Yummy Yama Yarn at Loop

We are so happy to be adding another new yarn to the lovely selection we already stock at Loop! Yama Yarn is brand new to us, and it is available to buy in store and online from today. This week we’re sharing a sneak peak into the creative process of Madeleine, the hand dyer behind Yama Yarn, as well as some pattern suggestions for our newest yarn.

Madeleine knitting, surrounded by natural beauty

Madeleine is the talented woman behind Yama Yarn. She is based in the coastal suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa.

The word Yama has a layered meaning from different mythologies and languages, but in Japanese it means ‘mountain’. Madeleine has a beautiful little garden, full of indigenous plants, where she draws lots of inspiration for her dyeing and knitting.

Some of the plants local to Madeleine’s area

Madeleine draws her inspiration from the natural world around her – the area surrounding the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa is home to a unique kind of shrub land or heath land called ‘fynbos’. This vegetation makes up 80% of the Cape Floral Kingdom.

The Fynbos Biome is home to one of the world’s richest floras, with more than 9,000 species of plants occurring within an area the size of Malawi or Portugal. Two thirds of these species are endemic to the region, meaning that they occur nowhere else on earth!

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Some of Madeleine’s beautiful knits, using her yarn

The influence of the natural world on Madeleine’s dyeing and colour palettes shines through with her wonderful photography and Instagram posts. As she is inspired by the landscape and the fynbos, Madeleine creates colour ways that reflect her natural environment and everyday observations.

Madeleine also uses harvested rain water for her dye baths, and to wash and rinse her yarns too. Her ‘dye studio’ is outside – in a corner of the patio that overlooks the garden.

Madeleine’s garden, with yarn hanging to dry

We feel very lucky to have Yama Yarn at Loop! We are stocking the Yama Merino Linen Worsted in store and online now. It is a beautiful blend of 90% merino and 10% linen. The yarn comes in 100g skeins, with 180m/199 yds per skein. This yarn has a wonderful lustre because of the linen content.

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We’ve got a few pattern suggestions here for our new Yama Yarn. Madeleine has let us know that it blends really well with the Spincycle Dream State for colour work, so there are so many yoked sweaters for you to choose from! The one shown above is Dreyma by Jennifer Steingass. You could also think about…

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Clockwise from top: Aveiro, Yanis, Koivua and Chaika

Koivua by Boyland Knitworks – this sweater uses Spincycle Dream State for the colour work!

Chaika by Midori Hirose – a cute and quick knit; one of our Loopettes, Juliet, is planning one of these in the Terre Vert colour way

Yanis by Isabell Kraemer – this lovely yoked sweater is being designed especially for the Yama Merino Linen Worsted, and will be released later on this year, so keep your eyes peeled! It uses three different colours.

Aveiro by Tête Bêche – a lovely minimal sweater that would show off hand dyed colours very well!

We hope you love our new Yama Yarn! If you want to follow Madeleine on Instagram, find her at yama_fibre_art!

When we have our ‘Loop in NYC’ pop-up shop, which will be 15th-17th November, we will have lots of the beautiful Yama Merino Linen Worsted with us, and you will be able to pick out your favourite colours for your project! And keep your eyes peeled for our post next week, when we will be showing you lots of other things we’ll be bringing to NYC!

Thank you very much to Madeleine for letting us use her lovely photographs!

Madeleine with her yarn

Giveaway winners!

This week we are also announcing the winners of our mYak Tibetan Cloud giveaway! Congratulations to ayuknits on Instagram and Sue Tulloch here on the blog, you have won 5 skeins of Tibetan Cloud each! We will be in touch very soon.

If you didn’t win our giveaway this time, don’t worry, we will be having more in the future!