Koigu

Koigu: Indie Before Indie Was Cool

Our shop has always been filled with hand-painted yarns. Long before the phrase indie dyer became part of the knitting vocabulary, a handful of remarkable artists were transforming yarn with color and creating something the knitting world had never seen before.

Our friend Laura Bryant was one of those pioneers. A fine artist with a background in color and textiles, Laura established Prism Yarns in the early 1980s. Across the pond, Colinette Sansbury had begun experimenting with dye techniques in Wales in the 1970s, eventually introducing unforgettable yarns such as her signature Point Five thick-and-thin.

By the 1990s, more hand-dyed yarn companies were appearing across the country. Fiesta Yarns in New Mexico, Mountain Colors in Montana, and Cherry Tree Hill in Vermont were among the names that became familiar to knitters searching for extraordinary color.

Over the years, our shelves have overflowed with yarns from these companies and others like them. Some are no longer in business, but what they created left a lasting mark on the yarn world.

Barbara Mandrell once sang, “I was country before country was cool.” We like to think these trailblazers were indie before indie was cool.

They weren’t following a hand-dyed yarn trend. They were creating it.

Then Came Koigu

One of our favorite members of that pioneering generation is Koigu Wool Designs, and we were delighted to welcome Koigu back to our shelves.

Koigu combines something we especially value: decades of experience and consistency paired with an almost fearless approach to color. Just when you think you have seen every possible combination, another Koigu colorway arrives and proves otherwise.

The story begins on a farm in rural Ontario, named Koigu after the family’s ancestral home in Estonia.

In the early days, the yarn came from sheep raised on the farm and was dyed in the farmhouse kitchen by Maie Landra and her daughter, Taiu. As Koigu grew, the flock could no longer supply enough wool to keep up with demand. The family began working with a trusted mill, eventually developing the yarn for which Koigu is perhaps best known: Koigu Premium Painter’s Palette Merino, or KPPPM.

The Woolshed was built in the early 2000s as the company expanded, providing a home for all that remarkable color and creativity.

Over time, a third generation joined the family business with Taiu’s daughter Kersti, making Koigu the story of three generations of Landra women creating yarn together.

Sadly, Maie passed away in the spring of 2026. Her influence, however, is woven throughout Koigu—from its roots on the family farm to the extraordinary use of color that has defined the company for decades. Today, Taiu and Kersti continue that creative legacy with their small team in Ontario.

Perhaps that is one reason we have always felt such an affinity for Koigu. Its story begins in an agricultural, rural community much like ours. Small-town Canadian folk really aren’t so different from Okie folk. Behind all those spectacular skeins is a family business, a small community, and a lot of hard work and imagination.

And phenomenal yarn.

Why We Love KPPPM

KPPPM is a fingering-weight, hand-painted merino that practically begs you to start combining colors.

One feature we especially love is the 50-gram hank. While many fingering-weight yarns are packaged in 100-gram skeins, Koigu’s smaller hanks make it much easier—and far more tempting—to mix several colors in a single project.

And if choosing individual colors seems impossible, Koigu has solved that problem too.

Their curated mini collections include the Paint Can, with five coordinating mini skeins, and the Pencil Box, with ten. Each gives you an instant palette while still leaving plenty of room to make the project your own.

A Little Koigu Inspiration

Jeannie used one Koigu Pencil Box to knit the beautiful Venation Shawl, designed by Ambah O’Brien. Ambah frequently works with Koigu yarns, and her designs are particularly well suited to showing off multiple colors.

Jeannie also knit Glow, a wonderfully simple slip-stitch infinity scarf combining one Koigu Paint Can with two skeins of Rowan Kidsilk Haze.

This one falls squarely into our favorite category of knitting: deceptively easy.

The combination of Koigu color and the soft halo of Kidsilk Haze does all the work, while the slip-stitch pattern makes it look considerably more complicated than it actually is. It is the sort of project you can settle into and simply knit.

We love Glow so much that we are offering the pattern as a free download.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE GLOW PATTERN

Hand-dyed yarn may be everywhere today, but companies like Koigu remind us where so much of that creative spirit began. Decades later, the colors are still surprising us—and we think that is something worth celebrating.

Prefer to watch?

Here’s the original Koigu feature from 24 Days of SWAK.