Our Story

Yarn Food grew out of a love for knitting and a moment where everything we’d built was nearly lost. Helene learned to knit as a child, and years later found her way back to it through Oliver’s business, KnitIQ, which we built together after meeting in 2015.

Oliver has always loved innovation and entrepreneurship. At the time, he’d figured out how to make blocking mats with measurement grids. It sounds unbelievable now, but blocking mats with lines simply didn’t exist back then. Getting a glimpse into the knitting world through his business fascinated Helene, and before long she was fully involved.

Through that, we fell in love with the knitting community and the care, creativity and time that go into making something by hand. Running our own business gave us freedom, purpose and a way of life we’d dreamed of building together.

Then, in 2022, everything changed. Oliver became seriously ill and spent weeks in hospital. It was a frightening, exhausting time, and we had to make the heartbreaking decision to let our business go so he could focus on recovering. Losing it also meant losing a community — and a way of living — that meant the world to us. For a long time, it felt like that chapter of our lives was over.

As Oliver slowly regained his health, we realised how much we missed creating something meaningful, and how strongly we wanted to come back — but in a way that felt even more personal. By then, Helene had developed a deep love for natural fibre yarns, and an equally deep frustration with how easily hand-made garments can be ruined by the wrong wash.

Yarn Food was our response which we launched in 2025: a gentle, fibre-specific, no-rinse wash designed to care for knits rather than punish them, helping precious makes last longer. Yarn Food isn’t just a product to us — it’s a second chance.