Wool Shopping in Iceland - Part ONE

Just a quick blog update before I go and get our dinner ready - I thought I'd write about my wool-shopping in Reykjavik!

I was excited about finding some new brands to try while we were over on holiday and Iceland didn't disappoint. We just found one dedicated wool/craft shop in the city itself, though a lot of the craft shops in the city were also selling balls of Lopi wool.

 Storkurinn is located up on the first floor of a building, above a supermarket but it's easy to find as the city is just small - even I didn't get lost there (and I'm infamous for my bad sense of direction)

 They were closed the first time we visited but I could still go upstairs and peek through the window!

 We went back the next day and they were open - yay!

 I was delighted to see that they had a whole 'wall' of Icelandic wool! - and in all the colours of the rainbow.

 It is a nice spacious shop with a large range of international brands too - such as Rowan, Hoooked, Debbie Bliss (I think), Noro etc - all good quality yarns and there wasn't any cheap scratchy acrylic! 

I love to see a wool/craft shop that obviously runs classes in the shops - I wish I had somewhere like this locally. They had tonnes of pattern books etc too and also sell fabrics, ribbons, buttons etc.

I had originally intended to just buy Icelandic yarn from there but this is some of what I selected!

None of this is from Iceland but it's all stuff that I LOVE!

I fell in love straight away with the skein at the bottom of this photo - it's made by Malabrigo yarn and is made in Peru! It's pure merino wool in a sock weight - I'm going to have to research this company; it's a new one to me. The skein above the blue one is made by the same company and is also merino wool and is a slightly thicker yarn (4-ply I guess)

The three balls to the left of the photo are all made by Schoppel and it's a yarn that I bought when we were in Germany! - it makes gorgeous crocodile stitch wrist warmers. They didn't have the full range of colours but I managed to choose three that I liked ;)

The final two are a German brand as well - I'd never seen these big balls of sock yarn though - they are 150g! I just loved the colours so they made it in the bag as well :) I will use them for more crocodile stitch wrist warmers!

Look! I did buy some Icelandic yarn there too- though the fluffy grey one in the middle is from Denmark! It's a brand I hadn't come across before so I thought I'd try them out.

I'm happy to say that the rest of the wool in the photo is actually Icelandic - the skein on the left is a pure wool, made by 'Hespa' (another new one for me - I need to check out their website). They seem to use all-natural dyes for their brand - my blue one was dyed with indigo. I could have easily bought more of this blue, or the different colours, but it was expensive.

The other yarns (the purple and light grey in the photo above) are also Icelandic - they are a fine lambswool, made by Gilitrutt so I now have yet another new brand of wool to try and a new website to check out.

The wool shop was lovely and had friendly staff - I'd really rate it if you're a crafter and are visiting Reykjavik. Buying wool in Iceland isn't cheap - but everything there is more expensive than here, it's just a fact of life and I've always believed that it's worth paying a little more for good quality.

They have a their own website (sadly all in Icelandic but the pictures are nice!) http://nytt.storkurinn.is/
and this is their facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Storkurinn/