I attended the Zombie Knitpocalypse retreat this past weekend. There are so many things I could talk about (it was a joyous experience). And I met so many wonderful new people.  However, the thing that’s tickling my brain right now is yarn –specifically, crazy colorway names.

Each night at the retreat Megan and Amy held a drawing,  giving  away massive amounts of yarn, fiber, tools, and other notions, donated by the retreat sponsors. While listening to the giveaways, I noticed that there seems to be a growing trend for wild and creative colorway names, many of which seem more like mini stories than simple descriptions of the colors.

Leading Men Fiber Arts has some amusing offerings.

Fable Fibers is no slouch either.

However, Kirbywirby Yarns‘s colorways blow everyone else out of the water:

Now of course, this set my own crazy little brain humming. Kirbywirby has already managed to take this idea up to 10. How could I take it to 11 or 12?

And then I remembered an amusing little web site called They Fight Crime.  (Sadly, the  web site is now defunct, but the original content has been kept alive by Paul Makepeace.)

Imagine, if you will, a series of yarn colorways inspired (and named for) unlikely superhero pairings in the style of They Fight Crime:

• “He’s a one-legged white trash rock star looking for a cure to the poison coursing through his veins. She’s a time-travelling Buddhist opera singer with a knack for trouble. They fight crime!”
• “He’s a genetically engineered shark-wrestling waffle chef who hangs with the wrong crowd. She’s a sarcastic foul-mouthed traffic cop with an incredible destiny. They fight crime!”
• “He’s a lounge-singing ninja astronaut from a doomed world. She’s a bloodthirsty goth widow looking for love in all the wrong places. They fight crime!”
• “He’s a bookish overambitious paramedic searching for his wife’s true killer. She’s a pregnant green-skinned widow living homeless in New York’s sewers. They fight crime!”

Would you buy that? I know I would.

The realist in me realizes that there’s probably an upper limit of 10 words or so before a colorway name is too long.

I’m not listening to her right now.