Cider Moon FAQ

Q:	I love the look of hand dyed materials, but have heard they bleed all over the place when they’re washed. Is that true?

A:	Nope! Materials that have been properly dyed and set, and are washed properly, are colorfast. Cider Moon washes all of our cotton, silk, and wool fabric and yarns to ensure that the color will not bleed. There may be a small amount of a tint in the water the first few times you wash the materials, but normally only for a few colors (turquoise, red, and bright yellow are the worst offenders). We do have to be a bit more gentle with our wool products – particularly our roving – so as not to felt the products, but since wool takes dye so well, bleeding is not a problem.

Q:	How do I wash _______?

A:	Hand dyed cotton fabric can be machine washed and dried. We recommend washing cotton in cold water with a small amount of Sythrapol (a fabric-friendly concentrated detergent that can be found at quilt shops). Hand dyed silk fabric is best hand washed, or washed on the gentle cycle of your washing machine in a lingerie bag, in cold water. Use Synthrapol or a small amount of shampoo as your detergent. Silk softens after coming into contact with an acid, so if possible, add a small amount of vinegar to your rinse water for the best result. Hand dyed wool fabric is also best hand washed in room temperature water with a small amount of Synthrapol or other detergents that are specially formulated for wool care (look for them at your local yarn shop). Using room temperature water and agitating the wool as little as possible will avoid felting. Of course, if you want to felt your wool, go ahead and throw it in your washing machine with a small amount of detergent and do a hot wash with a cold rinse. Detergent, plus agitation, plus changes in temperature equals felting. Items made from hand dyed yarns that are comprised of a protein fiber (silk and wool, or any other fiber coming from an animal) are best washed by hand using the same instructions as washing hand dyed wool. These items can, after washing, be put in a lingerie bag and in a washing machine to spin the excess water out of them (be sure you set the washing machine to just spin, and not add water!). The exception to this is our superwash wool yarns, Glacier and Icicle, that can be machine washed. We recommend washing those yarns in your washing machine using cold water and a gentle cycle. You can also put those items made from superwash yarns in a lingerie bag during washing as well. You can either dry flat or tumble dry them in a machine set to low. Items made from hand dyed cottons and rayon yarns are safely machine washed on the gentle cycle, using cold water and placing items in a lingerie bag first. Be careful with rayon yarns, since rayon is a material that is much weaker when wet than when dry. Materials made from hand dyed rovings should follow the above guidelines, based on whatever type of fiber is in the roving. Our roving is not washed with detergent before being sold, due to the possibility of the fibers felting. Instead, we soak the roving in a series of cold water baths in order to remove any excess dye particles. Yarn made from roving should be blocked thoroughly before use – we do this by washing the finished handspun skein in cold water and Synthrapol (you can use other wool-friendly detergents, too) and swish the skein around for a few minutes in cold rinse water to remove any excess dye particles. Then we hang the skein on a hanger, and if the there’s any twist to the skein, we weight the free end down with something (I normally use an empty plastic measuring cup). After it dries, it’s ready to be knit (or crocheted, woven, etc.)! Please do not use Woolite with any of our hand-dyed products. Despite the name, Woolite tends to do something really funky to the dyes that we use, and generally causes havoc to our hand-dyed wool fabric and yarn.

Q:	How do I order such and such a pattern from you?

A:	We will have a number of free knitting and sewing patterns available for free download on our website. We also have a line of patterns available to buy through our online shop. Of course, you can also contact one of the merchants on our retail page to buy directly from them.

Q:	Hey! I want to buy some stuff! How do I do that?

A:	Well, you can visit or call one of our retail locations to see our products up close and in person. Or, you can visit our online shop and browse our selection virtually. We’ll be having a wide variety of products available there, including yarns, fabrics, rovings, patterns, and gift. Also, we will be doing some special events at fiber festivals, so you can check out our news page or the blog to see what we having coming up.

Q:	Do you do custom dyeing jobs? For example, if I want some fabric dyed the same color as my cat, will you do that?

A:	Um… maybe? Custom dyeing jobs involve a pretty large amount of experimentation to match colors as close as possible. That being said, if you have an idea in mind for a project that isn’t too large, drop us an e-mail and we’ll see what we can do for you.

Q:	I own a (yarn, craft, etc.) shop and would be interested in carrying some of your products. How would I go about doing that?

A:	We are sorry, but we are not currently accepting new wholesale accounts. You may want to check back in the future to see if the status has changed.

Q:	I really like _________ pattern. Is it okay if I make copies it for my friends so they can make it, too?

A:	Well, we’re thrilled that you enjoyed the pattern, but making copies of it and giving it to other people isn’t okay. We’ve put a lot of hours and money into designing the object, writing the pattern, testing the pattern, designing the pattern, and publishing it. If you just give that away to your friends, that means we don’t make any money from that pattern. We’d appreciate it if you supported us and our retailers and recommend that your friends purchase the pattern there.

Q:	Well, what if it’s a free pattern? It’s free, so it must be okay if I copy it for other people, right?

A:	Not so much. You’re certainly welcome to print out a copy of the pattern for yourself, but instead of copying the pattern for other people, go ahead and e-mail them a link to the pattern so they can print it out themselves.

Q:	How about if I want to use items made from your pattern to sell?

A:	If that’s the case, e-mail us about getting a retail license from us.

Q:	What if I want to copy one of your patterns for non-profit use (for example, a group of us are going to make Basket Weave Hats and give them to needy kids)?

A:	E-mail us beforehand. We’re flexible.

Q:	I made a really cool ______ from your material, pattern, etc. Do you want to see what it turned out like?

A:	Yes! We love to see finished objects. Send us a photo and we’ll put it on our Blog .

Q:	Hey, I think I found a mistake in one of your patterns. What’s up with that?

A:	We test all of our patterns before publication, but it’s certainly possible that somewhere along the line, mistakes were made. If you find one, e-mail us and we’ll get it fixed as soon as possible. Thanks!

Q:	Hey, I bought a skein of yarn from you guys and it has a knot! What gives?

A:	We hate knots, too – they can be a pain to deal with, especially in a variegated yarn. However, the reality is that when you deal with yarn – especially when you have a skein of yarn that contains hundreds of yards of yarn – you eventually might have to deal with a knot. We discussed this a lot before we ever started selling any yarn and decided on the following policy for knots. Following industry standards, we will sell yarn with up to two knots per skein. The knots are discovered during the skeining process, so when we do encounter a skein that will have two knots in it, we try to add extra yardage to that skein to compensate for having to deal with the knots. If we have a skein with three or more knots in it, we set it aside and use it to knit samples and develop patterns. The only tricky part is that every once in a while, we’ll get yarn from our manufacturers that have just one ply of the yarn knotted with a tiny knot. Those can be very hard to detect and if you encounter one in a skein with additional knots, we apologize for that. We’ve skeined a lot of yarn in the past year, and have discovered that more than half of the yarn we sell is knot-free. Maybe 30% of the yarn has one knot in it, and about 15% has two. So if you’re concerned about knitting with our yarn and finding a bunch of knots, those are the odds that you’re dealing with. Ideally, we would love for every skein that we sell to be knot-free, but as far as we know, there’s not a single yarn manufacturer out there that can guarantee that, so until that day, we’re doing the best that we can.