In da Club IV: Rohrspatz & Wollmeise
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We at Strickmich! Club liked having Claudia Hoell-Wellmann’s Rohrspatz & Wollmeise yarns so much in 2014, we just could not resist and invited her to join in 2015 as well! Her yarns are unmatched in the hand-dyeing world: Deep, shiny colors and unusual combinations that no one but Claudia could think of. Like “Peggy“: Dark red, yellow, pink, orange and green. “My Peggy is a sweet girl, isn’t she?” Claudia says. Her semisolid colors are also fascinating and new every time: “Küken” (“Baby chick”) is a different orange than “Gänsefüsschen” (“Little Goose Feet”), and aluminum certainly is a different blueish gray than iron. Only someone with a very special eye and sense of color could see that and translate it to the dyeing pot. Someone like Claudia. Each skein must match her very high standards: Perfect color, no knots, always a little more than the promised 150 grams. If it doesn’t, it will end up in a “Nobody’s Perfect” box and be sold at Wollmeise’s spring or fall sale – to very enthusiastic knitters. Every batch will be inspected under a very bright lamp, wound into a signature tight skein and be put on its journey to knitters around the globe. The great quality of the yarn bases (developed by Claudia in cooperation with her spinneries), the beautiful colors, her friendly and professional team – we at Strickmich! Club couldn’t be happier to have Rohrspatz & Wollmeise yarns back in 2015.
Rohrspatz & Wollmeise have had a very exciting year so far: They added a new yarn base with cashmere called “Blend” to their selection, as well as special wool detergent with that delicious Wollmeise scent – just when it was time to move the shop to a bigger location, because the huge number of colors and yarn qualities had simply outgrown the old shop. Also, the little space where caring hands prepared the yarn for shipping and the storage space had become too small, so everyone had to move during summer. The new home of the Wollmeise operation (except for the dyeing studio) is a nice yellow building in the middle of Pfaffenhofen in Bavaria. Moving was a huge effort, but definitely worth it:
The new shop features four cozy sofas, so you can easily plan to spend half a day there – shop a little yarn, chat and knit a little, browse the shelves again, find something beautiful, knit a little…
Claudia herself also loves to knit when she is at her shop. However, at home she has a different ritual for winding down: “I love ironing on a Sunday afternoon with my shiny new ironing board! I turn on the TV and watch something stupid while I iron the sheets. There’s no better way to relax!” After that, she is ready to start dyeing again on Monday morning, creating new exciting color ways for the world of knitters. Her favorite color at the moment? “Glückstag (‘Lucky Day’)! It just makes me happy to look at it: a combination of Mamba-Samba-yellow-green and Am kalten Polar-Purple-Teal.”
We at Strickmich! Club consider ourselves lucky to have such an unusually talented dyer contributing a very special yarn in 2015 – just as pretty as in 2014, but different. Be prepared for a surprise!
In da Club III: Handu
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In Strickmich! Club 2015, we will broaden our horizons, and I am very thrilled to present the third yarn source: Ilona Korhonen from Finland and her exciting Handu yarns! Ilona (nicknamed “Ilu”) is a professional musician who has a PhD in music. Runosong, a traditional finnish singing style, is her genre, and she also teaches music and singing. As if that’s not impressive enough, she dyes beautiful yarns that make knitters’ eyes light up and hands tremble in anticipation!
Ilu started dyeing just for fun and showed the results on her blog. “Because indie-dyer scene did not exist in Finland at that time, my readers started to ask me to sell them. That´s how it started, but quite soon I launched a small webshop and a firm.” She offers an impressive range of colors, but her personal favorites are the very dark and autumn shades. In her shop you will find the workhorse basic sock yarns but also luxury blends. “I want to know that my yarns and dyeing process is sustainable – as ecological and ethical as possible”, Ilu says.
Colorful, fun sock yarns are her specialty – maybe because woolen socks are a bare necessity in a cold place like Finland? “Of course! But sock yarn is very popular too, and the reason is that socks are quite small and an easy knit.” Ilu herself knits all the time and also designs knitting patterns. With her two sweet daughters (5 and 9 years old) she spends a lot of time in her garden: “I do ambitious gardening during summer. I´m still just practising with vegetables, but I learn all the time!”
Next year, Ilu will not only be dyeing a very special, exclusive yarn for Strickmich! Club and keep her Online-Store running. She won a prestigious grant for composers by the Finnish government and will be creating beautiful pieces of music as well. I am very much looking forward to all her creations!
In da Club II: Rosy Green Wool
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… and today it is my pleasure to introduce the second supplier of yarn for Strickmich! Club 2015: Rosmary Stegmann and her heavenly soft “Rosy Green Wool“. Rosy grew up surrounded by yarn: Her parents owned a small spinnery in southern Germany that specialized in natural fibers. “My grandma used to design with our yarn and taught me how to customize sweaters for myself”, Rosy says. “In High School I knit all the time – I had tons of hand knit sweaters!” Today, Rosy has expanded her repertoire to shawls, hats and other accessories and loves to knit with beautiful colors: “I like it when my knitting pleases both my hands and eyes.”
Rosy Green Wool’s color range
Three years ago, Rosy was looking for a soft organic yarn: “The softness is very important to me – if something is produced animal-friendly, it should not mean that it’s not comfortable.” But such a hand knitting yarn was impossible to find. So she decided to create her own yarn label: Her high-quality certified organic Merino Wool is grown in Argentina and spun in a traditional Spinnery in England.
Rosy in the dyeing kitchen
Rosy has a PhD in Computer Science, and in the beginning, she worked for her yarn business part-time. But about a year ago, the wool demanded her presence full-time. “It was not an easy decision, because I was quite happy in the IT business”, Rosy says. “But this project of mine to bring great, animal-friendly yarn to knitters around the world was more important to me.”
Her new job has a lot of challenges to keep her sharp mind occupied: in-depth research about sheep breeding, dyeing and spinning techniques, customer care, choosing colors. Does she feel sad that her parents’ spinnery had to close in the 80s? “Well, on one hand it would be great to manufacture the yarn myself, and it’s surely sad that cheap synthetic yarns squeezed our products out of the market. On the other hand, it’s a huge task to run a factory, and I have grown very fond of the spinnery we work with in the UK. They’re doing a tremendous job!”
For Strickmich! Club, there will be a very pretty, exclusive color that dyer Danny has developed in a small dyeing workshop in England. He will kettle-dye the batch especially for our members (it’s not the color in the pictures – the Club-colorway is super secret and will remain so until the packages are delivered!)
Danny and his kettle
I am very excited!
In da Club I: Das Mondschaf
Strickmich! Club 2015 will have four very special yarns by four very special dyers, and the first that we would like to introduce is Sabrina Gleiß and her “Mondschaf“-yarns (“Mondschaf” is German and means “Moon Sheep”). Her yarns are smooth, shiny and soft, and she is the only dyer working for the club so far who also does spinning fibers (which, as an aspiring spinner, I appreciate a lot!). Sabrina was born with a great sense of color: “As a kid, I used to paint and draw all the time, and my favorite toy was a huge box of crayons”, she says. Later she went to college to study media design to create websites and virtual projects. In her job, she worked really hard to deal with the pressure, but at some point an acute hearing loss forced her to slow down. “I started to knit to distract myself. I sat down with my mom and some sock yarn from the supermarket”, Sabrina says. “The constant rhythm of knitting really soothed me and helped me to slow down.” Soon she discovered beautiful yarn blends with silk and multicolored yarn, but they all were not quit to her taste. “I knit this pair of hand warmers and ended up with huge black blobs on the backs of my hands. I thought: Well, there has to be another way – and started experimenting with dyeing yarn myself, trying to dye multicolored yarns that would not pool.” She started out with easter-egg dye from the drugstore and moved on to professional acid dyes. Back in her job, she spend her weekends dyeing. And she managed to dye multicolored yarns that would not produce stripes or blobs, but create an interesting, but harmonic knitted fabric.
“I realized pretty soon that I was dyeing way too much yarn to knit it all up myself. So I put up a few skeins on Etsy and Dawanda (a German platform for handmade goods).” Knitters all over the country were smitten, and it did not take long until Sabrina could update her shop regularly and present her yarns at knitters’ conventions, supported by her partner Jens (who, interestingly, is a magician) – “he helps me with all my crazy ideas.” Luckily for us knitters, Sabrina has a lot of those: “I always wanted to do something really cool, really creative, and dyeing yarn is just that to me. I can make people happy with the things I create, and that’s the best feeling on earth!” At Strickmich! Club, we share knitters’ enthusiasm about Sabrina’s yarns and are proud to announce that she has agreed to dye a very special color for our club members. One last question: Why is her shop named “Das Mondschaf” (“The Moon-Sheep”)? “I like this name because it sounds so dreamy. Also, I love the night, because people slow down and everything is nice and calm. During summer nights, I like to sit outside and watch the moon.” Now I want a wheel
It was obvious that this day would arrive: I want to start spinning my own yarn! I have been eyeing handspun yarns for a while because I link them so much: The long color changes, the heathered look, the interesting interaction between colors. Have you seen a
He was kind of hinting that he would not really mind me taking up another woolly hobby, and I very much appreciate that. But it still was not the time, and there still was not enough space. As you may know, we have moved into an old pub in a small village, and now there is one thing we have plenty: room. So much room which you only can afford if you decide that you want to live a one-hour-drive away from the next big city. I kind of got the idea that I could take up spinning now while folding laundry and listening to the Knitmore Girls Podcast. In Episode 298 they are talking about visiting a fiber auction, about the quality of fleeces, about spinning, and I was smitten. I knew: Now is the time to try out spinning. I called a friend in Hamburg (beautiful Julia who modeled my Joanie pullover), because I knew she had a spinning wheel. Last Friday she showed me the ropes on her Ashford traditional over a cup of tea, and it was really fun. (Thanks Julia!)
I spun a couple of yards, and I have to say: Yes, it’s fun. Great fun, and I think I will be able to learn it. It’s a great exercise to really take your mind off other things because you really have to pay attention to your hands and your work, even more than with knitting (but that may be because I am a beginner). On Craftsy I found a beginners’ spinning class with Amy King that I watched and liked a lot. And now there’s the big question: Which wheel to get? If you look around on Ravelry, most experienced spinners will say that it does not really matter and is just personal preference. You will be able to spin yarn on almost any functioning wheel out there, no matter whether it has two or one treadles, is upright or not, traditional or modern-looking. But I have kind of made up my mind about some features I want: at least 3 different tensions, double treadle, not too expensive, preferably made in Europe and available immediately. Unfortunately, some really nice wheels that spinning pros love are ruled out by my criteria, like the Schacht Matchless (just too pricey here in Germany), the great wheels by Tom Walther (you will have to wait 18 months until your wheel is ready) and the very cute Schacht Ladybug (still too expensive). It’s kind of sad because I think the Ladybug is really the most beautiful spinning wheel out there. The Bliss by Woolmakers is from the Netherlands, looks like a good deal and has lots of fans although it has been around for only one year. However, I know they had some problems with their double treadle wheels and I am not sure they have resolved them. It looks very clean and modern, but the looks (I am sorry to say) do not really warm my heart. So I am kind of leaning towards the If there are spinners among my readers (especially those who own multiple wheels) I would be very interested in hearing your recommendations in the comments! A Yarn Festival in Hamburg
Soooo many great knitters, so much colorful yarn, so many inspiring classes, so much fun! 
In case you missed Wollfest, please look at their website – most vendors do offer their yarns online, too: http://wollfest-hamburg.de/aussteller/ Knitting is Love
Those of you who have subscribed to my Newsletter already know: The first pattern from Strickmich! Club 2014 is available here in my Ravelry Store for 3.90 Euros. The yarn is the beautifully soft Merino/Silk Fingering by the talented dyers of DyeForYarn. They have developed this cool and deep red color called “Fire engine in a Princess Palace” especially for my Club members. And what else could one knit with a red like this than hearts? Enjoy! Getting used to…
Look what my mail lady has brought me: A very cute package to sweeten our arrival in our new home! Everything prettily wrapped and a joy to look at – a real treat! A knitter from Leipzig (who is accidentally – or not? – also a member of Strickmich! Club has surprised me with handmade stitch markers and this treasure here:
Crafting magazines from the GDR! I love those, because I like to look at old knitting patterns and gather some inspiration. Most patterns are not as detailed as the ones we are used to, but sometimes there are some interesting details or construction methods that can be useful. My pattern “Pepita” for example is inspired by a romper that I found in a crafting book from the 1950s. The magazines from the package are almost all from the 80s – which is fortunate, as the house we have moved into was last remodeled in the 80s as well, so there’s that vibe in our house anyway. I predict that that decade is coming back big time – and dolman sleeves are already here! Thanks a lot for the lovely package and the good wishes. We surely need them!
There’s still a lot going on in our house-slash-construction-site: The roof of the barn is leaking and must be replaced, we had a dripping pipe that caused some dripping from the ceiling in Peter’s office, which then had to be opened and is currently being dried by four very noisy machines, there are still lots of walls to paint and even some boxes to be unpacked. My future studio now looks like this, after lots of painting and cleaning:
And I could not resist decorating the window:
And while there is so much work and every day a new thing pops up that needs urgent repair, I have never lived in a place that felt so much like home. If you walk or bike a couple of minutes, there’s lakes, woods, fields, horizons, nature. That amazes me every day, and I can’t get enough of it (if you follow me on Instagram, you know what I mean). I am home, and I will never leave.
Knitting Class in Hamburg
On August 23rd I will hold a little knitting technique class at Mylys, Hamburg, Germany. See you there! Perfect Twins
These beautifully colored toe-up socks for my daughter (pattern is “Spice Man” by Yarnissima) have sweetened my evenings during the past couple of days. They are so easy to knit, and the pretty stripes in girly colors are just the thing to relax after a day of carrying boxes, unpacking, painting walls and cleaning up after the handymen that are crowding or house these days. Although the yarn is self-patterning (Zitron “Trekking XXL”, color 550), I have managed to make two socks that are exactly the same, using a little trick my grandma once told me (it is so simple that I am almost embarrassed to write it down, but I will do it anyway since I was not able to figure it out myself at the time!).
Industrially produced self-patterning yarn invariably has a repeat somewhere. Looking at my first sock, I could see where the colors from the toe of my sock started again (see the arrow). I finished the sock before the next pattern repeat was over, so I just wound the yarn from the ball until the pattern repeat starts again. It’s where the yellow stops and the orange begins, and that’s what I cast my next sock on with.
The disadvantage of this is of course that there is this tiny ball of unused yarn that will not be knit into this pair of socks. But I knew that I would use less than the entire skein for a pair of children’s socks, so I was okay with that. Also, scraps of colorful yarn have lots of uses in this house, that’s for sure!
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by Lisa Lloyd)
