We are very excited to announce our 2020 Pop-Up Shop series! Each month, we will be featuring an indie yarn dyer or company, showcasing their yarn, and highlighting perfect patterns to go with them! We'll also share an interview with the owners and designers here on the blog.
For the month of May, our Pop-Up Shop is Rosy Green Wool!! Founded by Rosy and Patrick, Rosy Green Wool uses all-natural dyes and environmentally friendly processes to harvest, spin, and dye their wool, and they are certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard. We had a chance to talk with Patrick and Rosy about their yarns, and we couldn't be more excited. Read on for our interview with Rosy!
I have been knitting since my childhood, but my life changed completely when I first heard that for my dear hobby sheep are being treated cruelly with the painful practice of Mulesing. That was the point when I decided I could not continue to knit with wool obtained in such a manner. I searched for alternatives, but I could not find organic wool - guaranteeing animal welfare - that was also supersoft and came in beautiful, radiant colours. This fact surprised and motivated me to try finding a better means of wool production, making the exact yarn that I would like to have myself. When I told my husband Patrick about my wool production idea, he was immediately thrilled. Together we learned a lot about sheep, spinning and dyeing. That was back in 2012 and, in the meantime, that initial idea has grown into our mutual calling. One of our main concerns is to also donate a portion of our earnings to effectively reduce suffering. Today, Patrick manages the operational business of Rosy Green Wool. I, as Creative Director, am responsible for the development of yarns, colour palettes and knitting pattern collections.
2. Where do you find inspiration for your colors?
There are many things that inspire me, for example browsing through Pinterest or Instagram, but the main areas for colour inspiration for me are nature and fine art. Both constantly surprise me with new and often unexpected colour combinations. Often I walk through nature with my “colour glasses” on, take photos to remind me or note down what I’ve discovered afterwards. It is also amazing what you can learn from the great masters of painting. The way they use colour contrasts immensely sharpened my intuition and refined my own colour choices very much.
3. Is there any particular colorway that has special meaning to you?
I don’t have a particular colorway I love more than others - colours are all fabulous and just need the right combination to sparkle. But I would like to mention how my mindset with regard to colour has changed since we founded Rosy Green Wool.
When I heard about the often devastating conditions in the textile industry, I defined my understanding of colours and dyeing newly. Today, meaningful for me with regard to colours is what is possible without harming the environment and the workers. For this reason all of our colours are certified according to the strictest international textile label, the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). This restricts our dyeing, however, to working with a positive list of non-harmful chemicals only. For example, bleaching chemicals or certain heavy metals, which can be dangerous for health or environment, are not allowed to be used under GOTS. This means that we cannot dye certain colours like neon shades. Also pale colours are difficult to achieve without bleaching.
For the colourways we develop, 2 things are key: combinability and colour quality. The colours of our palettes are always thoroughly thought through and can be combined beautifully with each other. Moreover we want to show that “organic” does not mean you have to do without bright, radiant and long-lasting colours with a lot of depth. But it often takes many trials and a lot of time until our dye house can create a new colour that meets all our quality criteria. And only these colours make it into our palettes.
4. When did you first learn knitting or crocheting?
My grandparents had a small spinning mill in Southern Germany. So from early on, I grew up with the smell of wool and the love for this fascinating material. I learned to knit and crochet already at a relatively young age. It was my grandmother who showed me how to design and knit my own sweaters. She also taught me how to make adaptations to existing patterns to better suit my style. As a result I was knitting all my sweaters myself already as a teenager. From her I also learned a lot about high quality yarns, the properties of different fibres, but also about colours and how they can be combined to create beautiful designs.
5. And just for fun: If you could design a parade float that was fiber themed, what would it look like?
This is a great idea! I’m fantasizing wildly now: The float wagon would have the shape of a gigantic sheep (with curled horns), made of a patchwork of knitted pieces - big and small and really colourful. And on the back of the sheep, there would be music and a big party of knitters from all over the world, singing, dancing, knitting and crocheting. To remind and inspire us that as a community we can achieve unbelievable things and our imagination should know no boundaries!
Ready to browse? You can find all our Rosy Green Wool offerings here!
