Can You Paint With All the Colors of the Yarn?

I did mention before that I was on a quest to find cheap, soft, strong yarn in many, many colors to begin making more amigurumi with. This took me to some interesting yarn choices on AliExpress. I'd bought some milk cotton from there in a pinch and ended up making some wonderfully soft headbands with them. One of the reasons I don't actually wear many crocheted hats or headbands is because even the softest yarns tended to irritate my forehead. Even if they were soft, they weren't breathable or caused more sweat than they could soak up.

I'm not a masochist for fashion so it's always comfort first.

A decent yarn of all those requirements was usually an expensive ask, despite how very cheap it is to make. My other option was to order from a Turkish company called ICE, which has beautiful quality yarns... But also came with a shipping cost of no less than $45, so unless you want to buy in serious bulk, it's not the best choice. And I did order bulk from them. For a little over 100 dollars, I bought a ricidulous amount and selection of yarn, averaging out to no more than $1 for every 50g ball.

It felt a bit like spoiling myself but it wasn't the kind of purchase I could make often. Where could I get a deal like for smaller volume?

Well, I answered that already so the suspense is gone, but yes, you can order a variety of wound fibers for an amazing price at AliExpress... If you don't mind the 3-5 week wait on average. Which I don't. In fact, I'm quite willing to wait to avoid retail mark-ups. Now, milk cotton sits at a little over a buck per 50g ball but even higher quality fibers like alpaca, silk, cashmere, and bamboo blends tend to hang around the 3-5 dollar per 50g ball range. Blends, of course, but I tend to prefer blends since they are varying percentages of other materials like merino wool (one of the few sheep wools I'm not sensitive to) or angora that actually provide more stable woven strands that make up for another fiber's weaknesses. Some luxury materials like cashmere tend to shed or cling to itself so stabilizing it with silk or bamboo, a much sturdier fiber, is a plus.

I'm going to break off topic for just a paragraph to inform here, but sheep's wool allergies/sensitivities  are not created equal. For a long time, I believed all animal wool was the culprit but in my case, only poorly processed wools that have high levels of lanolin were the issue. I'm able to work with merino because it is often properly processed. For those that believe that wool is the irritant, most of us are actually triggered either by animal dander or, in sheep's wool, it's the lanolin. Just like we secrete levels of sebum to regulate our skin, sheep secrete this as one of their natural defenses. Just like how humans can overproduce or underproduce sebum, sheep wool can contain levels that are irritants to us as well. Some wools are bleached in processing before they are dyed (if they are dyed, at that) so they are more prone to cause irritation. I myself have sebaceous dermatitis, an overproduction on my scalp, and not only can it make my skin itchy and flaky but even cause scabbing and bleeding if untreated. So of course, trying to cut corners on animal yarn processing means ending up with a 'cheap' product. Though removing wool from a sheep is kind to them, poorly processed yarn can in turn be unkind to sensitive human skin.

One of the reasons I like milk cotton is that it's a very renewable natural crop, definitely cruelty free no matter the process. It's very gentle on skin, both working with it and to be worn later...

Buuuut... Going back to the quest for a rainbow of yarn, I believe I've fulfilled that requirements, even nabbing those vibrant pinks, oranges and whites that I normally don't seek out. However, I wanted to challenge myself to make character plushies that DO utilize those colors. I don't enjoy that I'm a sort of color prude, a bit of a quirk that I won't let limit me as an artist. I find that preferences and hang-ups simply come from lack of good experiences, and that challenging those perceptions often means being able to change them and even embrace new attitudes that improve you. Aversions are hard to correct, but at times, the things we avoid are only minor annoyances or hesitations, something with room to be challenged. For me to actively avoid color choices has always been a discredit to what potential exists in reaching those who do gravitate towards them. What positive energy can exist by appealing to someone else's spectrums? Can I deal with my annoyances now to open my eyes to the response of positive energy that comes later?

And yes, I can. 

I wasn't looking to subliminally add a race parallel here, but I did notice it as I built. Literally, I'm exactly talking about my silly individual aversion to orange, pink and bright white being a problem. But sure, it's also silly for people to weigh skin color with so much finality. But you know, sometimes the shoe fits other feet. Life is no Cinderella story where no one else in the kingdom has the same tiny feet. Or make us wonder if he might've ended up with an 8-old-boy if he'd never found her.

Those stories are always creepier the more you analyzed them though, yeah? But face value is never where the juicier stories are at anyway.

Oh, I could tell you quite a yarn, but I just broke so many pun-haters' backs with that one...