our philosophy
Nordic knitting - clearly explained
This is the philosophy behind all our products. Iceland is of course an important country in the knitting world due to its famous warm sweaters made of Icelandic wool with large patterns in the round yoke - but that doesn't mean that only the classic Lopapeysur are worn here, which despite their excellent properties are quite scratchy and especially at the work outdoors or on vacation in nature.
Icelanders love modern, Nordic design with clear lines, delicate colors and lovely details. This is reflected on the one hand in the often minimalist furnishings of their apartments, but now also in the art of knitting. Like so many knitters, our designer and company founder Sjöfn Kristjánsdóttir was influenced in her youth by her knitting mother, but never found the perfect patterns in her patterns that she wanted to use for her children. In addition, there was the problem that knitting patterns, then as now, are often written in their very own formulaic language and are so daunting, especially for beginners, that many people prefer to stop knitting quickly.
After Sjöfn attracted a lot of attention with the wool clothes she designed for her children and started to write down and publish her ideas as patterns, she decided to do everything differently here: Her designs are well thought out and impress with beautiful details, but can also be very easy be reworked by beginners. She attaches great importance to understandable formulations and prefers to write longer explanations that everyone can understand and follow than to sell short, technical instructions only for professionals who have been knitting for many decades.
With this in mind, she has also developed a basic recipe especially for beginners: All beginnings are easy , a set consisting of a children's sweater and hat. This set is aimed at anyone who has just learned the basics of knitting (purl and knit stitches) or is perhaps just teaching themselves through videos, but is not yet daring to tackle more difficult projects.
The sweater, like most of their jackets and sweaters, is knit in one piece in the round, top down. At first glance, this can look difficult, but each individual step is described in such detail and clearly that even a beginner, no matter how uncertain, can actually trust this project. In the end you understood the concept of the raglan sweater from above and you can knit any other sweater from Stroff-Knitting without any problems. The same goes for the hat, which makes a wonderful base for many of our other hats, clearly explaining details like regular decreases, earflaps, or knitted ties.
