the journey. “These purveyors have supplied me with kindness and a variety of yarn such as Coopworth, Romney, Shetland, Polypay, and Finn.”
Linda dyed some of Fiber of Maine’s Coopworth yarn for us and it is beautiful! It is available on our webite. If you are interested in seeing other Sheepscot Harbor yarns available to purchase, or to read more about Sheepscot Harbor Yarns, please visit her website www.harboryarns.com or just e-mail Linda to get the latest on the stash: Lmmperry@verizon.net.