We first met Catherine Knutsson, our collaborator on the Beyond Merino yarn club, when she organized the Great Canadian Wool-Along last summer as a way to celebrate crafting with local materials and supporting Canadian wool farmers. We loved the concept of the wool-along, and jumped at the chance to connect with a community of Canadian wool-lovers. As we got to know Catherine better it became clear that her passion and knowledge really dove-tailed well with our own values and goals for our business. We'd been toying with the idea of starting a yarn club, but weren't sure we'd have the time and ..read more

This year we're celebrating Sweet Paprika's 15th anniversary, and it's honestly been a bit hard to get my head around where the time has gone! We've been looking back through some of our old photos, and thought it would be fun to share a little retrospective here. Our little business has come a long way in the past 15 years! Most of the images I'm including are not our polished product photos (although those have also come a long way since the early days), but more of a behind-the-scenes look at some of the memorable stepping stones along our journey. I'd also like to start off by saying a hug ..read more

Last December, just as we were shutting down the dye studio for a holiday break, we got an email from one of our favourite customers telling us all about an upcoming event we might want to look into: the Year of Gnomes Knit-Along. We loved the idea, and couldn’t resist joining in by dyeing up some mini-skein Gnome Sets for you to play with. We ordered in some special yarn as soon as we got back to work in January, and our Gnome Sets are now ready to head on out into the world! "Never Not Gnomeing" and "Gnome Pun Intended" patterns by Sarah Schira So what is the Year of Gnomes KAL? Designer Sa ..read more

Saltwater Gifts is the third book in the Saltwater Knits series written by Christine LeGrow and Shirley A. Scott. Like the first two books, Saltwater Mittens and Saltwater Classics, this book is grounded in Newfoundland tradition and includes many quotes, stories, and beautiful photography.  Saltwater Gifts includes a wider variety of patterns than the previous two books. There are several patterns for trigger mitts, mittens and gloves, some for hats, slippers, and socks, and some home accessory patterns - great for gift giving! The first pattern that caught my eye while flipping throug ..read more

The story of this pattern starts back in 2008 when Elizabeth and I, along with our sister Margaret, decided that we wanted to make a blanket for our parents as a gift for their 25th wedding anniversary. Elizabeth suggested we base our blanket design on the traditional Attic Windows quilting pattern, and she came up with a simple technique to knit the squares. The Attic Windows quilt pattern uses the placement of light and dark fabrics to create a 3-D windowpane effect, and we mimicked this by using a light, medium, and dark shade of the same colour for each square of our blanket. We happened t ..read more

It's only the middle of July, and we've already had some significant heat waves here in Montreal this year, so I've been swapping out my normal afternoon pick-me-up of a hot black tea for iced tea instead. I've recently discovered this simple method for making my iced tea using green tea instead of black and I've been making it so often that I thought I'd share the recipe! This recipe has been working particularly well for me for a couple of reasons. First, I have a ton of green tea that I always forget to drink, so this is a great way to use it up! Second, we have a couple of patches of mint ..read more

It's that time of year again! Our 2020 batch of Norbouillet fleece is already at the mill, ready to be custom-spun into this year's batch of our locally-sourced, 100% Canadian yarns. This year as we were setting up pre-orders for our Norbouillet yarns we took some time to look through all the beautiful projects that our customers have made with them over the past few years, and we were inspired to share a few of our favourites here. Thank you so much to everyone who gave us permission to share your photos! We're taking pre-orders again this year for the two yarns we use the Norbouillet fleece ..read more

Today's featured pattern in our 100 Days of Patterns project is Lanark, one of my design contributions to our Cloudy Day Collection (published way back in 2012). They're knit in our Messa di Voce fingering-weight superwash merino, in the Chimney Smoke colourway. When we were planning out the collection I wanted to design some socks, and I started swatching with that idea in mind. I loved the way this stitch pattern looked, and wanted to use it, but realized before I got very far that it was much too dense and not elastic enough for socks. After a bit of consideration, I realized that the ..read more

As part of our 100 days of patterns retrospective, we'll be sharing some project galleries featuring some favourite projects made from our patterns. Cranberry Biscotti (a free sock pattern) is my design with the most projects on Ravelry. I'm sharing a few of my favourites here, but do check out the project pages on Ravelry to see many, many more beautiful projects. My original pattern notes and swatch for Cranberry Biscotti from 2004 Although it's not my first officially published pattern, I consider Cranberry Biscotti one of my very first original designs. I designed and knit my first pair ba ..read more

Since we’re still on a shipping hiatus for the time being, we thought it would be a good time to do a retrospective of our Sweet Paprika patterns. We’ve been publishing our own designs and those of other talented designers for over 13 years now, and have 99 patterns available here on our website and on Ravelry! We decided to call this project 100 Days of Patterns though, since we’re pretty sure we’ll have at least one new pattern released by the time we get through them all... Starting today, we’ll be sharing a new pattern every day on Instagram, Facebook, and Ravelry, working our way from old ..read more