Color in Spinning

Rating:
Summary: Color Me Happy!
Review: Color theory and techniques for dyeing are only the beginning of the riches in this book. More importantly, it covers how to achieve color effects with fiber. I have found the detailed instructions on hand-combing and drum-carding to be indispensible.

Rating:
Summary: A invaluable read for any fiber enthusiast
Review: Deb Menz offers wonderful information on creating multi-colored yarns for knitting and weaving. As a graphics professional, I thought I had a good grasp on color theory -- until I started to dye fibers for spinning. The interaction of colored fibers is very different than what you'd expect from paints (and I have a big basket of ugly yarn to prove it!) This book helped me understand what was going wrong and gave me new princples to explore. And the range of techniques used by the author (painted rovings, blending colored fibers by carding and combing) are very inspiring.

My only reservation about the book comes the examples used throughout the text. The photography is lovely but there are very few closeups. I have often stared at the images and wished I were about two feet closer to see how the colors interacted and how the yarn structure affected the final product. Additionally, I found the range of examples to be surprisingly limited. Deb Menz has a particular style to her work and after a while I found the examples got a little repetitive. Her color theory covers a huge and complex range of possibilities, but the examples seemed to use the same palette of colors over and over again. A little more exploration and contrast between sets of examples would have been welcome.

But overall, this book is absolutely invaluable for any yarn designer. There is no other that covers this important topic in such detail and I'm delighted to have it as part of my library.

Rating:
Summary: A invaluable read for any fiber enthusiast
Review: Deb Menz offers wonderful information on creating multi-colored yarns for knitting and weaving. As a graphics professional, I thought I had a good grasp on color theory -- until I started to dye fibers for spinning. The interaction of colored fibers is very different than what you'd expect from paints (and I have a big basket of ugly yarn to prove it!) This book helped me understand what was going wrong and gave me new princples to explore. And the range of techniques used by the author (painted rovings, blending colored fibers by carding and combing) are very inspiring.

My only reservation about the book comes the examples used throughout the text. The photography is lovely but there are very few closeups. I have often stared at the images and wished I were about two feet closer to see how the colors interacted and how the yarn structure affected the final product. Additionally, I found the range of examples to be surprisingly limited. Deb Menz has a particular style to her work and after a while I found the examples got a little repetitive. Her color theory covers a huge and complex range of possibilities, but the examples seemed to use the same palette of colors over and over again. A little more exploration and contrast between sets of examples would have been welcome.

But overall, this book is absolutely invaluable for any yarn designer. There is no other that covers this important topic in such detail and I'm delighted to have it as part of my library.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting and inspiring book
Review: I received "Color In Spinning" as a gift and have found it to be one of the best, if not the best book on the subject of color blending that I have read. I was especially intrigued by the section on producing multi colored rovings using a hackle or combs. The many colored drawings and photographs throughout the book make her well written directions very easy to understand.

I am now making some wonderful multi colored yarns using the techniques explained so well in Deb Menz's woderful book and I highly recommend it to any hand spinner who wants to create their own unique one of a kind yarns.

Rating:
Summary: Color Me Happy!
Review: I received "Color In Spinning" as a gift and have found it to be one of the best, if not the best book on the subject of color blending that I have read. I was especially intrigued by the section on producing multi colored rovings using a hackle or combs. The many colored drawings and photographs throughout the book make her well written directions very easy to understand.

I am now making some wonderful multi colored yarns using the techniques explained so well in Deb Menz's woderful book and I highly recommend it to any hand spinner who wants to create their own unique one of a kind yarns.