I am often asked how I come up with the names for my colors...well, get comfy because there's a story.
When I first started, there were so many things to learn about dye techniques and chemistry and business stuff and legal stuff and tax stuff - not to mention that my kids were much younger - that I didn't have a lot of extra brain cells to come up with names for colors. One day while I was driving - ALONE - I had the idea to name colors after songs. And, if you've been around for a while, you know my favorite band is a-ha and a lot of my colors are named after their songs: The Blood That Moves the Body, Forever Not Yours, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, Waiting For Her, Velvet, Early Morning, Oranges on Appletrees - I think you get the idea...there's a lot of a-ha song titles in my yarn names.
Another big influence on my yarn names has been my Irish heritage. There are several named after places in Northern Ireland near where my dad was born: Fermanagh Walk, Corraleek, October Heather, McAleer Homestead. In the last half year, several colors have Irish language names: Grá, Uisce, Solas an Lae, Éire, and Bláthanna.
Colors like Raising Boys, You Ate All the Raspberry Jam, Mommy Needs Chocolate give a peek into my daily life. Being the mom of two boys I often need chocolate to function/not lose my mind and there's a lot of blood and dirt (see Raising Boys). You Ate All the Raspberry Jam was something I yelled once when I realized my husband and boys had polished off all the jars of homemade raspberry jam in a fairly short time-frame. Let's just say I had maybe 3 slices of toast with jam out of 8 jars.
Finally, there's the names that reveal my sense of humor: Your Brain on Yarn, Off to Play with My Unicorn, and If It's Not Scottish It's Crap to name a few. There was an anti-drug commercial from the 1980's when a guy holds up an egg and says, "This is your brain." He cracks the egg and put it in a hot pan where it immediately sizzled. Then he said, "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" When I removed the lid on the pan of a crazy color experiment, the first thing that popped in my mind was "This is your brain on yarn. Any questions?" That was a bit long, so I shortened it to Your Brain on Yarn. Off to Play with My Unicorn reminded me of Rainbow Bright, My Little Pony, and the other brightly colored toys and stickers from my childhood. If it's Not Scottish got its name because the color reminded me of the Black Watch Tartan, but I had to go with the line from Mike Meyers "If it's nae (not) Scottish, it's crap!"
Now, the thing I have found funny over the years is when people are convinced to buy the yarn simply based on the name - I mean, they clearly liked the color to begin with, but the name really seals the deal. What's your favorite color name in collection?