Welcome to Burrow & Soar!
I’m Fran, the dyer behind the yarns – I’ve been dyeing as Burrow & Soar since 2013.
I live in rural Leicestershire with my husband Simon and two cockapoos, Monty and Zelda, dyeing from a workshop in our garden. I come from Nottingham – city of rebels! I like to put on some tunes, stick my headphones on, roll up my sleeves, and really get stuck in around the dye pots.
I’m a lifelong knitter, and my aim is to dye the kind of yarn I’d like to buy – colours that are exciting, practical, and beautiful. I want yarn that makes me excited to make something, not the same taupe-vanilla-pink that everyone else used for this project.
If I spend three days on a pair of socks, I don’t want them to look like everyone else’s; I want them to be mine, the only pair of socks that look like this, and the kind of socks where I pull up my jeans legs and say “Check THESE out!”. Tasteful barely-beige does not do that for me. Magenta totally does.
I have a background in art and fell in love with all the possibilities of hand-dyeing yarns and fibres. I experimented with lots of different methods before settling on immersion dyeing, submerging skeins in water and applying the dye directly so it flows over the wool, combining with other colours like paint on canvas.
I use milling dyes on all my yarn, which will give strong, colour-fast and fade-resistant colours. These are often called ‘acid dyes’ because they are fixed into the fibres of the yarn using a mild acid. I use white vinegar, which rinses out easily and doesn’t cause any nasty side-effects!
When I make a yarn, I want it to be something that can’t be made by a machine, so that whatever you go on to make with my yarn, it’s to be completely yours, absolutely unique.
Make something really cool.
