Deep Sea

“When the reef ends, ascend, with a three minute safety stop at fifteen feet.” So said the divemaster; but we were both new, questioning our ability to spot the end of a reef as well as to maintain fifteen feet of depth without bobbing like drunk penguins. When the reef ended, though, it ended. It wasn’t just the alien menagerie of sponges and corals that stopped, it was the seafloor itself. Suddenly, the only thing below us was water.

I don’t think I understood the ocean until that moment. Everything at depth is greenish-blueish, but the color of the abyss below us was different—immense, chewable, the pure deep teal of an incalculable volume of crystal-clear, indifferent water. It sparked a sort of primordial terror in my spine, but to flee in panic was to risk the bends; so we ascended slowly, and fifteen feet from the surface, from the naked sunlight and reassuring solidity of a rocking boat deck, we paused for the proscribed decompression. For three long minutes, I gazed down into blue-green eternity, but by the end, I was no longer afraid.

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.