Schaefer Yarn Silk Lace Yarn, Rosa Parks, Discontinued

A single cake of Schaefer Yarn Andrea in Rosa Parks — saturated coral, scarlet, and burgundy with a flash of indigo — painted onto Schaefer’s 100% cultivated mulberry silk lace, 1,093 yd / 100 g per skein.

This yarn is 0.2 ounces light (3.3 ounces instead of 3.5) 1030 yards and is discounted accordingly. 

The Andrea series names every colourway after a woman in history; this one is Rosa Parks (1913–2005), mother of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, with the biography printed on the reverse of the band. Schaefer Yarn closed its Interlaken NY mill in 2014 — Andrea has never been reproduced.

This listing is for one cake of Schaefer Yarn Andrea in the colourway Rosa Parks. One of one from the Schaefer destash; no more will be made.

About the yarn:

Schaefer Yarn’s Andrea is a 100% cultivated mulberry silk lace-weight — 3.5 oz / 100 g / 1,093 yd per skein, hand-painted in tonal multi-colour washes. Andrea is Schaefer’s silk flagship: a fine, mercerised lace silk with a quiet sheen and a very long yardage, gauged at 8 st/in on US 0 / 2.0 mm for serious lace knitters, and held doubled for fingering-weight stitch-pattern work. The line was hand-painted in Interlaken, New York, and the colour series was named after great women in history — each band carries a short biography of its namesake on the reverse.

• Fibre: 100% cultivated mulberry silk
• Weight: lace
• Yardage: 1,093 yd / 1,000 m per 100 g skein
• Skein size: 3.5 oz / 100 g
• Construction: 2-ply, mercerised lace silk
• Needle: US 0 / 2.0 mm at 8 st/in (held double for fingering)
• Care: dry clean recommended (hand-wash cold delicate; lay flat)
• Maker: Schaefer Yarn, Interlaken NY (closed 2014)

About Schaefer Yarn:

Schaefer Yarn Company was the Interlaken, New York mill founded by Cheryl Schaefer in 1991 and run as a family business through 2014, when Cheryl retired and the studio closed for good. Schaefer was known for two things: deeply painted, long-colour-run hand-dyes (Anne, Esperanza, Lola, Heather) and naming their silk flagship Andrea after great women in history — Rosa Parks, Emily Dickinson, Dian Fossey, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Zimmermann — with a short biography printed on the back of every band. Production stopped over a decade ago and the line has never been revived; every Andrea skein on the market today is from a remaining studio destash or a private knitter’s stash.