We’re excited to bring you a wonderful new yarn that we discovered at Edinburgh yarn festival. Dandelion Rosy Sport yarn is an organic merino wool that’s hand-dyed in Sweden by Anna Strandberg. We are now the exclusive UK stockist of 24 beautiful colours.
Anna dyes rich, pretty colours that are almost solid, but have a little hand-dye variation. They are perfect light sweater-weight yarns that would work up beautifully in lace, texture or solids. The gorgeous colour range also lends itself to colour work beautifully.
We’ve sampled a number of the beautiful colours into lace swatches, which we have hanging in our window.
Dandelion Yarn Swatches hanging in the window at Loop London
This organic, GOTS certified yarn has a wonderful squishiness too it.
We have many favourite colours. It’s hard to choose just one. We love the range of pinks to berries.
Left to Right: Blushing, Salmon Salad, You Make Me Blush, Feeling Brave and Cranberry Juice
The brights are very jolly, perfect for children’s wear.
Dandelion yarn in colours: Fried Green Tomatoes, Raspberry Smoothie, Dirty Gold and Secret Superhero
But if your looking for a neutral to make the sweater or shawl you’ll never stop wearing, these yarns have you covered too:
L to R: Morning Fog, Thunder, Mountain Climber, Stephanie Says, Leatherette
Dandelion is a squooshie sport weight yarn with a put up of 320m to 100g. It will work for any wool pattern that calls for about 24sts to the 10cm gauge.
We found some patterns that were specifically designed in Dandelion Rosy Sport. Karin Weststrand and Emilia Jensen live in Sweden and have both designed with this yarn in mind.
Clockwise from top Left: Flöjten sweater, Vimpel cowl, Flöjten Cardigan and Ruta Sweater
The Flöjten Cardigan and sweater by Karin Weststrand are simple, stranded, colour work yoked patterns. (I’m casting on the sweater tonight). They are mainly in one colour with 40m each of three graduating colours and 15m each of two other colours for the dots. This would be a perfect pattern to use up some left over bits of sock yarns. These patterns are also available for children. I love Karin’s Ruta Cardigan, so simple with it’s textured circle pattern.
The Vimpel cowl by Emilia Jensen make delicious use of the Dandelion palette.
Anna Strandberg
We caught up with Anna to ask her a few questions about her yarn dying philosophy.
When did you start dyeing?
I started dyeing in 2013. For several reasons. It all started with reports about mulesing and angora rabbits being tortured. I promised myself than to try to only buy organic or animal-friendly yarns. However, I had really gotten into knitting with hand dyed yarns, and couldn’t find any organic ones on the market. Also, I could see a colour in my head, but it was always a struggle to find that exact nuance in the shops. Since, as a graphic designer, I work with colours all day, I tried dyeing my own yarns. At the same time, Rosy Green Wool started selling this lovely GOTS-certified yarn base. So I didn’t have to waive on the quality.
Early on I sent some samples to the biggest knitting podcast in Sweden, and they loved them.
Anna Strandberg of Dandelion yarn
How are your dyeing substances friendly to the environment?
They are only partially enviromently friendly right now. I use three different brands of dye. One is GOTS-certified, another lives up to the GOTS-certification, but is not certified, and the third isn’t certified at all. I use the latter for a nuances I can’t obtain with the first two dyes. My main concern is animal welfare, although the enviroment is important too.
I hope to be able to only dye with GOTS-certified dyes in the future, but I am not quite there yet.
What inspires your colour palette?
I wish I could answer “nature”, but I am such an indoors person.
When I began dyeing, I looked to other brand’s colours. But lately, the colors comes from an idea in my head, and I work from existing colors in my catalog. I have a book where I write down all my recipes. Some colours are the result of accidents that turn out amazing. I have to reverse engineer them to figure out how I achieved them.
Further Patterns that Anna Recommends
Ronn by Karin Weststrand, Ground pepper and Blue hour by Suvi Simola), Gärdet and Ängen by Erika Aberg. The final two are only in Swedish, but should be translated into English soon.
Come into the shop to see our pretty lace Dandelion yarn samples!
Loop is the host Sponsor for Pomfest 2017
2 Comments on “New Yarn Alert: Dandelion Rosy Sport”
what beautiful colours.
Love the da deli on yarn , colors are unbelievably beautiful. Can you post info for pattern to the beautiful cloths , thankyou