Monday, August 10, 2009

A few words about Kauni yarn...


I'd bought 3 balls of Kauni yarn in Denmark last year. We'd never seen it before and thought it was a Danish brand. We'd since looked at their website and learned that it is in fact an Estonian yarn. When we arrived in Tallinn, we went to The Old City Wall knitting market and even from a distance you could immediately spot the space dyed color changes.


They had hats and scarves and stockings like this that were clearly Kauni and I kept asking about "Kauni" and they kept saying "No, it is made here in Estonia." Then we literally stumbled upon some in a souvenir tourist trap. It was just on the shelf wound in unlabeled and unmarked balls. I didn't buy any just then and we went into the Jolleri Wool and Craftchamber near Town Hall Square and saw the same yarn in a skein.

This yarn can be really deceiving! It is hard to believe they are the exact same thing unless you really look! The ball on the left is the stuff I bought last year in Denmark and the skein on the right was purchased last month. I was so pleased to almost accidentally find exactly what I was looking for!

There was no website on the label but I found a website to navigate but most of the English links appear to be dead. Mom bought a few skeins of several colorways and there are pictures on their site. From what we can tell, it is made in Estonia and sold in these odd lots. In this case, this skein weighed 244 grams and cost 171EEK. They were all in random weights that were handwritten on the labels, but no dye lots. The skeins match each other exactly though and it matches the packaged and wound ball I bought last year in another country. So from what I can see, it is one and the same and Kauni is just a brand name for the repackaged and wound yarn. We've done searches for "Kauni yarn" and there are only a few people who import it and the way they describe it, it comes in these odd skeins and we still got it for less than half the going rate. So there again, sometimes it is easier for us to go to Europe to shop for yarn! ;) It would be worth contacting them to see if they would ship overseas, but I have plenty to keep me busy for a while! :D

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