I still remember how I spent some of my childhood days in Britain. When I was exploring the city with my mum, I would always stop at the local yarn shop and gaze at the windows in wonder. None of us was knitting back then, but both of us admired the stranded colourwork, heavy intarsia and cable knit jumpers in beautiful, muted colour palettes. The pattern books that also were on display indicated a yarn brand called Rowan which was responsible for the designs I instantly had fallen in love with.
More than a decade later when I finally started to knit, I was happy to learn that this company still existed and was pretty famous for their high quality yarns and exquisite designs. I browsed their patterns on Ravelry and started to collect older issues of the knitting and crochet magazine. My first Rowan sweater followed soon. It was knit in Kid Classic, a wool, mohair and nylon blend I still like a lot. Currently, I am knitting a yoked sweater in Kidsilk Haze, but I will tell you more about it another time.
I am glad to have been invited to the Rowan roadshow in Hamburg where I had the opportunity to learn more about a brand that has been inspiring me for such a long time. The company still follows its heritage of quality yarns in paintbox colour palettes paired with timeless design. I was a bit ashamed that I had missed the launch of two pure British yarn qualities, Valley Tweed and Moordale. Both are spun in Britain from British Fleece and are featured in this autumn’s British Made pamphlet. You may have noticed already that the Knitting and Crochet Magazine now is divided into a main collection and the Focus magazine. This season, Rowan focuses on natural fibres but the topic will change every season. You can purchase these two publications bound together with a wrap or individually which I find a pretty cool idea.
A completely new concept is Mode at Rowan. This collection is a capsule wardrobe in a contemporary design that reflects current fashion trends. The patterns are intended to fit easily into your wardrobe and beginner-friendly to knit. This fall, Mode at Rowan consists of a large pattern book with 18 patterns and four smaller publications showcasing one yarn quality each.
Another new
concept is the 4 project pamphlet. Each issue has four patterns in one yarn
quality and is yarn shop exclusive, so not available online. But talking online
availability, I am delighted to find the patterns of all other new Rowan
publications for individual purchase on their website! An exception is the
Rowan Magazine which is available in a digital version only in the Rowan App.
One of my personal highlights this season is Arne & Carlos’ remarkable men’s collection. It is called New Nordic Men’s Collection and interprets classic Norwegian knits in a fresh and modern way. Vegard, Vidar and Jens are my favourites, but all designs are really clever. I would definitely wear them myself as they perfectly work as unisex designs.
There are two new yarns for this season, Cashmere Haze and Island Blend. Cashmere Haze is a laceweight blend of 40% alpaca, 30% cashmere and 30% silk with a meterage of 230m per 25g ball. It is a sister yarn to Kidsilk Haze but even softer and more luxurious.
Island Blend is a DK weight yarn composed of 70% Falkland merino wool, 15% baby alpaca and 15% silk. It is super soft and has a beautiful stitch definition.
I also was
allowed to take a first glimpse at the SS20 collection, but at the moment, I am
mainly looking forward to fully indulge in winter, my favourite season. I will
let you know more later this year.
Thank you, Rowan, for the wonderful and informative meeting in Hamburg! Also thank you for the product samples, I am looking forward to try them out!
Last weekend, I attended the 12th edition of the annual Leipzig Wollefest. I love this event as the location, the exhibition centre’s glass hall, and the vendor’s list are both pretty extraordinary. As usually, I will introduce you to my latest discoveries as you probably already know the well-established exhibitors.
The very first booth that caught my eye was Kathienchen, a German hand dyer from Dresden.
She offers complex colourways on a variety of mostly Merino based yarn bases. She also sells high-quality kid silk lace yarns with a very high fibre length.
I have found the perfect match for two other yarns there that needed a third colour to become a shawl for a friend. I could not be happier with my High Twist in Peony!
Mominoki, a Berlin based hand dyer, showed semi-solid colourways on rustic yarns.
This is exactly what I had been looking for for quite a while now, and they even have two different bases, a fingering weight Finnish wool and a DK weight German Merino. Both are available undyed and plant dyed, the Finnwool also has acid dyed colourways.
Apart from those perfect-for-me bases, Mominoki offers some more yarns, an optionally plant dyed, drapey ramie silk, plied Merinos, singly-ply Merino and sock yarns. You definitely might want to give them a try.
Another vendor selling beautiful, rustic wool was Nordische Wolle.
They sell rustic, DK weight Baltic yarns in hanks of about 200g in a large variety of colours, but also ready-made stranded hats. The yarns are collected from the area around the Baltic spinnery, so they are entirely locally produced.
Moi Naturwaren showed handwoven linen and woollen cloths as well as plant-dyed yarns and ready-made caps.
All of their natural products are manufactured using traditional methods and processes as well as natural dyes where possible. I am very happy for every company that dares to follow such a consistent approach in today’s volatile times and hope there are enough customers to support them even in the long run.
This Berlin based online shop offers natural cloths only along with their own sewing patterns. I am particularly delighted to hear they plan to open a brick and mortar shop in the near future in Berlin.
This means that the silk worms are allowed to complete their metamorphosis and live, which results economically in a much longer process with shorter silk threads. This does not lead to a lower silk quality, it is just more difficult to produce. It is even possible to weave superfine cloths with a classik silken touch.
Seidentraum offer quite a large range of silk cloths, silk yarns and many more silk products. This is definitely a company worth supporting!
They mainly use local and organic raw materials which are plant-dyed only. The idea is to preserve craft and culture in Ladakh, Assam and Himachal Pradesh by valueing their handmade textiles. I greatly appreciate this approach!
There were quite some local alpaca breeders showing their products. One of them was Starker Alpakas from the Dresden region, who sold handmade soaps, yarns, socks and other products.
Another breeder was Sachsen Alpakas, who sold yarns, spinning fibre, garments and cloths.
What I particularly liked was their faux fur, woven with alpaca fibre. It is super soft and warm and has a fantastic look and feel.
I am looking forward to the next Wollefest in 2020! It is always a pleasure to be there!
After spending only one day at H+H Cologne last year, I decided to opt for a full three days this year. This is definitely necessary if you want to explore new companies and have some time to talk, be it at the stands, with fellow knitting bloggers or designers.
H+H welcomed its visitors with a cosy coffee bar right after the entrance paired with a small exhibition focusing on sustainable and eco-friendly products right next to it.
There were quite a few novelties shown:
One of my first discoveries this year was Elbwolle, a small company from northern Germany.
Traditionally, sheep are held there to graze many of the greens, but their wool had not been put to use in the recent years. Elbwolle wants to change this and produces yarns, loden cloth, bedding and fertiliser using local wool. They offer two very different types of yarn, fingering weights and super bulky ones.
The fingering ones have a slightly rustic feel, just like I love them. They remind me of Traditional British and Scandinavic 2-plys. The super bulky ones range from 80g/ 10m, spun around a cotton core, to 220g/ 20m, spun around a woollen core. As an idea how to use them, Elbwolle has shown some knitted squares to be used as cushions as the yarn has some sort of built-in padding due to its construction and thickness.
They also offer huge, handcarved knitting needles and crochet hooks to match their super bulky weights.
I also like that their yarns have a code showing all process details. This starts with the crop year and the sheep breed and continues with all manufacturers involved in all steps of the making of the yarn! I am really impressed about this level of transparency!
Another very interesting, young company is Nomad Noos, a yarn manufacturer that sells handspun yarns from Mongolian animals.
The yak, camel, sheep and goat fibres are bought from nomads directly, then handspun in Nepal. All processes in the production are sustainable, the people involved receive an income above the countries’ average. You can read more about their mission here.
The yarn range consists of four fingering weight qualities. Dry desert camel, a 100% camel yarn, high mountain yak, a 100% yak yarn, smooth satul sheep, a 100% Mongolian sheep yarn, and so soft yak and satuul, a blend of yak and Mongolian sheep. All yarns are incredibly soft and wonderful to touch. Although the sustainable and fair approach makes these yarns luxury goods, I am deeply impressed about the consistency of this small company. I really hope this concept will work out in the long run.
I spent quite a while at Gepard, a small yarn company from Denmark.
They work with small, family owned Italian yarn mills and have a very interesting range. Their Kid Seta, e.g., has a remarkable fibre length, comparable to the Uschitita Kidsilk Lace I have used for the Birds of a Feather shawl. It comes in a large colour palette so well composed all shades go well together.
Another yarn that caught my eyes initially is Wild Soft, a fingering weight, worsted spun blend of 60% Merino and 40% wild Tussah silk. It also has a DK weight, woollen spun sister yarn, Wild Wool Silk. I really like this idea of spinning the same blend differently depending on the resulting yarn weight! There definitely will be interesting differences in texture, reflection and drape in the results.
A more classic yarn quality is Pura Lana, a DK weight blend of 50% alpaca and 50% Merino. In my opinion, this eco-tex certified yarn could be an alternative to the squishy, pure Merino DK’s of other manufacturers. Gepard also has a GOTS certified base, Cotton Wool, a blend of 50% organic cotton and 50% organic Wool. It is availabe in fingering and aran weight.
I was really surprised by the beautiful knitting patterns. There were some of the designs at the booth which all were very clever with lovely little details.
If you like unusual hand-dyers, you might want to take a look at Urth.
It is a family owned American company which has their yarns dyed in Turkey. Apart from the sock yarns which contain 25% Nylon for durability, their yarns are 100% natural. They have semisolid range, Monokrom, in fingering, worsted and chunky weight single-ply Merino. The Uneek range comprises variegated, but tonal yarns on the single-ply Merino bases as well as a pure cotton DK weight and a self-striping sock yarn.
The sock yarn also comes in non-striping variegated colorways as Merino Sock.
Now to their true gems. Coexist is a fingering weight 80% silk and 20% Merino yarn, that I wish was available in semisolid colourways, but that I have seen in lightly variegated colourways only. I would like to try it anyway as I imagine the result to be super drapey but with a lot more elasticity than pure silk. The next rarity is a fingering weight 2-ply pure cashmere yarn, Kashmir Mono. It is available in a variety of semi-solid colourways, among them a beautiful dark grey.
Their most extraordinary approach, in my opinion, is Harvest, a fingering weight, plied, pure Merino. This collection is dyed with natural colours only with stunning results! They even have a black as black as can be. This is pretty difficult even with artificial dyes and this is dyed naturally. Wow.
Urth also supports the Trees for the Future project with one planted tree per skein of yarn sold. I am really happy to see more and more companies trying to be more eco-friendly by whatever approach. Maybe there is hope for future generations after all.
It is always a pleasure to see The Fibre Co. at H+H Cologne. They develop their own natural yarns and have strong values behind their products. I attended their Saturday brunch where Daphne introduced us to the company, the yarns and a new project: The one sweater. The idea is to provide a classic sweater pattern that comes in 13 (!) sizes and that can be styled to suit everybody’s wardrobe. This means all sizes, ethnicities and different styles. I am really looking forward for the campaign as I expect a large variety of interpretations.
Last year, Lore was introduced. It is a wonderful DK weight yarn made from British Romney sheep with a fantastic stitch definition. As it took way longer than one year to develop it, there will be no new yarn this year. Instead, the colour palettes of the existing yarns will be extended.
I am currently working on two projects with The Fibre Co. yarns and I like them so much that there might be more in the near future. I will tell you more, soon.
Pascuali served their yummy yarns in dessert bowls, ready to be tested by you.
They just have launched Cumbria, a vegan, fingering weight yarn made from 60% cotton and 40% rayon from bamboo. It is very soft, drapey and good to work with.
Apart from their vegan range, Pascuali is well-known for their luxury fibres. Their selection includes camel, cashmere, musk ox, yak and even vicuña. They offer everything to make a yarn lover’s heart beat faster.
GGH always has a beautiful way to highlight their products.
They showed some fresh designs and yarns for a/w 19/20. I particularly loved the three designs by their new designer Kseniya Bogdanovich.
If you are still looking for a yarn for your summer knits, I can definitely recommend their Bambu, a 100% rayon yarn made from bamboo. It is super soft, light and has a beautiful drape. It also is the yarn I chose to realise my Sleeves shrug.
Austermann surprised me with their brand new booth. Designed to provide a lot of open space, it was held in neutral colours to highlight their yarns.
Their novelties include a beautiful, DK dip-dye effect yarn (60% rayon, 40% wool), a fluffy alpaca yarn and a 100% cashmere, fingering weight chainette yarn. They also have some interesting designs for the next a/w season, e.g., a simple, yet wonderful hooded coat in Alpaca Fluffy.
Every year, I’m looking forward to see Novita‘s new colourwork designs. They never disappoint:
They recently have published a collaboration with Moomin featuring some really cute designs.
I really like Novita for their yarn policy. They often add new colourways and discontinue older ones, but the yarn bases change rarely. I, personally, am always happy to have long-term sources for durable, classic yarn qualities. Novita definitely is one of them.
This year, Rosarios4 are celebrating their 40th anniversary. At H+H, they took this opportunity to decorate a full wall of their booth with portraits of some of their workers at their workplaces.
The Portuguese company is not only a trader, but also a yarn manufacturer focusing more and more on natural yarns. Their eco-friendly (plastic-free) collection currently comprises 28 winter and 24 summer qualities they even have naturally dyed yarns and 5 GOTS certified, organic yarns. To draw more attention to this approach, there was a large shelf showcasing their sustainable products only.
Gedifra easily combines playfulness and opulence. Did you know that all of their yarns are mulesing-free? I fully appreciate this philosophy!
Their new yarns include a cashmere lace yarn made from 95% recycled cashmere fibres and 5% wool as well as a self-striping glitter sock yarn, skeined to be knit into two identical socks.
They also presented their sustainability project make me, take me in cooperation with Green Bag Lady. The idea is to sew, knit or crochet sustainable grocery bags to replace plastic bags. Initiative Handarbeit aims at 10.000 German bags to be made until the end of this year. To keep count, you can order numbered labels to put on your handmade bags.
I really like the concept, but Green Bag Lady has started this idea back in 2008 and me and all my friends and family already use sustainable shopping bags only, so I wonder if this initiative did not come up a bit late. However, I am happy for every plastic bag that can be avoided.
Like every year, Initiative Handarbeit also organised a fashion show with all the key looks by Lana Grossa, Swafing, Rico Design, Austermann, Online, Veno, CONCEPT by Katia, Gütermann creativ, GGH, Schachenmayr, Gedifra, Rowan and Lang Yarns.
Prym showed the next generation of their knitting mill which now can be fixed onto a tabletop and has the weight integrated into the overall design. Well done, this truly is an improvement!
They also have new pom-pom makers that feature handles to facilitate holding them.
Maybe they inspire you to make yourself such a gorgeous pom-pom chair:
I will close now with some pictures of the Katia booth which always is decorated beautifully. Thank you so much for having me, H+H Cologne! See you next year!
This was my third Yarncamp in a row and I am sure I will attend the next one in 2019 as well. With its barcamp background, Yarncamp is so very different from the usual knitter’s meet-ups where you mainly buy yarn, take workshops you had to book in advance and hurry through the day to meet your knitting friends who live too far away to see them regularly. At a barcamp, it is you who decides which workshops (sessions) will be held.
Each morning starts with a plenary session where everyone can offer or request sessions covering subjects she knows well or wants to take a closer look at. All suggestions are collected to a publically accessible session plan so you can check it whenever needed. Each time slot has 45 minutes which leaves 15 minutes between two sessions to have a cup of coffee, a quick chat or to grab something to eat from the buffet. To give you an impression on how versatile the sessions are, these are the 2018 session plans:
I attended the GGH session and the tatting and bobbin lace session on Saturday and also held an introductory session to toe-up socks myself.
GGH introduced their new “Bambu” yarn, a 100% rayon yarn made from bamboo. The session participants were asked to try it out, so I took my chance. The yarn knits up easily, has a good stitch definition, is soft to the touch and has a wonderful drape.
I am super happy I was allowed to take three dark grey balls with me to play with, I already have something in mind for next summer. As it is intended to be a summer yarn, Bambu’s colour palette actually is a pastel one, so I am very happy GGH has included a “light black”.
Uschi Wolf‘s introduction to tatting and bobbin lace was very interesting as she explained the potentials and limitations of each technique, apart from an overview of the techniques as such. She also had brought some of her current projects with her:
On Sunday, I attended the labyrinth knitting and yarn festival tourism sessions and held an introductory session to advanced vegan cooking and baking.
Doerthe knocked me off my feet with her labyrinth knitted sweaters. They are constructed by knitting a looong (30m or more) meandered garter “string” which is then assembled to a sweater. Sounds weird? Here is how it is made:
Using this technique, planning ahead is everything. A gauge swatch is mandatory as it affects the shape of your result as such. Moreover, you need to layout your labyrinth on squared paper first, to place the increase and decrease points. And in case you are still interested by now, like me, there is a book on that which sadly is out of print. It is called “Unexpected Knitting” by Debbie New and maybe I have ordered a thrifted version for myself before the end of the session.
During the “yarn festival tourism” session, Claudia Eisenkolb and the participants have compiled a list of yarn festivals worth a visit. I have added the links in case you are interested. 😉
You may wonder why I went to three sessions per day only, but there is so much more happening around that you keep losing track of time. I had a lot of really good talks in the lobby, tried out Schachenmayr’s new premium Regia sock yarn Alpaca Soft on Pony “perfect” dpns at the Schachenmayr knitting lounge and took a look at the book samples Haupt and Stiebner publishing had provided for reviewing.
The yearly yarn exchange table is also something worth mentioning. You are asked to bring some yarn, needles, books or whatever knitting related things you would like to get rid of and place it on the marked table. You also may take whatever you like no matter whether you have contributed to it or not. The leftovers then are donated to a local charity that knits them up for people in need. But look at how full the table was this year! There even were bags and books placed around it!
Apart from yearly charity for people in need, there was another one this time, held by Claudia Eisenkolb, to support Förderverein für tumor- und leukämiekranke Kinder e.V., Mainz. Claudia sold a lot of her personal knits and donated the proceeds.
She revealed the sum of the proceeds in the closing session and I am speechless she was able to donate 1376,56 €. Well done, Claudia!
In contrast to the previous events, this year’s Yarncamp warm-up event on Friday night took place in a bistro only with no yarn shop visit beforehand. As much as I liked the former warm-ups in yarn shops, I have to admit, I prefer the pub only version. It is so nice to have all evening to get to know each other and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere with everybody looking forward to the actual event that starts the next morning. In case you did not attend, you definitely should. You will start your Saturday with a lot more familiar faces who are happy to see you again.
Big thanks to all the sponsors who once again have supported this event. This year’s goodie bag was so filled with yarn, accessories, etc. it almost would not close. I did not take a picture of it as I had to disassemble it completely to fit it into my luggage, but you can find a pictures of it here, e.g.
See you next year, Yarncamp! I already have blocked the first weekend in November 2019 in my calendar. Thank you for a fantastic weekend in Frankfurt!
I was super happy when I received my invitation to the Schoeller blogger event, particularly as it included a factory tour at their dye works in Hard, Austria. A perfect combination of my degree in engineering and my love for knitting! Of course, I confirmed the invitation and was delighted to meet Rebekka, Alice, Kiki, Miki, Fritzi, Stefanie, Janine, Jasmin, Katha, Simone, Steffi, Marco and Julia-Maria. We were welcomed with a cup of coffee in a beautifully decorated conference room.
First, we were introduced to the company, whose main branch are industrial yarns. With their dye works located within sight of Lake Constance, they had to fulfill a lot of environmental requirements very early. The result is, that their yarns are bluesign approved, the treatment for their machine-washable yarns is chlorine-free and as a bonus, they are mulesing-free as they use south-american Merino only.
The tricky part is, not all their handknitting yarns are manufactured by themselves. So the Austermann Merino yarns, Schoeller Zimba and all sock yarns are produced to the Schoeller standards, other yarns may or may not be chlorine-free or bluesign approved, depending on the individual case. However, I am deeply impressed, Schoeller is working on a sustainable production.
If you are interested in my pretty technical summary of the factory tour, you can find it in my Instagram story highlights. Nonetheless, I want to write about some details here.
This is a poster showing the fineness of sheep wool depending on the animal part it is shorn from. The lower the number, the finer is the fibre. As you can see, the shoulder part (1) is where you find the finest hair with only 14,5 micrometers in diameter. This is how it looks like as a wool top:
Sadly, this quality is so hard to spin that fine hand knitting yarns usually start from 16,5 micrometer fine fleeces.
As industrial yarns are knit on knitting machines, they must not have considerably thicker or thinner sections. During quality assurance, these sections are cut out and the yarn is joined with a technique known as “Russian join” in hand knitting:
After lunch, we were introduced to the design philosophy behind the Austermann and Schoeller+Stahl hand knitting yarns as well as their knitting patterns. They also had brought a lot of their knits to take a detailed look at them. As all of us had received a large package of yarns to play with beforehand, we were asked to show our projects and to share our opinions about the yarns we had used. My favourite projects were a cardigan and a hand bag knit by Fritzi and a cowl by Alice. I will show you my own projects in a separate post, soon.
Thank you so much for inviting me, it was a blast! It was totally worth the 20 hours I spent in Flixbuses to get to Lake Constance and back. The day passed by way too fast with an amazing insight into the company and some really good talks. Well done, Schoeller!
After several years in Cologne, this was the first Wollfestival to take place at Rheinterrassen in Düsseldorf and I prefer this location a lot from the old one! The market place was located in one large hall instead of three smaller rooms before. The charity events were on a small stage, the designer booths perfectly visible in the corridor in front of the hall and there was an array of different spinning wheels to try out in the basement.
The Saturday opening queue was pretty long, as usually, but I got inside the building in less than 20 minutes, which I find very appropriate. The overall colour concept was bright pink, which I dislike a lot, but the concept was implemented very subtly, with small yarn samples hanging at the handrails, e.g.
As shortly after the opening the market place was so crowded that I could not make it to any booth, I decided to take the opportunity to knit a while and wait for the afternoon. There were a lot of lovely places to sit and knit, inside the building as well as outside in particular. Apart from using the restaurant terrace behind the building, you could sit on the quai wall and knit overlooking the ships sailing the Rhine.
Now to my personal selection of sellers, that I would like to introduce you to. First of all, I was more than happy to see Wolle Willich once again. They are one of my favourite German yarn shops and specialise in Shetland yarns and rarities. They even have started their own range of locally grown natural yarns recently.
Sadly, I did not have the time to visit the Atelyeah brick and mortar shop in Mönchengladbach before I moved to Leipzig last year, so it was a perfect incident they were showing a selection of their product range in Düsseldorf. Very lovely booth!
Another interesting seller was Alice im Wunderladen. They carry a lot of high quality and rare yarns from the US, UK and Scandinavia, The Fibre Co., Fyberspates and BC Garn, e.g., to name some of my favourites. They even have a seller from Leipzig! 😎
Lanaphilia also had a booth and it was a pleasure to see the beautiful colours of Zen Yarn Garden and Olann. They also had brought some String Theory Caper Sock, a yarn I particularly like for its softness and stitch definition at the same time.
It was a pleasure to meet Bodolina in person and to have a look at her handcrafted knitting needle organisers. They come in a large variety of colours and sizes, so have a look at them if you still have not found your perfect storage solution.
The biggest surprise was Mohairdesign, actually a breeder of angora goats, who sells yarn from her own goats. I particularly liked the bouclé yarn, but everything there was stunning.
Of course, I have bought some yarn. I needed two Madelintosh unicorn tails to contrast some leftovers in Victorian Gothic, so I bought one in Silver Fox and one in Duchess. My purchase of two skeins of black Lanamania Pearl fingering was completely unplanned, but I just could not resist. As currently I get more and more disappointed by my KnitPro needles, I bought a pair of interchangeable Chiaogoo Red Lace circulars to try out their system. I already like their fixed circulars, so hopefully, the interchangeable ones are just as good.
I spent most of my Sunday visit at Kölner Herzkissen knitting a charity hat. I do not exactly remember why I cast on an intarsia in the round hat, but at least, the result is pretty unusual.
My next public knitting event this year will be YarnCamp in Frankfurt. Do you have your tickets, yet? If not, the last ticket opportunity will be September 12th, 19:30 on their website. Good luck and see you there!
The most stunning colourwork sweater this year, imho, was shown at Novita, a Finnish yarn company. This honestly inspires me to try multicoloured intarsia:
Schoppel, as expected, has beautiful new designs for their fantastic yarns. They always follow their unique style with lots of new ideas every year. This is truly impressive.
At Pascuali, I have found some colour inspiration packs. They consist of three to four balls of one yarn quality in matching colours. There is no pattern included so they are just intended to get your creative juices flowing. Nice idea!
Over at Rowan, I found an interesting knitted sample. It is only stripes and slipped stitches, but the effect is fantastic:
Now to the last section of my summary:
Fun
Prym has developed some new gadgets. There are, e.g., tassel makers, flexible cable needles, stencils for animal pom poms, or a special pom pom maker for teeny tiny pom poms with a diameter of 3cm only. All of them were demonstrated live by @daniela_maschenkunst and @realmenknitpink:
Chiagoo now offers a set of interchangeable mini needles, going down to 1.5mm and with super short cables. How cool is that, please? Gorgeous engineering, by the way!
I also stumbled upon a wall of knitted trophies, but I forgot to note the company. Sorry!
Like last year, I was allowed to visit H+H Cologne as a blogger. Sadly, I could spend only one day there due to other appointments I had that weekend. This was definitely too little time although I had planned my visit in advance. However, I nonetheless have found a lot of inspiration.
Textures
I was happy to see so many designers play with textures. At Habu Textiles, e.g., I found this subtle texture:
At Lana Grossa, I unexpectedly stumbled upon this beauty:
At Novita, I instantly fell in love with this coat, a stunning combination of lace, cables and bobbles:
Bobbles seem to be quite popular at the moment, another example from Katia,…
Schoppel once again surprised with very unusual textures:
Another great find was The Fibre Co.‘s latest collection using their new yarn base Lore. A small excerpt (thank you, Daphne!):
To finish this section, I just have to show you Katia’s texture samples. They were too beautiful:
Yarns
I am always looking for interesting yarns. But as I am not that much into colours, I tend to fall for structure instead. I am not surprised to have spent quite a lot of time at Blue Sky Fibers. Their range of yarns is stunning, particularly because of their composition as well as their construction. The sport weight Metalico, half baby alpaca, half silk, comes in natural shades only, which, together with the single-ply structure, underline its natural shine. Next to it, you can see the sport weight Baby Alpaca, which comes in a large range of colours. It has a plied structure, but is beautifully soft.
Another fantastic yarn is their worsted Organic Cotton. It is unusually thick and soft for a 100% cotton and I am looking forward to try it out in a project soon. It even is available in different shades of grey and has a great stitch definition.
As I was invited to The Fibre Co.‘s blogger and designer event, I was further introduced to their exquisite range of yarns and was able to take a look at Lore, their latest addition:
It is made of 100% Kent lambswool and has a yardage of 250m per 100g. I almost can’t wait to try out the greys and the dark purple!
But there are also other really interesting yarns, e.g., Terra, an aran weight alpaca, merino and silk blend, …
… Knightsbridge, a light worsted weight baby llama, merino and silk blend, …
… or Meadow, a merino, baby llama, silk and linen blend you probably already know.
At Pascuali, everybody was invited to try out their luxurious yarns:
One of their new products is Soffio, an aran weight blend of 90% cashmere and 10% silk. It is extremely fluffy and soft, perfect for winter garments:
Pascuali also have an extraordinary new pure cotton yarn, Suave. It is lightweight, fluffy and pretty far from anything you might expect from pure cotton with 162m per 25g. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of it. Maybe I was too busy admiring it.
My next stop was at Habu Textiles‘ booth. Well, I just do not know where to start, so I’ll start with a picture:
This is paper yarn and maybe I’m a bit in love.
Another interesting find is this 100% silk yarn …
… or these textures…
…or these tiny pom poms on thread:
When I arrived at Baa Ram Ewe, I was surprised not to see the colourful Dovestone range which was introduced only last year. But it has a worthy successor, Winterburn. The only difference to Dovestone is that they have exchanged the Wensleydale fibre for Masham, which makes Winterburn a bit softer than Dovestone. I am looking forward to combine the Winterburn sample I have received with my remaining Dovestone bits to compare them directly. Dovestone, by the way, is still available undyed and at baa ram ewe directly.
I want to finish this section with two new yarns by Lana Grossa. There will be a sparkly aran weight yarn in the Lala Berlin range and a fingering weight merino and linen blend. They both look pretty interesting:
I will stop for now as this post already is quite long and will tell you more about H+H Cologne tomorrow.
Now that I live in Leipzig, I finally have made it to the annual Leipzig Wollefest! I was pretty surprised how big and beautiful this festival is.
Of course, you can find some of the famous indie brands there, e.g. Wollmeise, DyeForYarn, dibadu, Zauberwiese, or das Mondschaf, but I am sure you already know about their beautiful yarns. So let me show you some smaller booths that have caught my attention.
I was super happy to meet Claudia Eisenkolb aka Himawari knits! at her designer booth. She had brought a lot of samples, even an unpublished design. It was so good to see all those gorgeous little details live. You miss a lot of them when you just quickly browse them on Ravelry. The samples also show how nicely the yarns and her patterns play together. She focuses on shape and texture, which I, myself, have been experimenting a lot with, recently. Apart from that, I always enjoy our talks a lot.
Another designer I was happy to meet in person is Nicola Susen. I like her idea of a sweater pattern as a detailed guide to how and where to adapt your knitting to your body measurements. In addition, she has a cool way to play with lines and colour. I already have knitted her Longitudinal socks, a fantastic sideways socks pattern. You definitely may want to take a look at her designs!
As you already know, I have a weakness for unusual, ethically sourced yarns. So I was pretty happy to see Seidenhase at the festival.
They keep angora rabbits for the love of the animals, collect their hair without hurting them and sell it as knitting yarns, batts or ready-made items. They have a small manufacture in Germany and are my number one choice for future angora acquisitions. Definitely worth supporting!
My most surprising find was a woodworker. Rainer Mewes has a range of classic wood products, but he also produces writing instruments, spindles and spinning wheels. I do not spin, but how cool would it be to have a handmade spinning wheel according to your requirements? I love the idea!
There also were a lot of places to sit and knit at the exhibition hall. My favourite one was the catering area on the balcony-like first floor.
It was a wonderful weekend. I have met so many nice people and had a lot of good conversations, on knitting as well as on life as such. So, see you next year, Leipzig Wollefest!
Of course, I had to attend a yarn festival so close to the place I live! I went there last Sunday with my friend Rebekka who even had organised our tickets (thank you so much, again!). Apparently, Sunday was a lot more enjoyable than Saturday as you could breathe, rest a moment and even take a relaxed look at the yarn stands.
As I am still trying to destash, I had strictly planned possible yarn acquisitions. I needed black and white fingering Merino Singles to combine them with a hank of Tosh Merino Light in Tart for a Black Lodge Shawl. When the pattern was published, I instantly fell in love with it. It combines so many things I like, Inspiration from the Twin Peaks TV series, darkness and an edgy, very talented designer. Just take a look at Lisa Mutch‘s other designs if you haven’t done already and you’ll understand why I like her style so much. A lot of her designs are in my favourites and my queue just waiting for me to find yarn for them. By the way, Lisa much also dyes her own yarns and carries wonderful, dark colourways.
However, I chose a hank of Dibadu Funnies Simply Merino in Mondlicht and a hank of Das Mondschaf Aurora in Black Hole. Dibadu as well as Das Mondschaf are both German Indie Dyers with stunning colourways but different focuses. You will find a large selection of speckled and shaded yarns even for the darker taste on luxurious, but quite common yarn bases at Das Mondschaf, whereas Dibadu is not overly dark, but carries a lot of stunning colourways on a huge variety of common as well as less common yarn bases. I definitely need to try their Curly Silk one day, to name only one of their gems.
I had allowed myself to buy yarn for another project as long as it inspired me to knit something specific. To be honest, the Wolle Willich booth inspired me as a whole. They carry traditional British yarns and similar yarn constructions from elsewhere only, so I could have bought everything if they just sold more blacks and darks. After a long and pleasant conversation with the shop owner, I chose a Blacker Yarns Mohair Blend in purple to knit a Lestat shawl.
And here’s a picture of the beauties I bought:
In fact, I spent most of my time at Wollfestival not shopping but in the company of wonderful people. There was a lot of space to hang around in groups and have a cup of coffee together:
So we were chatting and discussing knitting ideas a lot. Thank you, Rebekka, Daniela and all the other lovely people I met for a perfect Sunday knitting afternoon! See you next year!
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