The Summer 2026 Sunshine MAL has come to a close!
Read more below about Kristine's journey through this make-a-long.
Hiya!
Well, here we are, wrapping up Summer and our 2026 Sunshine Make-a-Long. I thought I would take a moment to check-in with you and recap my progress.
The first part of my Sunshine MAL process was pulling the colors to create a palette, which is one of my absolute favorite things to do. I could spend another lifetime looking deeply at color; learning about it and the relationships between colors. In other words, how colors chat with one another. Sometimes I can even hear their disagreements. And other times, I feel their love for one another. I can feel the harmony.
Right now, though Verb is a natural dyeing studio and shop selling yarn, threads, and fabric, I think of Verb as a color museum, better yet, a natural color archive. And one day, when I am very old, and can only dye a little bit, I would love to see the main role of Verb to be a color museum with a dyeing-centered botanical garden. Its main intention will be to educate and experience color and its chit chat. But currently, we get to have the joy of continuing our production dyeing practice and making with our yarns and threads! AND we all get to combine these naturally dyed hues with Bread & Butter. Which is NOT naturally dyed, but is made of U.S. wool and still carries forth my goal of knowing color. (We will be doing even more of this in the Fall.)
So to create the palette, I gathered a bunch of images, including ones I have taken while out foraging with Adrienne, and I gathered some of them here. And then I began pulling colors from our library and the shelves. Mixing and matching, listening to the chatter. A little tension and disagreement is ok! Even welcomed. It's the spice! And when the palette felt well rounded, I photographed it and sent out the invitation to you to join the MAL.
So the only bad thing about Verb and Bread & Butter and loving color and making is it can be overwhelming knowing where to start because I have so many ideas. There are a ton of fun designs these days to choose from!
So as soon as I finalized the palette and the MAL, we make Marmalade Skies to celebrate Summer Solstice. And I had to have it. Though it is not one of the Sunshine MAL colors! I was so annoyed with myself after putting all that work into making the palette and really loving those shades! Ha! But since the Sunshine MAL only requires the inclusion of the shades listed in the palette, I could use Marmalade Skies! I plucked a skein of Rumor and of Doodle, both in Marmalade Skies, right off the drying rack, and grabbed a few skeins of silk mohair Frond 20g skeins in vibrant coral Habanero, and two more serene hues: ivory Meringue and a skein that had been dipped half way into the indigo vat named Wind. I went in search of a mini-shawl pattern that included a pattern than echoed the skips and jumps of Marmalade Skies and landed on the Peacock Scarf. And completed three of them. Each is such a sweet, perfect, elegant, pocket-sized accessory.
And then, Enda announced they were coming out with a new sweater design, named Linked, in Pretzel. So I darted over to Verb's wall of Pretzel, inspired by the shells of our local mussels, and selected a palette including Inkwell, Cottontail, Minnows, Graphite, and Wild Raspberry. What is absolutely amazing about color, is that it shapeshifts! I will think I understand a color, I look at the mussel shell and I see a beautiful purple grey, but as I get closer, and I really look, I see tiny little micro hues: of ivory, dark grey, light grey, and yes, even flecks of pink. (I am now the age where I have to whip off my glasses to see those flecks. And I do! And encourage you to do so too!) So if we pan back out again, from that mussel shell, found on the beach, to the huge rock the mussel was attached to, jutting out of the ocean, the birds flying overhead through the gauzy mist in the sky, above the ocean waves rolling onto the sandy beach, each element containing a myriad of color, it is not one of those colors but all of them from across the horizon, coming together, that makes one feel beauty - not just see beauty.
So then, I felt the call to open the store for a few Sundays in August (we are back to our regular schedule and not open today). I got the idea that I would sit at my spinning wheel and make yarn. Something I truly love to to do but have absolutely no time to do so. I thought I could treat this as a residency and if I told the public I would be at Verb for those hours, then I was locked in! And indeed, I sat and spun our Bread & Butter U.S. Merino fiber in the colorways Day Moon, Cottontail, and Dove (shown in the photo below). I now have 380g. I think I will knit this vest. And am weighing the idea of adding a strand of Frond in either Oasis, or Indigo Blue Sky.
One of my favorite things about the MAL is that it really helped me to have a selected color palette. I used that focus to support my choices of additional colors and patterns. So instead of feeling paralyzed by indecision, I had wind in my sails!
My next favorite thing: the in-person and virtual meet-ups. It was really a joy to connect with you and to see how you used the colors in the Sunshine palette. Thank you for sharing in this journey!
So though we are wrapping up this MAL, we are having another:
The 2026 Fall Harvest MAL!
Stay tuned for more details. It will function similarly to the Sunshine MAL. There will be a selected palette, giveaways, and meet-ups. We just need to nail down the dates. So start collecting your wish list of patterns! (Here are some of mine!)
If you were unable to join the Sunshine MAL, I hope you will join us for Harvest!
Thank you always for being here!
- Kristine
