B is for Bohus

Bohus Stickning
Important note: I have updated much of the information below with a new post!

A Swedish knitting cooperative in operation from 1939 to 1969. The knitters developed a distinctive style that makes use of sophisticated colorwork, especially in combining color with knit/purl changes.

So many wonderful thoughts have been written about Bohus and Bohus-style knitting. I don’t have much new insight to offer, but it’s really the only knitted “B” I can contemplate. And if you look at the patterns in just the right way, B’s do start to emerge.

Most Bohus Stickning garments were knit from blended angora/wool yarn and were knit at 8.5 or more stitches to the inch. The most famous Bohus designs are yoked cardigans. A recent rebirth of interest in Bohus has resulted in some wonderful new (or at least newly-written) patterns, specially-spun & dyed yarns, and even some exhibitions. Collections held by the Bohusläns Museum and Röhss Museum are the most extensive; the Röhss Museum collection also includes original pattern cards. It’s now possible to make a Bohus sweater with Bohus-like yarn and in a Bohus-worthy gauge. Solveig Gustafsson of SOLsilke (in Sweden) offers stunning kits with angora/wool yarns she has hand dyed and patterns (in Swedish, but saintly Susanna Hansson has also translated most of them).

And of course, there is the compelling prospect of being lucky enough to take Susanna Hansson’s class on Bohus Stickning. Her class page is filled with stunning photos, including fantastic close-ups of Bohus garments from her own collection. Fluffbuff has written a great, detailed (and extremely well illustrated!) account of her experience at one of Susanna’s classes.

I saw my first photo of Bohus knitting when I read Margaret Bruzelius’s piece in the Threads compilation, Knitting Around the World. Saying I was an instant convert would be something of an understatement. I grabbed whatever fingering weight yarn I could find and made some experiments (at left; this included mohair because I didn’t have any angora), with, well, mixed results. Shortly afterward, a dear friend in Sweden procured the 1980 Häglund & Mesterton book for me, and even luckier, it included some text in English. I didn’t have much longer to wait for Wendy Keele’s delightful book and some bonified patterns. My favorite Bohus pattern remains the one Bruzelius wrote of in her article, which was about exploring her mother’s Bohus sweater. I think the pattern is called the “Blue Tone,” by Annika Malmström-Bladini.

More experiments ensued. Pictured here (right) is a sample of the beautiful “Blue Shimmer” pattern, primarily in a lightweight alpaca, which was somewhat suitable, but not quite the heart-stoppingly beautiful original in angora/wool.

The photo at left depicts a hat knit in the Bohus Dean pattern, as charted by Wendy Keele in Poems of Color (see below).

According to Keele, Anna-Lisa Mannheimer Lunn designed “Dean;” she was inspired by the African-American conductor, Dean Dixon, who had appeared in concert with a blue shirt. Since he was the principle conductor for the Gothenburg (Sweden) Symphony Orchestra from 1953 to 1960, I presume that is when she designed it.

I knit the hat with yarn from a kit produced by Kimmet Croft Fibers Fairy Hare, around the time Keele’s book came out. I knit it at a slightly finer gauge than called for in the pattern: 8 st./inch. I believe that Kimmet Croft has, alas, since sold. But their yarns are available through Stagecoach Yarns.

I hope in the not too distant future to add an image of a whole Bohus sweater...
[updated info in a later post]

---

Bohus Bib

• Wendy Keele. Poems of Color: Knitting in the Bohus Tradition (Interweave Press, 1995).
• Ulla Häglund & Ingrid Mesterton. Bohus Stickning 1939-1969 (Swedish publication with some English translation, 1980, republished in 1999 by the Bohusläns Museum).
• Margaret Bruzelius, “Exploring a Knitted Pattern (Bohus Stickning),” originally published in Threads Magazine in 1986, republished in Knitting Around the World from Threads (Newtown, Connecticut: Taunton Press, 1993).
• Pattern for Anna-Lisa Mannheimer Lunn’s design, Blue Green, in Interweave Knits (Fall 1996).

More Resources

• Bohus Knit Along (Be sure to check out the links on the Bohus KAL blog to blog posts about Bohus knitting)
• Lots of glorious pictures on Flickr tagged with Bohus.