Bioluminescence

After sunset, the Pacific merged with the moonless night to form a snug cocoon of blackness. As our dive boat charged out into the void, I focused on the glowing blue plume of its wake to steady my nerves. “Cool, isn’t it?” Kai asked, grinning towards the wake. My chittering anxiety gave way to wonder as I realized: that blue glow wasn’t a reflection of the boat’s lights, but a bioluminescent protest from a legion of flustered plankton. It was why we were here.

When the engine roar silenced, we donned our scuba gear and stepped one by one into ink. We descended to the prearranged 50 feet, feeble flashlights carving small cones of comfort into an eternity of black water. Then we turned the flashlights off, and the ocean came alive.

Fish, jellyfish, things that were neither nor, pulsed pink and green and electric blue against a darkness that went on forever. The tiny lights of plankton formed neon highways tracking the sweep of a hand or a fin. The ocean wasn’t black, but deep blues and greens, illuminated by a trillion tiny suns. For an hour, I was an astronaut in the deep.

Words by Kathleen Joyce

For more information about our yarn bases and spinning fibers, including care instructions, please visit our Yarn Bases page.

Please note that, due to the nature of hand-dyed yarn, no two skeins of yarn will be exactly alike. I recommend alternating skeins every few rows for projects using multiple skeins of the same colorway. If you order multiple skeins of the same colorway, I will do my best to select skeins that are the closest match.

I dye each skein with professional acid dyes and leave the yarn in the dye bath until the dye has exhausted before rinsing and soaking in wool wash. Minor color bleeding may occur on the first wash, especially with extremely dark colors.

Although I do my best to accurately represent each colorway in product photos, please note that the colors may vary depending on monitor and/or device settings.