Monica, otherwise known as my Evil Yarn Pusher, had sent me a link to Rohrspatz & Wollmeise, a German site.   The Wollmeise side is full of absolutely gorgeous handpainted yarns, by Claudia.  We immediately needed all of them.  

She dyes a variety of yarn weights, but of course, we wanted sock yarn.  Especially after going through the flickr group and seeing all the yarn that other people had bought.   In particular, this picture shows the basic color range.  What’s great about Claudia is that you can request all of her colors in light, medium and strong.

So, since the exchange rate sucks ass right now, and shipping for just a few skeins would have killed us, Monica and I decided to do an order together.   Lynette jumped in, and Monica convinced some of her California knitting friends that they also need ze german yarnz.  We ordered 10 skeins all together.  Claudia ships 5 per package, for a total of 12 euro shipping per package.  I believe once we split up the shipping cost, each skein cost us 21 dollars US, which is quite reasonable.

She also packages them gorgeously.

I really did try to get a picture that didn’t include Hunter’s head, but he was very very very interested in the packages.  He stole all the feathers off of them immediately, and then went for the mini skeins.   It was like wild animal kingdom, but with cats and yarn.

Honestly, I knew the yarn was going to be gorgeous, but I didn’t realize how gorgeous until I opened the packages.  These pictures in no way do the yarn justice.  If you click on each picture, you’ll get a larger picture.

The colors aren’t quite as dark as this picture.   The Lowenzahn (in strong) is for me.  I fell in love with the Rhabarber and Brombeere (in strong), despite not particularly liking red.  Sadly, they have other homes.

The Iris sibirica and Dornroschen (in strong) are mine.   The Dornroschen is to make Aimee the Sis a pair of socks.   I’m totally in love with the Iris skein - it reminds me of the Irises we had at our old house in Colorado.

Claudia has a blog which shows a few limited edition colors she is dyeing this summer as well.