The first yarns.

Here’s a little introduction to the three first Sägen yarn bases. There are numerous undyed yarns available for hand dyers, but I’m pretty particular in what I like and wish to use and put out in the world - as a lover of all things wool, I want yarns that have as much of the natural properties of the materials left, and use non-superwash treated, protein fibres, like wool, alpaca, silk and other exciting blends.

All skeins are dyed using GOTS-certified dyes, and as all pigment from the dye bath is absorbed into the yarn, the only waste this practice produces is water. The skeins are washed using an organic wool detergent. Some of the darker colours may bleed even if they’ve been rinsed thoroughly here, so if you’re making a high-contrast project, steam blocking is a great way to finish it.

Let’s move on to the yarns! Those of you who have been following my plant dyeing journey know them well - Mermaid, Light Fe and Basilisk. Let’s start with the oldie in the game, Mermaid.

Mermaid, colourway Selkie

Mermaid was one of the first bases I fell in love with dyeing because every colour looks spectacular. It’s a fingering weight yarn (400 m/100 g) spun from 50 % merino and 50 % Mulberry silk. It’s ultra soft, definitely suitable for even the most sensitive, and has a beautiful shine from the silk. The yarn is round and very even, creating a smooth and fine fabric. Since it’s so soft, it’s also prone to pilling so be prepared to go over your sweaters with a wool comb every now and then, especially in places where there’s friction, like where the sleeves and body touch. Scarves and other projects that you don’t use in the exact same way day after day are less prone to pilling - I made a small version of Vertices Unite last winter and it still looks very good even after a year of use.

Vertices Unite

Mount Pleasant

Mermaid is perfect for things you want to wear next to skin, like cosy shawls and soft, light sweaters worked on needles 3-4 mm or thereabout. Here are some pattern ideas:

Vertices Unite by Stephen West
Open Edge Tee and Shorts by Jessie Maed
Mount Pleasant Tee by Pip&Pin
Luna Tee by cl.knits
Kuutar Top by Sari Nordlund

Think soft, smooth fabrics with lustre for Mermaid - it’s cool enough to wear even on warmer days and behaves very well both in lace patterns and for colourwork.

Next up is Light Fe!

Light Fe

Colourways Martallen, Askafroan and Ursus

Light Fe is also a very, very soft yarn, spun from 70 % baby alpaca, 20 % silk and 10 % cashmere. It doesn’t have the lustre of Mermaid, and uses light grey baby alpaca so all colours are slightly heathered and muted, which I love. The depth of the shades is just beautiful! Light Fe has 400 m/100 g but behaves like a slightly thinner yarn so look for patterns that call for a fingering to light fingering weight yarn, on needles 2.75-3.5 or so, with a gauge of 23-26 sts/10 cm.

Suolaulu Sweater

Some patterns I think would be a perfect match for Light Fe:

Suolaulu Sweater by Jonna Kostet (also available in her stunning book Knitted Kalevala)
Woodfolk by Weichien Chan
Ziggy Shawl by Joji Locatelli
When The Rainbow Is Enuf by Mara Licole
The Twigs by Junko Okamoto

Last but not least we have the fluffy halo hero Basilisk:

Basilisk, colourway Hearth

Basilisk is a classic silk mohair yarn with 420 m/50 g. It can be used on its own to create very light and airy garments, but is more commonly held together with another yarn to create a warm and very soft fabric with a beautiful halo. Basilisk pairs well with everything from Mermaid and Fe and other finer yarns, but also with heavier wool yarns like Cumbria.

Old Shell Cowl by me

Snow Crocus by Midori Hirose

By using Basilisk together with another yarn you can get almost any gauge you aim for - I’ve made things with a gauge of 16 sts/10 cm, as well as 24 sts/10 cm depending on what I used it together with. Here are some ideas:

Old Shell Cowl by me (originally designed with Basilisk together with Nutiden, but you can also use Lore, Cumbria or another DK/worsted weight yarn)
Snow Crocus by Midori Hirose (I got perfect gauge with Basilisk and Cumbria)
Elton Pullover or Cardigan by Joji Locatelly would be a lovely match for Basilisk and either Mermaid or Light Fe
Augustins no 14 by Anne-Sofie Velling would also be perfect for Basilisk and either Mermaid or Light Fe
Ingrid Mohair Sweater by Anna Strandberg
Fireflies jumper by me, in Basilisk and either Mermaid or Light Fe (I’ve made one in each combination and they’re both lovely!)

Fireflies jumper, by me

I hope this helps a bit on the quest for the perfect pattern for these yarns!

The release will take place on February 1st, right here: https://elkmarketyarn.com/collections/sagen

The first colours.

The very first colours of Sägen are here, and I wanted to take some time to talk about them and the names I have given them. My aim was to create a versatile palette with both beautiful neutrals and strong, vibrant shades that can be combined in so many ways: from soft earthy tones to neutrals with a dash of colour, or as saturated as you like.

Each shade has a name that somehow connects to a folk story or an idea in folklore, often but not always the Swedish or Nordic since that’s my own cultural heritage. Stories know no such borders though, and so many themes have been told in a wide range of cultures around the world, in different times.

Let’s move from the top left to the bottom right corner in the pic above!

Every collection needs a neutral grey, which might seem like an easy shade to create. But often the grey spills over into blues, or have a purple undertone, and I wanted a colour that complements both warm and cold shades. After som trial and error, Ulven was made - a light, silvery grey that is just as pretty on its own as it is together with basically anything. Ulven is the old Swedish word for wolf, and even though we don’t have any in the southern parts of the country where I live, this apex predator used to roam even the forests I walk now. It was of course feared, and people used the word Varg as a noa name, a name to describe something that’s bad luck or taboo to mention by its real name, instead of Ulv.

This one might not be the easiest to pronounce even for Swedish speakers - Askafroan. It’s småländska, my dialect, for Ask-frun or “the Ash woman” in English: a female entity much like the dryads in the Greek mythology, that lives in an ash tree. The ash has always been significant in Swedish folklore and of course Norse mythology (the World tree Yggdrasil is an ash), and if you had an old ash guarding your house you were lucky. Askafroan lived within a specific tree, and if treated well and sacrificed to she would protect and bring luck to the people around her. But like so many other entities from these stories, she would be very upset and send illness to those who disrespected her by hurting the tree or taking a leak on her roots. Askafroan is a light and warm sandy shade, the perfect base for combingin with more vivid tones, or to love just as it is.

This taupe-ish shade is called Ymers Gryta, named after one of my favourite poems by Swedish author and word artist Lennart Hellsing:

"Jätten Ymer i en dyster klyfta
ryter till så nattens fåglar lyfta.
Kokar korngrynsgröt i jättegryta
röken väller över jordens yta.
Rymden skälver, alla ulvar yla.
Det är urtidsnatt och urtidskyla."

This little poem is about the giant Ymer who cooks his porridge in a giant cauldron and covers the Earth with smoke. A story from my part of Sweden tells of the female giants who were good at baking flat bread and brewing beer, and that the fog over the fields was the steam from their porridge pots. Ymers Gryta is a darker version of Askafroan, where more of the ashy brown shades get to shine through.

Ursus is the name of this deep, rich brown shade, like the warm fur of a hibernating bear. Ursus is the latin name for a genus of bears, among them Ursus Arctos, the brown bear that inhabits the northern parts of Sweden, and bears have been very important creatures in Swedish folklore. They were often seen as a little slow and gullable, but just as with the wolf, the bears had several noa names, and some people were thought to become man-bears, much like werewolves, and roam the forests and kill sheep and cattle in the night. Ursus has so much depth and is the perfect base for an autumnal colour combination, but also looks really really good with the cooler shades.

Hearth is named hearth because I couldn’t think of a better word for this colour, or a better colour for this word. It’s a warm, rich red with fiery undertones, beautifully saturated and still rather calm somehow. The hearth was of course also a central place in every home, and as all important places it also found its way into folklore. In England, there are stories about how fairies live in the hearth and if you want to bring luck with you when you move into a new home, you can light one last fire and carry the still hot coals with you, allowing the fairies to follow you.

I couldn’t possibly put together a collection like this without including a nod to one of my very favourite characters, Baba Jaga. She is a complex crone archetype from the Slavic tradition, an old woman living alone in the forest, in a hut on chicken legs. She has teachings and lessons to offer you, sure, but they always come with a price, and entering her hut is not for the faint of heart. If you come upon her hut in the forest, you won’t find a door on any side until you say the words “Turn your back to the forest and your front to me”. Chicken Legs is a fiery orange that leans more to the brown than the red, and it’s the perfect pick-me-up to add that little extra to a more muted combination of colours.

It is said that the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other colour, and I often think about how many different things “green” can mean when I move through the forest where I live. Martallen is a very harmonic olive kind of green, with some grey undertones. It can feel almost like a neutral, together with more vivid colours, or add a streak of forest feel to a neutral palette. Martall is a Swedish word for those crooked, small pines that grow very slowly on mires and marshes - one of my favourite kind of trees, that just do their weird old thing without giving a f about their straight, tall pine relatives in forest plantations.

While we do have stories about mermaids, sea creatures or sea guardians in Swedish folklore, they’re not quite as fascinating as the selkie myth from the northernmost Scottish isles. The selkie is a shapeshifter, a woman and a seal, and many stories tell of how she is tricked into staying forever in her human form by a man because he wants to marry her. If he can steal her sealskin while she’s in her human form, she can’t shift back into her seal shape, and she is caught on land, forever longing for her underwater life. The Selkie colourway is a light, soft hue somewhere between green and blue, with lots of silvery grey in.

Svartgölen is a rather common name for small forest ponds here in Sweden, but my favourite one is located in Store Mosse national park. It’s surrounded by a quagmire and you need to walk the last 600 meters there across a footbridge. Once you arrive, the pond is dark, still and the cranberry and moss covered sides plunge straight down into the deep, dark water. The colourway Svartgölen is a dark petrol, and just as Selkie it’s neither quite green nor blue. Just as I like it.

I guess if you’re a Scorpio, you need to always have a midnight kind of purple, don’t you? This is definitely a colour that stands up for itself. It’s purple: dark, deep, unapologetic purple. I had to give it a night name, and chose Marans Natt, meaning “the night of the Mara”. The Mara in Swedish folklore is a haunted creature that torments her victims, both human and animals, with nightmares and terror. She sometimes looks like a beautiful young woman, and sometimes as a hideous hag, tangling the manes of the horses during the night or riding them so that they’re sweaty and tired in the morning. To protect yourself against maran you could put your shoes under the bed with the toes pointing in, cover all windows and little holes in your bedroom, and if she still managed to come in you could pour out a bag of sand on the floor and ask her to count them all.

Trollharen is a purple too, but the similarities with Marans Natt end there. This is a light and sweet, silvery purple tone that’s very mild and soft. It has a nice grey tone to it and it adds a romantic touch to basically anything. Trollharen in Swedish folklore is not a very romantic creature at all though - the word translates to “the magic hare” and is a creature created by a witch to steal milk, or draw luck, from neighbouring farms. The general Swedish name for this kind of creature is “bjära”, and in different parts of the country it could take the shape of a bird, a cat or even a ball of yarn. Where I come from, the bjära took the shape of a hare, thus - Trollharen.

Svartgölen, Ymers Gryta, Ulven, Askafroan and Selkie.

This is the first collection of Sägen yarns all summed up. I hope that you will discover single colours or unexpected combinations and that the stories I’ve woven in while making them continues with you. Perhaps you remember an old folk tale from your own culture, and maybe it somehow seems to connect to mine, even if we come from very different parts of this strange planet.

The first collection will be released on February 1st, on Imbolc, right between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, when we can start dreaming of spring for real here on the northern hemisphere. See you then.

https://elkmarketyarn.com/collections/sagen

A story about a story

The story of Sägen

Sägen is the Swedish word for a very specific kind of folk story: one that is set in a past remembered by elders, neighbours, acquaintances or travellers, and that tells of frightening or chilling events often including supernatural creatures or entities. It’s short and part of the old, oral storytelling tradition, and unlike sagas or fairy tales, it has some claims of truth, placing it in the liminal space between myth and history.

In the Swedish sägen, things are never quite what they seem. They tell of encounters with trolls, giants, ghosts, fairies and other creates, and quite often it’s not easy to sport the difference between natural and super natural. A common way of dispelling the supernatural was to say its true name out loud, but just as often, the creatures were neither benevolent nor malignant. If you treated them with respect and made small offerings, they could help you. But if you didn’t believe in them, if you were careless with their home in the natural world or somehow offended them, you would soon regret it.

Even though a Sägen is tied to a specific place, they are often retold with small variations in many different places. They were meant to uphold a certain kind of structure and enforce some behaviours while discouraging others: don’t get lost on the mire, stay away from deep water, move with respect through nature. Be kind, not greedy. They were also, no doubt, a way to pass the time when the night was really dark and the winters cold and long.

Onto a story of stitches.

Folk tales and myths have been a source of inspiration in my work for many years, and my hope is that the yarn, the colours and the names I give them, will be passed on to those of you who pick up a skein or five. Because what is knitting, or crocheting, embroidery, weaving, needlebinding or any textile craft based on fine threads, if not the creation of a story? All the hours we spend with yarn and needle in hand, knitting our worries out from our minds, knitting our joys into the fabric we create. It’s my story, inspired by so many old stories without authors, and then it becomes yours. It might not always turn out exactly to what we expected, but the magic twist in this whole craft is that we can unravel - undo what we did, and then use the very same thread to create something completely different.

All Sägen yarns are natural fibres: wool, silk, alpaca, cashmere… They have not been treated to withstand machine washing but have their wonderful, natural properties left - a mitten that turned out too big can be felted to just the right size, a steek can be secured by needle felting the raw edges. I simply love wool because it is wool, behaves like wool, feels alive and has character, and removing this takes away some of the fun.

The first release will be all about semi solid shades. I’ve worked hard to come up with a palette where all colours work together and that can be combined in numerous ways, even if there aren’t tons of shades available. As the seasons change, I will add more colours. Some colours are more solid and some more variegated - there are stories even here, and I love to pick out that spot of dark colour where the pigment for some reason was more concentrated, think about how it will look in a knitted fabric, give the surface depth. Some shades may vary over time, as I have moved from one dye studio to another and my recipes need adjusting to the different composition of the water. It’s not an exact science and neither do I strive to produce batches that are exactly alike - part of the story is that it’s hand made, and that is allowed to show. Just as your finished sweater won’t look like it’s been bought in a store. There’s a freedom in letting that pointless and unobtainable perfectionism go, and I look forward to exploring it more.

From Febryari 1st, 2023, Sägen will be sold in my yarn shop, www.elkmarketyarn.com. Let’s make stories.