Bohus

Our high quality, hand-dyed Angora yarn duplicate the color and feel of the original Bohus Stickning in Sweden. This co-op closed its doors in 1969, when Emma Jacobsson retired and it became impossible to obtain high quality fibers at a reasonable price. Stagecoach Yarns makes it possible today for any dedicated knitter to resurrect the Bohus Tradition.

Back in 1994, when Wendy Keele was writing her book, Poems of Color, she tried to find angora-blend yarn from which to make up the sample sweaters. There wasn't any being manufactured in either Europe or the United States in the broad range of colors she needed. However, Meg Swanson referred her to Janice Becker, of Kimmet Croft Fibers, who was having her angora yarn spun at Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill, and they referred her to me for the dyeing.

So we all collaborated to produce the yarn for the sweaters shown in the book, with Green Mountain Spinnery doing the fine yarn at the 40% angora/60% wool content which Jan calls "Fairy Hare". Over the years the content of this yarn has come from Jan's sheep and bunnies, but once I gave the dye formulas to Jan, she took over the dyeing, and has produced the yarn for the Bohus kits under her business name, Kimmet Croft Fibers.

From the beginning to the present, the small American custom spinning mills have had difficulty with spinning such a high angora content at such a fine weight, but we are now working with Blue Hills Alpacas and Fiber Mill to produce this yarn.

I also offer kits for the wool sweaters in Poems of Color. This yarn was also matched to the original color cards and samples from the museum, so the colors will be slightly different from the ones in the book, which were the closest match Wendy could get from commercial yarns. I'll have additional pictures of sweaters from these kits as soon as I can get samples knitted—I'm faster at dyeing than at knitting!

Below are some of the Bohus sweaters from the kits we have available, including the Wild Apple modeled by Jan's daughter Clara.

The Wild Apple	Red Palm Pullover
The Dean	The Large Collar
Wild Apple Pullover	The Late Autumn