I need to start with two confessions. The first is that I am colour obsessed. The second is that I am texture obsessed. So Laura Good’s yarn was always going to be dangerous for me. The first time I showed Laura something I was making with her yarn, she reached out, felt it and said, “It feels like butter.” I have used that phrase ever since because it really does. It is the best kind of buttery treat, all the indulgence and none of the cholesterol. Laura is the person behind Yarn Phase, a North Canterbury yarn business built around locally grown merino, carefully considered colour and a slightly unexpected journey from graphic design into hand-dyeing yarn. I invited her onto The Next Row because I wanted to talk about where the yarn comes from, how she develops her colours, and what it is like putting something deeply creative out into the world when imposter syndrome is sitting beside you asking whether you are really allowed to be there. It started with a graphic-design client Before Yarn Phase, Laura owned a graphic-design agency here in Rangiora. One of her clients was Sarah from The Grumpy Merino, whose family farms around 3,000 merino sheep and Angus cattle at The Grampians, a high-country farm near Culverden. Laura originally worked with Sarah on her branding, packaging and the stories behind her blankets and knitting yarn. At that stage, the yarn came in a small number of colours, including natural, navy and petal. There were also some undyed skeins available for people who wanted to experiment with hand-dyeing. Laura had always wanted to learn to knit or crochet. Her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother could all do it, but she describes herself as having been fairly cack-handed when she first tried. Then the yarn got her. She became curious about dyinng nd asked Sarah whether she could buy some of the natural skeins and experiment. The first dyeing happened in Laura’s kitchen, very shortly after a brand-new benchtop had been installed. A bold choice, really. Thankfully, the dye she uses attaches to natural fibre rather than the benchtop, so the kitchen survived. The rest of the household did eventually suggest that the laundry might be a more appropriate permanent dye studio. Laura began sending Sarah photos of the yarn she was creating. Sarah started taking some of it to markets with her, and then she stopped bringing it back. Not because she was stealing it, but because it was selling! Laura began travelling to markets with her and, over time, took on more of the yarn side of the business. When Sarah eventually decided to step away from that part of it, Laura continued. That is how Yarn Phase began. Not with a giant business plan or a perfectly prepared studio, but with curiosity, some undyed merino and a new kitchen bench that was thankfully more resilient than expected. Colour is personal Laura’s background in graphic design gave her a strong relationship with colour, but hand-dyeing yarn has shown her how differently each of us reacts to it. A colour that makes one person recoil can make someone else light up. We see that every day in the shop. Hot pink is practically a neutral for me. Other people are happiest with oatmeal, grey or beige. I cannot fill a shop with only the colours I want to wear because the whole point of making is that we each get to express ourselves differently. That is also one of the challenges of being an independent dyer. Laura has to make room for colours beyond her own favourites. She watches what people reach for, listens to requests and notices which yarns disappear first. There is some freedom in working in small batches. A large yarn company may need to commit to producing an enormous quantity of one colour. Laura can experiment. When something works, she can explore it further. When a colour does absolutely nothing for anyone, she does not have to make it again. Or she can dye over it and create something entirely new. There is still pressure, though. Yarn is precious, and Laura knows it is precious to the people buying it too. Colour can also shift on a screen, so there is another layer of work in making sure the photographs are as close as possible to what someone will receive. Anyone who has bought yarn online knows the mild panic of opening a parcel and hoping the colour looks the way it did on your phone. Laura thinks about that part too. The push and pull between creativity and consistency Laura and I had a slightly funny beginning when it came to stocking Yarn Phase at The Wool Shop. I loved her yarn so much that I was too shy to ask if I could stock it. Laura, meanwhile, was unsure whether she should ask if my stoore would like to carry it. Thankfully, we eventually worked that one out. Once we did, we had to talk about the slightly awkward relationship between creative work and retail. Laura needs room to keep experimenting. A yarn shop needs some consistency. Retail needs sameness for long enough that customers have time to discover something, understand it and come back for it. It often takes months for people to realise a new yarn is in the shop. If it changes too quickly, we never get the chance to tell its story properly. Laura, quite reasonably, did not want to feel trapped into making exactly the same thing forever. So we found a middle ground. Her collection would remain available for a set period, giving us enough consistency to stock and talk about it, while still allowing Laura to keep creating and move into a new range later. That process also pushed Laura to develop more repeatable dyeing methods. Part of her hesitation was not wanting to let people down if they ran out of a colour and needed more. For a creative person, being asked to repeat yourself can feel restrictive. But it also builds skill. Laura has learned how to reproduce colours more consistently without losing the part of the work that keeps her interested. High Country Hideaway The range we currently stock is called High Country Hideaway, and it is very much a North Canterbury collection. When I first saw it together, I was not prepared for how strongly it told a story. I know these colours. I live in this landscape. The shades were inspired by Laura’s time at The Grampians. The crumbling rocks along the ridges, the frost, the fleece on the sheep, the moss growing on the side of the hut and the changing light across the farm all found their way into the collection. The colours work separately, but they also sit together beautifully. That matters because not every colour works beside every face. There is an orangey yellow in the range that I adore, but I cannot wear it near my face. Because the full collection shares small echoes of colour, I can still use it lower down in a garment and place something more flattering near my skin. Laura designed the collection so that people could make their own choices while still having a fairly safe framework. The colours will work together, but they do not have to be used together. Each one can still stand on its own or be added to something else. It gives the maker room to be creative without feeling like they have to become a colour expert first. A yarn that has stayed close to home One of the things that makes Yarn Phase special is how close the wool stays to its source. The merino comes from The Grampians. It is tested, scoured and processed, then returns to Laura to be dyed. It has not travelled halfway around the world before arriving back in Canterbury under a local label. Laura is very aware that she has been given something unusual. The farm does not provide wool like this to everyone. Sarah and Johnno have supported her because they believe in what she is doing and want to see the wool continue to have a life in this form. Laura described that trust as a gift, both to her and to the people who eventually use the yarn. The supply itself is also limited by the reality of farming. She receives wool around shearing time, rather than simply ordering another batch whenever she feels like it. At the time we recorded the conversation, she had only a handful of undyed skeins left, with some held back to rescue people losing a game of yarn chicken. The minimum processing amount is significant, around 150 kilograms, and she is looking at increasing that as demand grows. That is quite a leap from buying a few skeins to experiment with in the kitchen. It is soft, but it still behaves like wool The yarn is officially an 8 ply or double knit, although it sits toward the fuller end of that category. I have knitted it on 5.5 mm needles and it has held itself beautifully, so I often describe it to customers as sitting somewhere between a traditional 8 ply and a lighter 10 ply. It has that plump, bouncy quality that can disappear when wool is heavily processed. You can also see a difference between the undyed skein and the finished yarn. Once it has been soaked and dyed, the fibre blooms and becomes fuller. That bloom is part of what gives it the buttery feel. Laura also has eczema and cannot wear every wool directly against her skin. This merino works well for her, and she has heard the same from other people with sensitive skin. It is soft enough for garments worn close to the body and lovely for babies and children. We have made a small vest sample using one skein for the smallest size, which makes it a gorgeous option for a very special baby gift. There is something lovely about pairing New Zealand wool with a New Zealand pattern and creating something that can be handed on. Merino is not just for winter We also talked about the number of Australian customers buying Laura’s yarn. At first, Laura wondered why people in a warmer country would be so interested in wool. I did need to remind her that Australia contains places such as Tasmania, Melbourne and Canberra, which are not exactly tropical all year. More importantly, merino is not only a cold-weather fibre. I am knitting merino T-shirts for summer. Good merino can help
