Origin' by Bergere de France

By MJ on March 14, 2010 3:33 PM (GMT +1) | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 14, 2010
{ Flickr } Screenshot from Origin' website

A display of new yarns caught my eye at the yarn store in Avignon in December last year: Origin' by Bergere de France (BdF). It turns out it's not new, per se. BdF announced the arrival of Origin' in October 2009, apparently, to its newsletter subscribers, and there is a bit of discussion about it in their forum. I waited to see if more information would come out but so far, apart from their forum thread, a Ravelry thread, a Paris trade show and a listing of UK suppliers, there has been nothing. Yet? ETA BdF showed this at TNNA earlier this year.

According to its website, the line consists of "seven outstanding yarns of natural origin". It's true, most of these are made up primarily of 1 material: alpaca, bamboo, cashmere, merino wool, mohair, silk, and soy, whereas the main BdF line is a mixture of wool and acrylics. Origin' is also priced higher, possibly because of the quality of the material. This is clearly not a budget yarn line! But we all need a bit of luxury every now and then, non? Let's look at the colors.

March 14, 2010 { Flickr }

{ Flickr } Montage by MJ, yarn screenshots from Origin website

The colors are gorgeous, aren't they? There are enough neutrals and colors for every preference, and I love that there are some touches of grey and brown in some of them. The blues are very contemporary, as are the purples, but I do wish they had more green! It makes me wonder if these were a result of some color preference, popularity, or geographical survey.

March 14, 2010
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Curiosity got the better of me, eventually, so I purchased a couple balls of Soja in Brin (Eng.: sprig), a clear, bright robin's egg blue. It's a cable-ply, meaning it's two 2-ply yarns plied together to create one cable-like strand. It was also only 16% soy, with cotton making up the other 84%, but the yarn itself is soft and quite shiny. It felt luxurious! At €5/ball it's a decent price (but that's because I'd already spent €€€ at Puyricard). Now, to find a project using 186 yds / 170m of DK-weight yarn! Any suggestions?

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I'm not sure about Origin''s packaging: each ball is individually packaged in its own recyclable pouch. I'm sure this is meant to add some touch of exclusivity, but somehow in this age of recycling and the push toward renewable materials, it isn't necessarily the best choice. I'll grant that yarn can be delicate, but this isn't the best packaging direction. It's beautifully designed, yes, but it sends the wrong message to knitters.

Perhaps the only other problem I see is that I wish there was more about the actual origins of the materials for the yarns themselves. Two lines of intro copy on the site is not enough; when I first saw the yarn line I thought it meant that these were produced by organic, sustainable, eco-friendly methods. Who knows? If and when BdF launch Origin' in the US at any of the major trade shows, I hope they'll have more information. It's a truly lovely yarn line, with gorgeous colors and beautiful pattern support, but a bit of transparency would be helpful.

On Tuesday I'll post about the pattern support. In the meantime, take a look around the website.