RAVENSWOOD — Pink yarn is having a moment courtesy of the Pussyhat Project, but at Ravenswood's Lorna's Laces, they make the string in every color of the rainbow — sometimes in a single skein.
The company's red, white and blue speckled "Go Cubs" yarn was a huge hit during the team's playoff run and demonstrated how quickly Lorna's can adjust to trends, even though its hand-dyeing techniques are as old as yarn itself.
"If there's a color thing going on, we can do that on a dime," said Lorna's owner Beth Casey.
Some of Lorna's processes are proprietary, but as dyer extraordinaire Gwyn Aubrey demonstrated, the basics of creating a multi-colored yarn are decidedly low-tech.
"This isn't a factory; it's a studio," said Casey.
Undyed yarn arrives at Lorna's from various mills, typically pre-spun, in dozens of weights and blends — from lace to super bulky, single-ply to multi-ply, 100 percent wool to bamboo/silk blends.
Aubrey's recipe for creating dyes includes colored powders (folks at home have been known to use Kool-Aid packets) and dishwashing liquid, but never vinegar.
She pours a color onto a section of yarn and massages it into the fiber before switching to the next color and repeating along the skein.
It's that simple.
"Eight thousand years ago, people were putting wild indigo on sheep wool," said Aubrey, a knitter who used to shop Lorna's semi-annual warehouse sales before nabbing her dream job, and little has changed since then.
The dyeing process. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
The yarns are distributed as locally as Knit 1, just blocks away in North Center, and as globally as Australia, but in both cases solely to independent boutiques not manufacturers or large-scale retailers such as Michael's.
"Our yarns are designed for the hand-knitter, crocheter and weaver," Casey said. "They're not for commercial use."
Lorna's in-house designers create six to 12 new colors for each of the industry's two seasons but dyes are never really discontinued, Casey said.
She's had customers call about a color they saw or used a decade ago and Lorna's can make that happen.
Though knitting has been making headlines recently with the Pussyhat Project and was given a boost previously by celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Casey said the hobby's popularity, and the subsequent demand for yarn, has actually held fairly steady over the years.
Steady enough that over the past 14 years, she's expanded Lorna's operation from 1,200 square feet to 4,200 square feet and added a second yarn brand, Mrs. Crosby.
"I really enjoy the creative outlet," said Casey, who back in 2002 answered one of those tiny back-of-the-book magazine ads that announced "Yarn company for sale, can be relocated."
She bought Lorna's from the actual Lorna, and moved the company from the foothills of California's Sierra Nevadas to 4222 N. Ravenswood Ave., where neighbors include printmakers and woodworkers.
Casey, a knitter herself, said, "For me, it was good to have passion about what I was buying, I enjoyed working with the product."
She and her staff pour that passion into each yarn and then send their "pretty string" out into the world, carrying that love with it, Casey said.
"I believe you always knit from a place a love, so a little bit of love flows through the entire process," she said.
Yarn hanging to dry. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
The creation of speckled yarn, like this "Go Cubs" variety, involves the use of eye droppers, and that's all Gwyn Aubrey would say about the dyeing process. [Lorna's Laces]
