Closing in on Goals

After 1 1/2 years at this wool business, I feel a tremendously warm and fuzzy sense of accomplishment, although there is much left to do before I will feel entirely done establishing myself. My inventory is about 3/4 complete, and I am preparing to go back through each and every color to make sure all is well with the formula, the documentation, the dyestock, the listing description, and to prepare to release color planners of all the colors -- a monumental project to say the least, and one which will cost $2,000 or more upfront to finance.

In particular, I have been going back through graphics to fine tune them for accuracy. This is very time consuming work, but vital. It is hard to shop online for color, so I hope to remove some of the quesswork by at least making sure that the color on my screen looks the same as the color I am holding in my hand. I have checked my colors on other monitors, and I do find that the colors seem correct, although perhaps a little more or less intense, depending on the monitor. I have noticed that laptop screens are not nearly as good at rendering the color as desktops screens are, so I suggest the use of a desktop screen to my customers. I also try to help my customers select colors by giving a good description of the color they are viewing, as it relates to the colors around it. Also helpful, I believe, is the fact that the colors are grouped according to similarity in formula. For instance, all the colors in the Primitive color family have at least 15% of each primary in them sending the closer to the center of the color wheel. The Vibrant colors all have only two primaries, so they can be expected to be very bright. In this manner, a customer can be assured that the colors in a particular family will go well together in a project, and I find that customers tend to favor color families, often selecting colors from only one family, or sometimes two that are next to each other, for instance, from the Vibrant and Modern colors families, or the Primitive and Country families.

I believe that this way of organizing color is new, at least in the commercial arena, but it makes logical sense to me, and is the only way I could think about color really. There is a lot more detail to share about this approach, but to be honest I am saving it for a book that I hope to write about formulating colors. I hope to make it very comprehensive, in looseleaf format for easy use on the workbench, with many, many quality graphics to guide the dyer, and logical, comprehensive techniques for formulating each color family. In particular, I have what I believe are pretty revolutionary ideas for looking at the formulation of yellows, oranges and greys.

In the meantime, I enjoy the day-to-day of dyeing and adding to the inventory. The pleasure that I get from simply looking at all the colors hanging on the racks is difficult to describe. Isn't color wonderful?



Penny Rug Wool