UPDATE October 2021: Array and the bundles that include the yarn, warp, a loom, and my new Intro course in various combinations are now available for everyone! Find them HERE.
Gist Yarn is a wonderful small company based in Boston. Started and owned by the brilliant Sarah Resnick, it is a yarn and weaving company that values materials sourced in the United States. Sarah and her team are committed to supporting local agriculture, mills, and dye houses and their weaving yarns are gorgeous.
I have admired Sarah’s business for many years now and was thrilled when she asked me about a new project she was thinking about, a tapestry yarn made from US wool (Corriedale and Columbia from the Western USA) in a US mill.
If you’re a tapestry weaver, you know that there aren’t all that many yarns that come in a wide range of colors that include gradations. This holy grail of tapestry coloring, having light, medium, and dark versions of the same hue, only exists in a few yarn lines and none of them currently are made in the USA. Gist Yarn has tackled this challenge with a beautiful yarn they have aptly named Array. The line is launching with around 70 colors and plans to expand as the yarn sells. Each hue comes with light to dark gradations of four or five shades.
Gist Yarn is taking pre-orders for this yarn starting today, August 9th, 2021. Pre-orders are crucial for the launch of this yarn line. For a small company to produce and sell so many colors upon launch is a huge undertaking and accepting pre-orders for the yarn which will be shipped early in the fall is the best way for a successful new yarn. Links to more information are at the end of this post.
I’ve been able to help with this project by testing the yarn. If you watch my Change the Shed program, you’ve probably seen me weaving with this yarn a few times.
The Listen tapestry was probably the first time I tried Array. I only had undyed and I used it for the background of this tapestry in 2020 which ended up being the word Listen. The colored yarns are EPiC.
After that, Gist Yarn sent me a bunch of natural yarn so I could play with how it dyed. The photo below shows my dye experiment with the yarn. The final yarn is not as bouncy as the one you see in the photo here. It soaked up the dye beautifully and evenly.
This was an early version of Gist’s Array yarn which I dyed. The yarn underwent some changes after this, but I’ve been having fun with it from the first version Gist sent me.
In 2021 I’ve been using the yarn that Gist had dyed in a dye house in the USA. The colors you see in the remaining photos are ones that you can purchase.
These images are from a new online course that I’m rolling out in September. It’ll be offered in a bundle with Gist’s new tapestry yarn Array and a Mirrix Saffron loom. (There will also be a kit version without the loom if you don’t need one.) The course is an introduction to tapestry weaving and so it has the very clever title of Introduction to Tapestry Weaving. You can find more details about the course here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/introduction-to-tapestry-weaving
Gist is offering Array as a pre-order in August 2021 with delivery sometime in September. The yarn kit will come with access to my online course, Introduction to Tapestry Weaving.
You can find out more about the Gist kit on their website HERE. Pre-orders open August 9th, 2021 and go for two weeks. There are more details HERE.
The bundle with the yarn that includes my new beginning online course can be found on Gist’s website HERE.
And if you haven’t heard Gist’s podcast, it is called Weave and it is a fascinating, deep discussion about all aspects of the fiber industry.
One of the example tapestries in the new course from Rebecca Mezoff, Introduction to Tapestry Weaving.
Weaving tapestry on a Mirrix Saffron loom.
Another example from the Introduction to Tapestry Weaving online course from Rebecca Mezoff.
Samples from Rebecca Mezoff’s Introduction to Tapestry Weaving course. These samples all use Gist Yarn’s new tapestry wool, Array.
Gist Yarn’s Array in teal. photo: Ian Justice
I am excited about this new tapestry yarn. I love the way Gist Yarn is supporting US farmers, mills, and dye houses and how committed they are to creating a beautiful tapestry yarn in a wide range of hues and shades. It is also a great tapestry yarn! It is 3,360 yards per pound and works well at about 3 strands at a time woven at 8 ends per inch. It is worsted spun and has a fairly soft hand for tapestry wool. If you’re familiar with other tapestry yarns, it is softer than the Norwegian yarn Frid which is quite stiff, and similar to yarns like Faro and Harrisville yarns in hand, and a little stiffer than EPiC. It has a beautiful sheen and I really like the surface it produces.
They are selling yarn sample cards with actual yarn. They’re beautiful (see example below). If you want to try this new yarn, I encourage you to preorder some of it to help Gist afford start-up production costs for the line and make it a long-term successful venture. I hope this yarn is around for decades to come!
Gist Yarn sample cards. photo: Ian Justice