Product: The Hemingway Sweater

October 24, 2016

We're very proud of our new Hemingway sweater. It's taken over a year to develop and builds on our years working with yak fibre. We're sometimes guilty of trying too many new things, and with much of our production moving to Europe, it made sense to slow things down and get one new product absolutely right - from yarn to final knit garment.

Our production chain can sometimes be complex. Most sweater brands choose an appropriate yarn from a reputable spinner. These yarns are generic and available to any other interested brand. Yak is rarely offered as a generic yarn, meaning we need to start from scratch. This adds a huge amount of time to development, but also means we end up with exactly what we want, and something unique. So when you pull on your new Hemingway this season you can do so knowing the yarn that made it is absolutely original and unique to Khunu.

The process of creating yarn starts by looking at the composition, and to help with this we collaborated with one of the best spinners in the business, and one of the few with experience working with yak. The fine down's short-staple length can make it challenging to spin so to help give greater consistency we decided to try some long-staple wool, which has turned out to be a great addition - strong and still with the great hand-feel of yak. We think you'll like it.

The obvious features of the Hemingway are the high neck and wide ribbing at the hem. We've been careful to ensure the neck is not intrusive, but is also snug enough to keep out the cold. The look of the wide hem was inspired by old submariner sweaters, but the functional thinking came from a nomadic Tibetan lady who wisely pointed out that snug fitting wool around the kidneys was critical to staying warm in sub-zero conditions. Someone who's lived her whole life at high altitude knows how to keep warm.

                              

The Hemingway will initially offered in navy, with a black and "hunter" green option following in early December.

 

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