Knitting Advice Nr. 10 : Don’t use merino wool for stranded colourwork (some wools are much easier to knit with)

Nowadays, many knitters equate wool with ‘Merino wool.’ Merino wool is fantastic, and I don’t have anything against it. It is soft, it looks good, it’s widely available, and it has been widely crossbred to achieve a very fine quality of wool. There is a lot going for it, really! It’s a wool that I feel perfectly comfortable knitting with, and it has been my go-to choice for years. Until I realised that Merino wasn’t always the best choice for my projects, especially when it comes to stranded colourwork.

It all started in May 2021 when I became interested in expanding (and reviewing) an article on Norwegian knitting as a contributor for Wikipedia in French. It was an epic journey, with me browsing paragraph after paragraph on Google Translate to grasp content only available in Norwegian, and going on – let’s face it – a spending spree for books about Scandinavian knitting and Norwegian knitting in particular. So, I came across many splendid colourwork grids and naturally, I became very interesting in learning to knit a Selbu mitten, and not just any Selbu mitten, but a Selbu mitten as historically accurate as possible.
So I ordered some very fine needles online (1.5mm, 1.75mm and 2mm) -needles I didn’t even know existed until then. Very fine needles and my usual wool, so that was fingering weight merino superwash wool and off we go. A challenging endeavour; I knitted 3 mittens (with the same wool and pattern) before managing to produce two okayish mittens that I sent to a friend. I was not used to knitting on such small needles, I would make mistakes in the colourwork and had great difficulties undoing it because of all the floats and tight gauge, etc. It was a humbling experience. Norwegian knitters exported millions of Selbu mitten in the 1930s and here I was, unable to produce just two! But I persisted to prove myself (vanity, oh vanity).

But there’s a twist to this story. Having gone down the rabbit hole of learning everything I could get my hand on about Norwegian knitting, I came across the name of Annemor Sundbø, THE expert on Norwegian knitting and how she was breeding some Spelsau sheep. These sheeps were the ones the Vikings used to make their wonderful sails, whose remarkable qualities allowed them to sail (more or less safely) through rough sea. Not much of a blessing for the Brittish Isle, as they were vicious slavetraders, but I’m going on a tangent here. So… I got interested in Norwegian sheep breeds and old – but still operating – Norwegian mills and ended up ordering wool that came from Rauma. And here is what I discovered : those Selbu knitters weren’t superhumans after all! They were using Norwegian wool whose propreties are very different than the Merino wool. Namely : wool that is grippy. Stitches that kindly stay in place, no escaping, no laddering, no nothing. These stitches just stay there, waiting for you to put them back on your needle.

So, the first Norwegian wool I bought was the 2 ply Gammelserie from Rauma Garn which is great for knitting socks and mittens. My second purchase was some Finull yarn, with which I knitted a full jumper. Finull comes in 137 different colourways! The most common sheep breed in Norway is the Norwegian white sheep ( Norsk kvit sau in Norwegian), comprising about 70% of the breeding ewe population in Norway. So, my guess is that both Gammelserie and Finull are made from this Norwegian white sheep wool. My third purchase included more Finull and one skein of Vandre which is 50% white Norwegian 50 % Spelsau (unfortunately not Gammelnorsk Spælsau whose wool is of much higher quality). I haven’t knitted anything yet with this wool but it seems just as grippy and well-suited for colourwork.

When Norwegian want to buy traditional wool, there’s essential 2 brands that cover their needs : Rauma and Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk. The website of Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk is entirely in Norwegian. They sell some kits with instructions in English (https://ull.no/produktkategori/garnpakker/yarn-kits/). When the kit is available, you can press on the buy button (kjøp) and if the kit isn’t available, you’ll see the “choose an alternative /velg alternativ button instead. If you are looking for sock wool, go to “Garn” and then choose one of the “Sokkegarn”. Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk offers many different colours as well as different breed-specific wools. So far, I haven’t bought anything from Ullvarefabrikk but this mill, alongside Rauma, is the wool of choice of many Norwegian knitting designers.
In fact, Norwegians are so accustomed to this brand, that they often simply refer to it as ” Hifa” As an English-speaker, this diminutive isn’t the most straightforward one you might think of, but there you have it. For instance, in the book “Norwegian mitten and gloves” by Annemor Sundbø, she tells you she is using “Ask Hifa 2”, by which she means wool from Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk, called Ask and that is 2 ply. The down side of Hifa is that their website is in Norwegian. (I recommend using http://www.deepl.com for a free translation into any European language). The plus side is that you can order directly from them online. As for Rauma, you can’t order directly from them. For European customers, they have a list of retailers here (but the list is not up to date and they are more retailers in Europe). For the US, several online retailers such as Wall of Yarn and The Wooly Thistle carry a selection of Rauma yarns.

In summary, my experiences with Norwegian wool have led me to realise that Merino wool isn’t always the best choice for colourwork projects. My disastrous experience with the “Merino Selbu mitten” has opened my eyes to the importance of selecting a wool that aligns with the traditions of a specific knitting style. Norwegian wool, with its grippy texture and very good stitch-holding properties, makes colourwork easier and more enjoyable. This experience left me wonderomg whether other breed-specific wools might also be better suited for colourwork than Merino. Breeds whose name I know but that I haven’t worked yet. Amongst them, it seems to me that Shetland wool might be a very good option. It is grippier than merino. I haven’t done any stranded colourwork with it, yet it seems to me that this wool won’t be as easy to knit with than the Norwegian one, but still much easier than knitting with Merino. Additionally, the rich tradition of colorwork knitting in Scotland relies heavily on Shetland wool. With centuries of knitting history, trust in their wool choice is certainly warranted !
I’ll keep you updated with my explorations of European landbreed sheep wools. For now however, I can’t offer much more insight into the best-suited wool for colourwork.

Now, should you want to delve a bit deeper into Merino sheep, you will soon learn that “Merino sheep” is, in fact, a family name. In short, there are several strains of Merino sheep, and a non-exhaustive list includes the Peppin Merino, the Debouillet Merino, the Delaine Merino, the Saxon Merino, the Rambouillet, the South African Meat Merino, the German Mutton Merino, the Dohne Merino, and so on. And while I’ve been knitting a lot of ‘Merino wool,’ I can only guess which one I have any experience with. My bet is on the Peppin Merino, and here’s why: it is by far the most widely sold worldwide, as far as hand-knitting wool is concerned. Not all Merino wool is equally fine, and the extra-fine ones come with a much higher price tag, with producers specifying which breed their very fine yarn comes from. For all I know, some Merino strains might be easier to work in colourwork than the Peppin one.

References :

• Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius : The fleece and fiber sourcebook: more than 200 fibers from animals to spun Yarn. 2011. Storey Publishing. See p. 135- 150 (on the Merino sheep family) + p. 323-325 on the Spelsau. Note that the Spelsau is also spelled Spaelsau, Spælsau and sometimes called “Old Norwegian”).
• Sarah Pollack: Old Norwegian sheep and their durable wool. Craftmanship. https://craftsmanship.net/sidebar/old-norwegian-sheep-and-their-durable-wool/
• https://www.rhonna.net/norwegian-sheep-breeds
  

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PS : I just realised that if I schedule a post and that I work on it as a draft, my poor suscribers apparently get these drafts sent to their email boxes! I apparently have 3 suscribers (which comes as a big surprise to me as I have hardly done any advertisement around this blog yet). Nevertheless, I’m sorry for the inconvenience I caused. I am trying to fix that. I’m not a techie. I thought I needed to create a newsletter to have suscribers. I had no idea any of my content was already going to some people’s email boxes! My goal with this blog is to share my knitting experience with you and hopefully, interact with other knitters. Spamming your email box is not part of the plan at all!