RiverKnits started out when Becci was on maternity leave with her third child. She is an engineer by trade and worked in a manufacturing environment for many years. It may seem completely unrelated on the surface, but the experience gained in designing and producing quality products spills over into her hand dyed yarns. She keeps all her notes and every colourway in the Etsy shop is highly repeatable. Since the beginning of 2017, her husband Markus has joined RiverKnits and guess what? He is also a engineer and has lots of customer-facing business experience.

We are both keen, experienced knitters who are passionate about British wool. As there are over 70 native breeds of sheep in the UK, we believe there is more than enough fibre to explore on this little group of islands! RiverKnits wool yarn and fibre is all sourced from the UK, you won’t find any Merino here! The majority of the range today is Blue Faced Leicester; a lustrous English longwool. It’s buttery soft to work with and takes dye beautifully. As we are so proud of this British heritage, we are also currently in the process of getting some 100% Jacob wool spun into a DK weight yarn. Watch out for shop updates in the next month or two!

Another passion we were able to realise is to live and work on our narrowboat home, the “Drowsy Maggie”. All RiverKnits yarn is hand dyed on the boat, whilst exploring the British canal and river network. In the warmer months, we will be trading from the towpath, so do keep an eye on social media (Facebook and Instagram) to see if we stop near you!

The colourways are often inspired by nature, wildlife and even industrial scenes that the Drowsy Maggie passes through. You can see this in the rich, earthy colours. The yarn is dyed in layers, to give it a complex and subtle appearance. This also makes the variegated range less prone to pooling. The core range includes 4-ply (fingering), DK, and lace-weight yarns, so we have something for most projects. We believe there is a colourway out there for everyone, so do have a browse and thank you for stopping by :-)