Oxide

He makes his daughter wait by the door each time she visits the studio: one last line, wait, Sarah. She keeps her shoes on, even when they’re damp with rain. He carefully, softly, puts down his brushes, his palette, his little knife, and fetches a heavy, splotched smock to hang around her neck. He pulls the waist tie snugly, as he did when she was half his height, in a kind of embrace. She won’t be painting. Flecks find their way onto favored sweaters, gym pants, bare wrists. She keeps her arms folded behind her when she leans in to examine his latest work. The outline of a felled rabbit, a still life of wooden toys stained by pomegranates, her mother’s pressed bridal bouquet. She wonders if he’ll ever give her a piece to hang in her apartment downtown. When she leaves, she stands at the doorway, and lets him lift off the smock from her neck and return to his craft. In the mirror at home, she finds a smudge on her ear: oxide, tender pink, like a stubborn thumbprint.

Words by Caitlin Ghegan

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.