Swedes hooked on knitting
Sweden.se
Knitting needles and crocheting hooks, stuffed away in closets for years, are re-appearing in Swedish cafés and homes. And its not just grandmothers who are putting them to use – a couple of professional free skiers are twisting yarn into very modern headwear.A few years back free skier Sverre Liliequist spent some time in the Rocky Mountains, USA. Traveling from one treacherous ski slope to another, he started passing the time with a needle and yarn.
For his active, outdoor lifestyle, he wanted warm headwear that also suited his personality. Finding nothing of interest in the shops, he picked up a crochet hook and started doing what his mother had tried to teach him over the past Christmas holidays. “I’m left-handed and my mom is right-handed so it took a little while to figure it out,” Liliequist says of his crocheting debut.
From pastime to business
His first attempt is still one of his favorites – a beret inspired by Jamaican Rastafarian hats. “It was a big hat – green, yellow and red,” he says. A couple of hats later and his friend and skiing buddy Kaj Zackrisson was also hooked, and they came up with shapes that were more suitable for skiing.
The new hats, or beanies as they are called, were fun and colorful and attracted attention on and off the slopes. Eventually, requests started coming in from other skiers and the pair began making more hats to give away as gifts or even pay the rent with. [more]
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