(mellow ambient music) (mellow ambient music continues) (gentle piano music) (upbeat acoustic music) - Color is the whole thing.

(upbeat acoustic music continues) It is the magic of Spincycle.

(bright music) - [Kate] I am Kate Bergeytebi.

- [Rachel] And I'm Rachel Price.

And we are the owners of Spincycle Yarns.

- [Kate] We have been in business for 20 years, and we manufacture knitting yarns.

(bright music continues) Our store is located in the center of downtown Bellingham Arts District, so we're surrounded by some of their pretty cool studio spaces.

(bright music continues) (serene music) I moved out here I think just two years before you did- - Mm hm.

- And I was working at the food co-op, and that is where I met Rachel.

So we would cashier next to each other, and we were both fairly obsession level knitters.

And 20 years ago it was really difficult to find a large variety of cool knitting yarn.

So we both were really into hand spinning, and so we started having craft nights together, where we would make stuff, and we had so much fun.

We were like, "Hey, we should do this farmer's market booth together and sell our yard."

That's where Spincycle, the name, came from.

We used to ride our bikes with bike trailers with spinning wheels on top and then the week's worth of yarn underneath and then set it up.

- We've been very connected to downtown Bellingham since the very beginning.

Our yarn is different from a lot of the other indie hand dyed yarns out there, because they maybe- - Look more like this.

- Yeah, that look more like a solid.

That's my favorite color in the entire world, by the way, but our yarn, as you can see, has a lot of different colors in it, and we figured out how to scale it up and make it by machine.

And there aren't a lot of people that are doing that because it's actually really time consuming, and there's a lot of human power that goes into still making this machine made yarn because of the way that we dye it, every skein is unique, and you get these beautiful sun setting effects from one color to another color.

And that's, yeah.

Case in point.

(mellow ambient music) (mellow ambient music continues) - [Kate] We draw color inspiration from all over the place.

I've definitely dyed a colorway based on some rocks, some beautiful rocks I saw or some flowers.

Color inspiration can hit you anytime.

(mellow ambient music continues) - It's crazy to look at somebody wearing this beautiful sweater, and if it's a colorway that I know I dyed, I know that I touched that fiber, and I put it under water, and I laid dye on it and then it went through our machines and shipped out and that person hand selected that skein, and now they're wearing it?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- To be really involved in somebody's beautiful creative outlet, it's really special.

- Yeah.

It's the coolest.

- Yeah.

(serene music) - Today we are gonna be tincture dyeing some of our Spin Spun sport weight yarn.

- We're using these wool tinctures, which are really fun kind of individual dyeing kit that you can do in a one gallon glass jar, and the color we have selected today is Rachel's favorite, and it's called Woodlands.

So, shall we get started?

- Yeah, let's do it!

- Okay.

Do you wanna go ahead and fill the jar up to about- - Yes.

And this is very hot water.

We're aiming for about 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

- Open your wool tincture packet.

There's little bag of dye.

Alright.

You can pull it tight and then toss it on in.

- [Rachel] Okay.

(serene music continues) - [Kate] Whoa.

So we need to let it kind of dissolve for about two minutes.

- That's very pretty, but I'm gonna be impatient and stir.

- Nice.

(serene music continues) So in my red bowl here, I've got one of these skeins of Spin Spun.

It's 400 yards.

I have it fully saturated with water.

I soaked it about a half an hour ago with warm water.

Okay, so now you can go ahead and lower it in.

- Okay.

I'm going.

- Okay.

(serene music continues) And once you have it all the way in there, you're gonna wanna, you can go ahead and drop 'em in.

Give it a little stir with your stick.

- Okay.

- And we're going for solid dyed, so we want to really try to mix that dye into the skein.

So now I think we're ready for the next little packet of citric acid.

- Okay.

- So I'll get that out for you, and I'll rip it open.

And then what you're gonna wanna do is pull that skein all the way out real carefully.

- Okay.

- [Kate] Get rid of your chopstick for one mere moment for me to stir.

- Uh huh.

Definitely.

- Okay.

I'm gonna try to give that a good stir.

- Okay.

- I'm going in under.

(water whooshing) (stick clattering) Okay, and now I think it's ready for you to put it back in and then give it some movement in that citric if possible.

- Okay.

- Well, now we should start seeing the water clearing up, and we'll know that it's all the way finished when the water is just about fully clear again.

Pull it out, and check the water for clarity.

(serene music continues) (Rachel gasping) Alright.

Alright.

So if you wanna put it in here, we'll squeeze it out.

- Okay.

(serene music continues) It's beautiful!

- Yeah, and look, it exactly matches you.

(Rachel laughing) So I'd say this one's yours.

- Yeah.

- So there is our finished solid dyed yarn, and that was so easy.

(serene music continues) - "Made There" was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham Whatcom County.