Page ain't here. Sorry.

404 page

But you definitely are. Our fault, yours? Who cares? Let's get on with it.

Front page Read articles

Our Wool Beanies

4 Hand Knit Wool Beanies You Need to Know About

Hand knit wool beanies. That is the one thing our brand centers around, and here are four handmade beanies you need to know about.

1. Our most classic hand knit wool beanie

The Southlander was made to be a clean classic using high quality wool. Inspired by icons such as Jacques Cousteau, and his fictive derivative Steve Zissou, we’ve made the red model a cornerstone in our beanie collection. But it does come in other colors as well.

With over 650 Southlanders sold (2600 knitting hours for our Norwegian ladies) to over 40 countries and 43 American states, we can safely say that the Southlander is our best seller. [At the time of writing.]

It is slow fashion at its best. We estimate 4 hours of knitting per piece, and it is knit using a classic rib-knitting technique. Nothing new, nothing fancy, just high quality material, and age old skills at work.

Mixing the wool with 20% nylon was a deliberate choice, as it allows this beanie to be more of an all-round beanie, a bit thinner and cooler than 100% wool thread (as you’ll see on the next model below).

As with all our beanies, we ship for free worldwide, and you have a 60 day window to return it in case you don’t like it.

2. The most natural hand knit beanie we have

The Westcoaster is pretty new, but our people have loved it.

It is grittier than the Southlander. It is knit with two threads of 100% sheep wool. And like all our products, it is knit in slow fashion, on the Norwegian South Coast.

The double-thread knitting technique allows for some rough patterns you might not have seen before. And this also makes this a pure winter beanie. Do not expect to wear the Westcoaster on your office — it is an outdoor model, suitable for the cool of spring or fall, all the way into the depths of winter.

For the release of this hand knit wool beanie, we made a video as well.

It comes with a longer version, for those who want to make sure their ears can be covered by a solid double fold. This is the Westcoaster Arctic Circle.

3. The pointiest hand knit wool beanie you’ve ever seen

When we made our Southlander, we branched out to a second model, spurred by my Steve Zissou loving brother in law. It’s also a four hour knit, and the only difference from it’s ancestor the Southlander is that it ends in a tip.

It’s name was shaped by the pointy mountains found in the North of Norway, where we vacationed when this model was being brought to life.

4. The 1997 — A taste of our leftover knit collection

While it’s cool to hand knit beanies the old fashioned way, it’s even cooler to use the leftover yarn from our basic knits to create multi color wonders.

The 1997 is a beanie knit with leftover yarn, but it is not the only one we have. The collection called Mom’s Market, features a bunch of hand knit beanies that are either special lower-volume creations, or leftover knits like this one.

What’s the Point of a Fisherman Beanie

Ok. Let me get my terrible jokes out of the way first.

The point is at the top.

Pointy, folded fisherman beanie on a hike.
For a hike with friends in a cool breeze, the fisherman beanie might be spot on.

Indulge me one more, and I will answer your question properly.

The point of a fisherman beanie is to put a beanie on the fisherman.

Why we actually wear fisherman beanies

The real question you have about fisherman beanies is usually “why are they folded above the ears.” There are a couple of good answers to that, of which the most relevant is probably that we like the style.

Historically, and tied to the name fisherman beanie is the idea that you’d be able to regulate temperature easily when working the seas and docks. On the docks you roll it up to cool down a bit, and also hear better as you work with your buddies. On the seas, you pull it back down to face the elements. It was born of practicality, only to become a style icon.

You hear better with your fisherman beanie rolled up

It sounds a bit corny, but it’s a real factor. If the temperature allows for you to wear your beanie rolled above the ears, you do hear way better. So for a hike with friends in a cool breeze, it might be more comfortable.

A fisherman beanie folded above the ears.
How about a folded fisherman beanie to hear your own banjo tones.

Also, the beanie still does its job just fine, even though your ears are out. Though the myth that you loose almost 50% of your body heat through the head is not true, capping of the top of your head does have a major effect. Mainly because your head is usually one of the few places of your body that goes uncovered otherwise. (I mean it’s not as common to walk barefoot as bareheaded.)

Fisherman beanies have become an icon — and that affects us

When all comes to all, we select our apparel based on emotion. If it feels right, we use it. The best apparel does its job (practicality) while also making you feel good about yourself (esthetics). And I would venture to say that a lot of us would accept minor drop in practicality if it makes us feel like us esthetically.

Many attribute the rise of the fisherman beanie as an icon to the rise of Hollywood. Style icons invaded our homes in an entirely new fashion, as film and cinema entered its glory days. And when actors wore their beanies folded above the ears, the rest of us followed suit eventually.

Steve McQueen wearing a fisherman beanie
Steve McQueen in a fisherman beanie.

But while fashion spreads though media, it always has to come from some root. And I believe the true point of the fisherman beanie was utility, born of shifting weather and sea spray. And therefore, it carries its heritage with pride, though most of us use it on land these days.

OpenAI is Coming for You (But It’s Nothing New)

ChatGPT. Yes, I was also lured in, beguiled by its playful smile and the promise of endless answers to my every question. And joining the ranks, I was soon led to stare into a bleak future projected by the doomsday prophets of our time — a vision of AI’s shadow lengthening and devouring all human creativity and expression.

And left was…

Well. It was not quite like that. But kinda.

Being a company that still lingers in pre-industrial-revolution times, I have thought a lot about what AI means for the stuff that is made by hands and minds. What will happed to those passion filled moments where your fingers make a constant drumroll on the keyboard, your paintbrush moves so fast it splats paint in your face, and you don’t even notice it — because you are caught in the moment of creation.

I mentioned the industrial revolution. The AI revolution is much like what the industrial revolution would be for knitters and other makers-by-hand. Only this time it is creative workers and intellectual property that are sacrificed on the altar of speed.

And that is where I find myself. Among all the existential questions that arise when staring AI dead in the eye, wondering if it was a glimpse of sentience I just witnessed. I think about the altar of speed, and how much passion has been sacrificed upon it long before AI was even conceived of.

We want everything faster, but the world has a threshold. Speed breaks it. Speed breaks us.

Slow fashion is much more to us than just fashion

In the beginning of Red Hat Factory, I had no idea why I started it. It happened so organically, in a rush of inspiration — some from myself, some from my peers. But as I’ve lived with this ongoing experiment of a company for years, something has coalesced — and it is the very thing that was there from the beginning. The value of the patience it takes to knit a beanie.

Extend that into other forms of creation. Whether you are climbing, fishing, painting — as long as you rush, you will miss out on what you’re doing. It is a luxury to enjoy the moment — not given everyone or at all times — but too often, once we’re granted the space to enjoy, we tend to just rush onward towards something else.

And paradoxically, it is this very race towards a castle of clouds that causes a lack of freedom for so many workers across the world. Strained production chains, ever stretched by revenue driven owners and companies so large they can’t hold up under their own weight.

And while we have more things at our fingertips than ever — did we forfeit the peace of mind to enjoy it?

I am a master of this. I get caught up in the world that rushes by me, and am captured by its demanding tone. And then I’m in there threading water, just pushing hard to get my tasks over and done with.

But every river has its banks.

Take a breather. Go for a walk. Turn off the TV just for one full Saturday. Leave your phone at home. Allow that silence to challenge your life choices. Whatever it takes. When I do these things, I always come back to the same core. I love sitting here in front of the keys and just typing a story — feeling smoke rise from below the keys as passion finds the right words. When I no longer care if you like it or not. What matters is the love for the process of creation, the pain of pushing through, and the prize of reaching completion.

And that’s the thing that AI can never replicate from you as an individual. The enjoyment of the moment of creation — and the pleasure of having pushed through till the end.

Unless AI is as sentient as you, of course.

New Wool Beanie Release — The Westcoaster

600 meters above the fjords with hurricane force gusts slamming into us, moving us around like puppets. How the heck did we end up here?

It was in the warmth of my parents house. My mom was messing around with the knitting needles, and came up with a new design. She called me up in Stockholm, and showed it to me — my dad as the semi-voluntary model, as per usual.

It was an instant classic. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on it. This was the 100% wool beanie we had been hoping to make.

Wool beanie being hand knit.
A Westcoaster being knit. (Frame from the Westcoaster film.)

Why 100% wool is a challenge

We love the natural stuff, but wool comes with two innate challenges. In its raw form it itches and easily gets too warm.

To harvest the moisture absorbing features of wool, while circumventing the challenges, there are several ways to go.

As you might know, we use raw wool from Uruguay, processed on the Norwegian West Coast. It’s not that we don’t have Norwegian wool available — the problem is that it’s rougher and can itch if it is the closest layer to your body.

Read all about wool here.

With our Southlander, North Cap, and Bay Bee, we use Uruguayan wool to avoid the itch, and 20% nylon to make sure we can use thinner threads and bring the temperature back down a bit.

However, this time we only attempted to solve the itch-issue. We wanted to make a wool beanie for the heart of winter.

The Westcoaster wool beanie in the hand.
A Westcoaster in the hand. (Frame from the Westcoaster film.)

A wool beanie for the wild Norwegian West Coast weather

As soon as I saw the beanie, I knew we had one for rough weather. A beanie that would take on the lower spectrum of the thermometer. So I began dreaming. Back to my many trips to the West Coast with its wild, bare mountains and open fjords, where winds blow unhampered across the stone.

The wool beanie in the mountains.
The Westcoaster goes to the Pulpit Rock. (Frame from the Westcoaster film.)

And as we decided that this would be the beanie to fill in the third cardinal direction of our naming scheme, I decided to tell its story through a film in the Lysefjord.

And boy did the beanie get tested.

I still can’t believe both me and my friend Ethan got to bring our beanies back from that trip. Once we arrived at the foot of the mountain, a parking guard came to us and warned us starkly against going up — and if we did, we should by no means enter the Pulpit Rock. The winds were gusting at literal hurricane speeds up there.

I have told this story in full in another article.

The wool beanie did decently — and this, of course, was in weather that most people wont experience. Yet, the trip made me decide that I wanted to extend the beanie into yet another level of warmth.

Thus came the Westcoaster Arctic Circle to be.

Double thread wool beanie being grabbed.
Close up of the Westcoaster. (Frame from the Westcoaster film.)

The Arctic Circle

There are now two Westcoasters in the store. The Westcoaster Arctic Circle is about an inch longer, which gives you the ability to fold it twice and still have it over your ears.

I’m telling you, this is not a city beanie. The Westcoaster is more universal (though winter ready), the Arctic Circle, is really meant for rough winters. With the double wool thread technique that it’s knit with, a double fold will give you three layers of dual thread 100% wool over your ears.

With the natural components, and the field testing in a hurricane, we can say with confidence that our slogan (second slogan, I guess) for this beanie rings true.

The nearest to nature we’ve ever been.

Why Are We Fascinated by Handcraft

Since childhood I’ve always taken things apart, trying to understand how they work. I believe this is one of the core elements of why so many people are fascinated by handcraft.

We should save the planet, for sure. But be completely honest. Do you love handcrafted stuff only because of your virtuous attitude to life? I think it’s more complex than that — even if our altruism definitely plays a part.

We don’t need to buy completely handcrafted items to save the planet. There are machines that are more environmentally friendly than others. And you can run machinery with care for the ones handling it. If we wanted to, there’s even hand-operated knitting machinery available.

I wouldn’t be opposed to it if we didn’t exist to honor our Norwegian heritage of hand knitting. And honestly, a neighbor from my childhood did defy the gender norms of his time and Norwegian heritage by being a man knitting on a knitting machine — so maybe we have to do that once in honor of him. (But if we do, it will be clearly disclosed. Don’t worry all our work is knitting needles only.)

A knitting machine – almost hand made.
I think my neighbor operated one of these, or a similar one.

This is my take on why we really love handcraft

First of all there is a certain esthetic associated with handcraft, that many of us gravitate towards. Raw materials spread out over a desk, a person intensely focused on using their hands.

It creates a very attractive environment.

But back to the intro. I always loved taking things apart to understand their parts. And handcraft does this to us.

When we see a pair of knitting needles going, there is a direct thread back to history — years and years of holding sheep, shearing them, and grinding the fibers into yarn.

When you see handcraft at work, it makes you think of the entire process from raw material to finished product, and you are invited into perceiving the entire process and understanding every step.

Understanding the world

Every human has some level of desire to understand the world. And honestly, starting this company and getting to research the history of beanies, wool and knitting has expanded my thinking a lot.

I often enjoy standing on my balcony, watching the sprawling cherry tree, and thinking about how it was a single small seed at one time. And in that seed lay the entire blueprint for the tree.

If that’s not magic, what is?

And when I am in a large city, like Stockholm, I like to think about how every single beam of metal, brick lain, and wood carven, was once a part of the earth and our forests.

And somehow our knowledge has compounded so much over time, that we’ve reached the level of technology we have now.

Lost in all of that, looking at an age old handcraft can help ground you. Its simplicity allows you to understand the complete journey from the earth to finished product. And you remember something of our relationship to the earth, and how mysterious it is.

So both of these things count to me. The idea that a person has been personally invested in ensuring the quality of what I buy, and also been allowed to spend time in the zone. As well as the idea that I can grasp the path from the product all the way back to the earth.

Every Kind of Beanie — A Comprehensive List

“A dear child goes by many names,” says an old Norwegian proverb. When we started Red Hat Factory, one of the main challenges was what to name this product of ours: Beanie? Toque? Hat? Knit cap?

Now that we have several years of beanie related content behind us, we’ve learned quite a bit along the way. We even dug deep into the etymology of several of the most common beanie names.

After all, if you want to know what a word means, the clearest path to take is that of language. Here’s a quick paragraph or two on every beanie-related name I could come up with.

What is a beanie?

Often called beanie hat — sometimes a beanie cap.

There are two origin stories of the word beanie. One is that it derives from the early 1900’s slang word bean, meaning your head. This is first documented in 1905 baseball slang, where a beanball means a ball thrown at someone’s head.

The other explanation is that it came from the small bean-sized button that, on some models, held together the several panels that made out 1900’s style American beanies.

Beanie is the most widely used term for what we are producing, so that’s the one we choose to go with most of the time. Also wool was the most common material for beanies at the time, which also happen to match what we’re up to.

What is a cap?

Equally common to beanie, is the word cap. Cap has a similar etymological history to beanie, but the roots stretch far deeper. It comes from old English cæppe, meaning “hood,” which probably derives from Latin cappa, meaning head.

So we’re not talking very advanced linguistics here.

“Dude, what’s that thing you have on your head?! It looks amazing!”

“Yeah. It’s one of them… head-thingy’s.”

“Wow, cool. A headdie.”

Nowadays if you simply say cap, or search the web for the same, you probably mean a brimmed cap. Which draws its history right back to the baseball caps which were once called beanies.

What is a hat?

Surprise. This is also incredibly primal and simple.

While cap traces its roots back to cæppa meaning hood, hat traces its roots directly back to old English hætt, which means exactly the same.

Notice the similarity between head and hat.

If you search the web for just hat you will primarily see a hat that’s brimmed all the way around. This is what we generally think of as a hat. But hat can mean just about anything you put on your head. That’s why it’s often used in day-to-day-language referring to a beanie — mostly in conjunction with other words to specify the type, like beanie hat or knit hat.

A regular hat.
First thing that comes to mind when you say “hat?”

What is a knit cap or knit hat?

If you use the term cap or hat, in conjunction with other words, it no longer means brimmed headwear. After all the linguistics are very primal here, so we can’t go wrong.

A knit cap refers more often to what we call a beanie, but it’s specified that it is knit. So whether it’s hand knit or machine knit, it just helps us rule out for example leather caps or felted caps.

What is a toque?

Modern day Canadians uses the term toque to refer to a common knit cap. They got the word through their French ties.

For the rest of the world, the word toque is more tied to history than present-day usage. The etymology is fascinating for nerds like me. It seems to have made it’s way from Old Persian taq (veil/shawl), through Arabic, French, Spanish, and then finally English in the 1500’s.

It means/has meant everything from women’s headwear, to the iconic white chef’s hat, to different military uniform hats.

In short, it is a word as broad as hat itself. But I’d say it makes more sense, since it means veil/shawl, rather than just head.

What is a fisherman beanie or fisherman hat?

This is one of my personal favorite terms, and I’ve written a lot about it before.

The reason is that it ties the beanie to a specific life style and history. The rough beanie worn by simple working men, living close to nature and the sea, and making their living.

As I argue a lot, a true fisherman beanie should be hand knit, to honor the history of a time when you would get your apparel locally produced with old fashioned knitting needles.

A fisherman beanie is often associated with having your ears out, and the reasons for this also tie right back to practicality.

In short, when you’re working in shifting weather on the sea, you’d appreciate a beanie that is not sown into one position, but can be folded up when you’re too warm, and down when the wind picks up.

Does a fisherman beanie have to be rolled up over the ears?

What is a watch cap?

Some sources say that watch cap comes from the American navy, and the hats they wore to stay warm during night watches. Every source agrees that it has to do with keeping watch and keeping warm while doing so.

Searching the term reveals that it’s mostly associated with a simple knit beanie that covers your ears, at least somewhat. I would argue that this is a good use of the term, since it originated with cold night watches.

What is a docker hat?

A docker hat or docker cap, is a canvas cap without a brim and with a folded edge. Pretty much the sweet spot between a baseball cap and a knit cap. Often they feature the little “bean” on top, going all the way back to the original beanies of the 1900’s.

While docker hat is not an old enough term to have its own particular etymology, I’d just assume it is a continued play on the fisherman beanie. While a fisherman beanie is free to be folded up or down, the docker hat is locked in the folded-up position — as the land-locked dock workers are safely out of the weather.

Since I couldn’t find a free image of a docker hat I could use, I picked these hand made ones I really like and I credit them: Shout out to Baxter & Black for keeping hand craft alive!

Docker hats.
Baxter & Black’s docker hats.

What is a Monmouth cap?

Monmouth is small a town in Wales*, with a huge impact on beanie history.

In the 1400’s the hand knit wool beanie industry took on a life of its own, beginning in this town, and escalating to the point where a large part of England and Wales’ population owned a Monmouth cap. It had such an impact of the English and Welsh economy that the law had to step in at one time to forbid imported beanies.

The law also, at one point, commanded people to wear Monmouth caps on Sundays and holidays.

If you say Monmouth cap nowadays, you are probably specifying the old gritty hand knit style of beanie. Unless, of course, you are talking about this particular piece of history.

*Thank you Jason Evans for pointing out that Monmouth is Welsh, not English. My bad.

What is a ribbed hat or a rib-knit hat?

Rib refers to the knitting pattern. The simplest way to explain it is that it features right and wrong stitches alternatingly, creating a ribbed pattern like you see on our North Cap beanie below.

A rib-knit beanie.
Our North Cap — a rib-knit beanie.

What is a skullcap?

Skullcap is another word you see thrown around, and it means what it says. A cap for your skull.

Now given what we’ve learned — that cap means head — I think this word is redundant.

Why a Fisherman Beanie Should be Red

We are all about beanies — and our roots run back into red beanies specifically. Now if you are looking for the ultimate, classic fisherman beanie, there is a strong argument for the color to be red.

We’ve often mentioned the red fisherman beanie carrying characters Steve Zissou and Jacques Cousteau as inspirers and poster children for the red beanies. Zissou is a fictional character, based on the real life Cousteau — and they are connected to the sea.

However. They aren’t fishermen. So why would I argue the red beanie is the best color for a fisherman beanie?

The history behind Jaques Cousteau’s red fisherman beanie

I did a deep dive into the roots of that iconic red fisherman beanie that Cousteau wore all the time. And the trail actually goes all the way back to Whitstable oyster farmers in the 1820’s.

Since these elusive oyster farmers wore the red fisherman beanie at sea, the red has followed divers down the paths of history, from the invention of the first diving helmet in Whitstable, until Jaques Cousteau made it an icon of proportions through his TV series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in the 60’s. Finally Wes Anderson further spread it through The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in the 2000’s.

Here’s the result of my deep dive into the red fisherman beanie.

The red fisherman beanie and the sea

A fisherman beanie could be anything. If you go completely back to the roots, we arrive at the primal need for food, leading to men fishing, and then the primal need for heat, driving them to wear headwear.

But if you would want to search out the absolutely most iconic fisherman beanie — which is what we’ve tried to do here at Red Hat Factory — I would go with something gritty and rough, handmade, and finally… red.

Below the Beanie — The Stories I Hear

I don’t know exactly what I expected when I began this beanie venture — but it was not this.

Honestly, I’ve questioned why I started this brand, and I can’t come up with an answer. It just came alive from a hodge-podge of different inspirations, skills and desires. And here it is, flesh and blood.

I think the challenge of building something from scratch — to understand every component of a whole — beckoned to me. And I set out on a journey of crafting a brand as genuine and personal as I could manage.

It seems that for some of you I’ve managed just a bit of what I set out to do.

When I tell tales of our family, adventures, and the crafting of our beanies, one of my favorite things is when you respond in like manner.

Matt and his foxes

Better than a review is a story told over email. I mean, please write us a review still, they help us peddle more goods. But there is something to be said for spontaneous comments or email replies.

Matt replied to the newsletter about the foxtail beanie and told me about how they’ve had 8 foxes living under their shed — 6 kits and two parents — and what a joy it was to see his 7 y/o have that experience.

Suddenly I got a peek into a life on the other side of the globe, in the middle of my work day, grinding away with content and design.

It gave me a smile.

A story about a beanie in fox tail colors

And oh by the way, he also told me earlier that his whole biking crew wears North Caps. So now our family’s craftsmanship is being used to knit a group of people on the other side of the world a little bit tighter together.

Paul and the hospital beanie

I opened an email that talked about a problem with our website. Not fun, but after chatting for a short while and solving the problem, Paul on the other end told me why he found us, and what he wanted to do.

His baby had been born early and had a rough start, and the hospital had gifted them a small beanie to keep warm. Now they wanted to upgrade to a hand knit cap.

A story about a beanie sent to a hospital.

He even sent pictures of his newborn baby in the hospital, which was very special to me. My own son was born a month early, so it connected to my own memories.

These sort of connections are priceless. I can’t force them, but still they come.

Aitor and the generational gift

A small, simple thank-you email that I got turned into something more.

“I just received your hat, it is great and it feels wonderful! Could you please send my special thanks to K.K.”

It was from Aitor, all the way from Japan.

I answered that the signature K.K. means it’s knit by my own grandmother.

Her full initials are actually K. K. K., which is terribly unfortunate, but she more than makes up for it by being the sweetest old lady.

As the team of knitters grows, getting a beanie from her becomes increasingly rare, so it is always cool to see one in the wild.

Aitor proceeded to tell me that he owned a pair of wool socks knit by his own grandmother, and he treasured them all the more since she passed away some years ago.

A story about a beanie sent to Japan.

This feels precious

The fact that people share genuine stories about themselves is one of my absolute favorite parts of what we’ve built in Red Hat Factory.

It’s not asked for, it’s not forced. You guys just add a little personal spice, and I realize for a moment, in between all the designing, number crunching and logistics that I am actually interacting with complete human lives full of hopes dreams, and challenges, all across the world.

That feels incredibly precious to me, and I’ve flagged and kept all those emails.

What is a Fisherman Beanie?

There are many names for beanies, but one of the all time classics is the fisherman beanie. But what exactly makes a beanie a fisherman beanie?

My first instinct is, of course, to hone in on the fisherman aspect of the name. As we explore two aspects of the fisherman beanie, we do it in the context of old rugged fishermen and how they chose their beanies.

A fisherman beanie is rough, simple and preferably hand knit

A fisherman beanie.
Our own Southlander fisherman beanie.

All the way back when a fisherman typically would be a relatively poor working class hero, his beanie would often be hand knit by his wife or someone in his family or local community.

While it doesn’t have to be hand knit to be called a fisherman beanie, it certainly adds threads of history to an otherwise generic piece of apparel. The sense of roughness often connected with the fisherman beanie, is a trademark of the time — a time of less processing, rougher raw materials like wool, and handiwork rather than precise machine work.

A fisherman beanie is rolled over the ears

The second feature denoting a fisherman beanie, is the traditional, often criticized rolling up of the beanie over the ears.

“Why doesn’t it cover the ears!”

We hear it all the time in our advertising, and I always just reply. “Some people like it that way.” It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, but historically there might be another reason why we roll our fisherman beanies.

Imagine having a beanie on as a fisherman. When the wind is blowing and the waves are beating, it would be beneficial to roll the beanie down over your ears. But when you’re docking up, and the sun peeks out from a cloud, and you also need to communicate unhampered — it’s nice to roll it up.

Going back to the fisherman beanie roots

Fisherman beanie.
The fisherman beanie by the sea — where it belongs.

We’ve always prided ourselves on being genuine.

Red Hat Factory was founded on the feeling that I got when my own mom knit sweaters and socks for us during our childhood winters. To capture this feeling we hand knit every piece, and chose to not put any brand or label directly on the beanie — to emulate exactly how it felt when we received knit goods directly off the knitting needles, from mom.

We knit with 80–100% sheep wool, and this is a rough material, giving it that gritty, real look you would expect of a fisherman beanie from a hundred years ago.

The Everyday Battles That Hold the World Up

Here’s to all the fighters.

The war in Ukraine shook me out of my stride and reminded me again that the world we’re all building is fickle. I am reminded that the peaceful Norwegian countryside I grew up in came at a cost, and no peace will last unless we hold it up. And that it has been held up by the wars waged by those who came before us.

But when I say wars, I don’t necessarily mean to paint pictures of heroic tales of battles and fury — leave that to Tolkien.

There are unsung heroes that need to be sung. There are crowds of people who fought before the war ever erupted. The ones who cherished peace enough to take on the tiny, daily battles against their own greed and selfishness, and chose to mean something to others.

It is a travesty that we so easily look in admiration on the big, the successful, the impressive. All the while, we are living in a world held up by those who simply show up.

Having worked part time in a kindergarten back in the days, I always think about those winters. We dressed three to five kids each to go out and play in the snow. And then a few hours later undressed them of the wet mittens, heavy snow boots, and soggy overalls — just to hang them to dry in preparation for the next day. And this we repeated. Every. Single. Day.

In the midst of all that work (winter clothes being only one of many tasks), the teachers still had the peace of mind to actually care for the children, listen to them and give them complete focus.

This has always impressed me. People who do their work with intentional care for others.

To me, the kindergarten teachers are war heroes — one shining example among countless others who choose to approach their everyday life with care, and to work hard with what’s in front of them.

This is what builds our peace — the war before the war.

You don’t have to wait for war to be a war hero

It is not to be glanced over that a peaceful society still can be ravaged by a great, vicious force. So maybe working for peace is a hopeless cause all along. But the truth still stands, that if the vicious force had been busy at war with their own shortcomings instead, there would be no blood spilt.

The truth still stands, whether anyone picks it up and wields it or not. So here’s to the ones who wield the many faceted plowshare-swords of peace.

Here’s to the dads who put down time, intention and care, to raise their sons to feel loved, strengthened, and aimed towards some worthy purpose. None of that happens without them waging war on their ego, restlessness and fear of failure.

Here’s to everyone who takes a grip around their mental health, and carry on forward to work on their deep rooted problems, instead of drowning the symptoms in addictions. None of that happens without a war on shame, hopelessness, and mistrust.

And a solid portion of gritty grace to get back up when you fail.

Here’s to everyone who refuses to hold on to bitterness, and decide to live graciously after disappointment, wafting winds of warm kindness into the cold corners of culture (yes I tried to be poetic — maybe too hard). None of that comes without a war on pride and unyielding justice.

I know that none of these came for free — because I, like you, have felt the cold temptation to turn my war upon others instead of my own ego. To sit down and give up, and to begin blaming others for the roughness of the world.

And I know the cost of getting back up.

Stories unending

This is why I am so passionate for the driven individual. Somebody who has their eye on something, and is pressing towards it. We seem to be wired for war, so finding something constructive to fight for is essential for peace to subsist.

Not only do you quench your bitterness and resentment in the fire of a passion, but you also contribute positively to society around you. And thus we craft peace with our hands and our words.

Behind each human face is a story and a fight. The fight is theirs, but the story is for each of us to hear.

I am inspired by Emeli and Mathias who left Stockholm city to heal from burnout and set a new healthy standard for themselves and whoever may hear their story.

It is not nothing to put health before career, and be willing to leave everything in order to become a new person.

I loved hearing the story of Monica, who has channeled her innate fierceness into mountain climbing, where she has carved our a space to go live and be free — and a place to conquer her fears.

She brings back hauntingly beautiful imagery to the rest of us, so that we can dream of one day conquering mountains like her.

Mountain climbers.
Monica conquering Mont Blanc.

I love how Marsden Brewer lived such a contented life that his son wanted to follow in his steps, and now they farm shellfish together, and feel all the more blessed for being together.

Fathers engaging with their sons is incredibly inspiring to me as a father, and I have no doubt that this kind of relationship builds our future peace.

Marsden Brewer on the job.

Factorium — the place of doers and makers

The name Red Hat Factory came to me in a dream. I’m not trying to be poetic or anything, it’s just true.

And I thought a lot about the name. Why do I call it a factory, when we’re literally the opposite. We hand knit in Norwegian homes. We don’t do factories.

But then one day I was scouring the internet for the meaning of words (a common pastime of mine) when I came across the meaning of the word “factory.” It comes from Latin “factorium” which means a place of doers or makers.

My heart jumped when I read it.

I’ve always been passionate about reading, hearing and telling stories. It does not matter much what it is about, as long as the one sharing the story is passionate.

Even this brand has grown out of a desire to share the story of our Norwegian culture, the mountains that I love, and the childhood I received. And the wool that knit all those parts together. To me everything is a story to share, and as the brand grows, I will want to search out stories more and more, to be able to put more faces to the everyday battles that hold our world up.

Foxtail Beanie Origins

Being a father, there are few things more valuable than discovering something both you and your son likes to do. In this case we discovered a book — for me a dear childhood memory, for him an unchartered tale. And speaking of tale… I mean… tail.

The Animals of Farthing Wood. (Say that out loud.) It is a great tale about a bunch of animals that are forced out of their homes because of human building projects (boo humans!). Led by a mellow old badger and a wise old fox, they set out on the adventure of their lives.

When this same book became a tv show, it was notorious for its amount of death scenes. A chronically depressed mole, a snake that always wants to eat all the mice in the crew, and the loss of crew members at an interval makes for some serious childhood drama.

Anyway. I was reading these books at bedtime, over and over…

And over…

And over…

Until my 2 year old son discovered Carl Barks, but that’s another story.

And I started noticing the pattern on the tail end of the wise old fox. It’s already beanie shaped. I could see a North Cap taking shape as I read. So of course, I made sure to put the beanie on another wise old fox for the shot — namely my father.

The Foxtail North Cap is here to stay

From the moment I noticed the pattern, every book we plowed through on our daily bedtime routine seemed to feature a fox tail. You know how it works. The moment you buy a new type of car, you notice everyone else driving the same model.

The foxtail beanie was inspired by this
The classic Norwegian tale of “Climbing Mouse.” Ask a Norwegian, they will know what it is.

Inspiration can come from any source, and the foxtail beanie came from a crew of contentious animals sacrificing their lives in the pursuit of freedom — and then other bedtime stories added fuel to the fire until we made the beanie a reality.

A foxtail beanie design inspiration.
The Gruffalo book, yet again showing that foxtail beanie design into my mind.

The Secret Ingredient to Enjoying Work

Quality. We strive to create it, and we are drawn to consume it. How to work in such a way as to create quality is a topic of eternal discussion. Skill, talent, inspiration, work ethic — though every one of them are probably true in some measure, here at Red Hat Factory, we’ve chosen an often neglected virtue to highlight — and that’s not without reason.

It makes a blatant show in our hand knit wares, and that is where it first made it’s way into our language. After the skill of knitting has been learned, and the talent honed, all it takes to craft a great beanie is two knitting needles, yarn, and patience. And the moment you let that patience drop, quality begins dipping.

My entire childhood I saw my mom knitting while hanging out with her friends. I’ve seen her knit on an airplane (why is that legal btw — those needles?), or while she watches TV with my dad. And it is that restful state that makes each stitch even.

Young me, wearing a sweater my mother knit — the old way with knitting needles and patience.

Patience in all parts of life

I consider myself first and foremost a writer, then a designer. My driving force behind running Red Hat Factory is to craft stories about our heritage and share it with the world. And the beanies, they are a mere token of the lifestyle we like. One of valuing your family and friends, the sharing of tales and time, and products that are made in such an environment.

Here’s what I find again and again. No matter what craft you’re pursuing, patience is mixed into the essence of everything. The moment I see the finished product in my mind’s eye — the complete article, the perfect imagery, the perfect presentation — that is when I have to take a deep breath, and realize that it will take a long time to get there.

“Patience gave value to the journey as well as the finished product.”

Kid with a red beanie
If there is anyone that knows how to be in the moment — redefining patience for all of us — it is our friends, the kids.

Then when I focus on the restful discipline of the work, enjoy my breaks with friends without thinking about work — the work just happens, and the craziest thing of all, I actually enjoy it. And there we are, the finished article I envisioned (yes, this one). I could have got here in many ways, but patience gave value to the journey as well as the finished product.

Learn from the worst

I made patience a core Red Hat Factory value for more reasons that one. It is in our products, yes, but it is also my biggest crux in life. I am so easily drawn into the vortex of hurry, as I am sure many of you can relate to. I am ambitious to a fault, and living in Stockholm City, where everyone is constantly on their way somewhere, does not contribute to healing my dysfunction.

So my journey as this brand grows, is to learn to do life in bite size chunks, and savor each bite. To learn to value the journey over the destination (Sanderson shoutout for my fellow nerds).

A Norwegian wearing a red hat.
Me… I’m the worst.

Every step matters. Every job, every experience, every text written, all amounts towards a larger ability and future opportunity. Every line written needs its proper attention before it can contribute as it ought to the whole.

“Every line written needs its proper attention before it can contribute as it ought to the whole.”

The paradox of patience

I am always reading up on the big brands that I love. Ones that I perceive as committed to quality before speed of production. In a satisfying paradox, it seems the virtue of patience, which should slow you down, actually speeds you up in the long run. The snowball of patience is increased trust, and over time, that tends to pay off.

And who knows, if we do a proper, whole hearted job with what’s in front of us, we might last beyond our own spans and into generations to come.

And if not, at least we slowed down enough to enjoy what we’re doing.

Summer Beanies of 2022

I was in my mother’s basement browsing though yarn, and noticed a few pastel colors laying next to each other. Then I picked up another and then another. And as quickly as that, we had put together the 2022 Limited Edition beanies.

It is really that easy to come up with something new. That is the fun of crafting it right at home (though I live in Sweden now) and having raw materials, production and packaging in the same house. Especially since the Limited Editions are made in very low amounts (as opposed to our main collection.)

We called the new pastel beanie line up The Subtle Summer Shades.

Pastel beanie #1 — Peach

What would a pastel beanie line up be without Peach — maybe the most pastel pastel there is.

Pastel beanie #2 — Pear

Going with the summer theme, we named the other beanie after the delicious fruity flavors you often find in your ice cream.

Pastel beanie #3 — Violet

While naming this beanie I learned the difference between violet and purple. In Norway we only have one word for that color (unless you’re a painter, then you probably have more).

Pastel beanie #4 — Sky Blue

Peach and Pear for your summer tastes, Violet like the viola flowers sprouting in early spring — what better to round it off with than the Sky itself.

So in spite of it being summer, we’ve prepped something new to cover your precious head. After all summer is not all sun, and you’ll be better off with a woolen beanie in your pack.

Visit Mom’s Market

Mom’s Market is something we set up so that we could have some creative freedom. When my mother or I come up with an idea that’s epic, but it’s not quite an entirely new product — then we have a place to put it.

50 Shades of Aleks Grey — Meet the Norwegian Artist

Four years old, in my small Norwegian West Coast township, I often put on a vest and played keyboard for my family. My mom has said I would always pretend to be Elton John. Nowadays it’s shoes off and red hat up top — and my name is Aleks Grey.

Red beanie hat Norwegian music artist
Recording “Myself Hurt” in a Vikingship.

My grandfather played the accordion, his brother the traditional Norwegian violin, hardingfele. My mom plays the violin, and my father plays piano and sax. Suffice to say, I have always had a lot of music around me.

I grew up in a beautiful, quiet township called Heggjabygda, located near Nordfjordeid on the West Coast of Norway. The size and remoteness of the community meant that I often found myself with a lot of time on my own — time I spent making my own melodies and eventually lyrics.

Aleks Grey is dropping a new single at the release date of this article.

I took piano lessons, taught myself how to play the guitar. I was always singing as well, although not publicly until I was 15 or 16 years old. I was, and still am, shy, but at the same time there is no greater feeling than being on stage.

The size and remoteness of the community meant that I often found myself with a lot of time on my own — time I spent making my own melodies and eventually lyrics.”

Aleks Grey

The Grey sound

When I was 20, I got accepted to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. That same year I started my own solo project under the stage name Aleks Grey.

People always ask, “Oh, Aleks, what’s the story? Does it have anything to do with 50 Shades of Grey?!”

Well… anyway…

From 2013 to 2016 I lived in Liverpool making music, friends and a lot of good memories, and somewhere along that journey I discovered my sound. As it turned out, it was way more connected to my home and roots than I thought.

Norwegian musician wearing a red hat in the Mountains
My roots consist of Norwegian fjords, valleys and mountains.

Some people roll with the bands and artists they heard at home growing up, but my parents listened to Katie Melua, Gypsy Kings and Dire Straits. Don’t get me wrong, they have some good songs, but it just didn’t click with me when I was in my teens — I was still searching.

Oh man I feel old, thinking back on MTV, TV ads for new CD’s, Absolute Hits, McMusic… That was how I discovered new music. There was no New Music Friday or Discover Weekly.

For my own songwriting I never knew exactly where I was going. Drawn here and there, and inspired by different sources at different times, I meddled in dubstep, folk rock, singer songwriter ballads, house/EDM, jazz and more, but there wasn’t any consistency.

“The more I experimented, the more I realized I wanted to make music with my hands.”

Aleks Grey

Moving back to Oslo in 2016 I really wanted to make more electronic pop, really “up to date”/ top 20 kind of music. But I quickly found out that I don’t have it in me to become like Martin Garrix, Calvin Harris, Ryan Tedder and those guys.

I always seemed to move towards something more organic. The more I experimented, the more I realized I wanted to make music with “my hands.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking a dig at EDM producers or other producers that only use electronic devices and programming — they can have just as much talent as the next guy.

I just found out it’s not really my sound. 

I had to follow the calling back to my roots.

Norwegian music artist Aleks Grey as a child
Roots.

I grew up singing, and playing piano and guitar. It was with these three tools I wrote songs. And I always wrote my lyrics by hand. It was a more analog approach.

Through my explorative journey I’ve found my sweet spot between the modern sound, and modern tools, and connected it with my roots. In my song B.A.B.Y. I wanted a violin solo, performed by my good friend Madelene Berg. It’s pretty unusual for a pop song in the 2020’s to have a violin intro, but that is the personal twist that comes from my roots.

Norwegian musicians in the studio, with a violin player.
Madelene Berg recording violin for “B.A.B.Y.”

Inspired by the Norwegian mountains and fjords

Most days I do my writing in the studio, but I like the idea of going to my family’s cabin. Well, it’s more like a small hut. A 45 minute walk from our ranch, we have a 200 year old cabin. No power, no water. Just a wood stove and candles. And the idea of being there, with a notebook and an acoustic guitar and still being able to write my music, might be the purest reconnection with my roots.

But I have more ways than one.

Norwegian artist Aleks Grey in his home town in Norway.
In the mountains of Norway.

To do my best work I need to have the right atmosphere. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I built my own studio together with two mates. We tore down walls, rebuilt, did soundproofing, and painted the place. We call it Pytt Studio. Pytt is the Norwegian word for a puddle. So the Norwegian nature intrudes on the music again.

We built our own studio desk using the top of an old table, combining it with some modern, slender “legs”. At the most we’ve had over 30 plants in the studio. It’s green from the floor till the roof. We even got plants in the ceiling. Most studios I’ve been in are very clean with led lights and black acoustic panels. We’ve gone in the opposite direction.

We get coffee beans from Sognefjord Kaffibrenneri, so every morning we grind beans and put on a fresh pot of coffee. I then sit down by the piano, an old thing from East-Germany. It sounds old and “rusty” but yet it has a certain tone and warmth that I love.

The painter Erik Bergan has painted a puddle (the “pytt”) on one of our walls. So we’ve really made it our own and we’re very happy with that. No matter the weather outside, or whatever is going on in the world, I can always go there and get the same good atmosphere every time. 

Norwegian musician Aleks Grey at the grand piano.
At the grand piano.

What’s up next…

In August 2021 me and two friends went to Ocean Sound Studio at Giske, just outside Ålesund. This studio is the perfect combination of a world class, up to date studio, with just mesmerizing surroundings.

Together with Iselin Solheim, we wrote two new songs. One song is releasing today (!), the other will follow soon after. I’m also heading to Germany to play my first festival of the year, and when fall hits, I’ll be playing in Oslo.

And as always I will try to find that balance between the modern, electronic music, and blend in sounds from my 100 year old piano and my grandfather’s accordion.

Conquer Your Fear of Beanies in 3 Simple Steps

Growing a beanie company and staying true to your authentic core is actually very hard. It requires taking deep breaths, hydrating frequently, and considering all things before acting. This is a story of when I almost went astray.

Averagely one third of your life is spent working, so I refuse to spend that time with something I don’t care about. I will say what I believe, and I will believe what I say, even when running a brand.

But one has to adapt.

For you to even know that our beanies exist, I have to do certain things. Like focus on beanies only, use the keyword beanie, like I’m doing right now. Maybe even bolden or italicize the word beanie.

Sometimes, this tinkering with words and trying to reach out through the internet, goes too far.

Thus the title of this article.

How Beanies Saved My Life

Colorful hand knit beanie
Find this beanie on the Market.

Back to that title…

I was learning about Instagram, algorithms, numbers and stats and blah blah blah. Then, somewhere deep down the wormhole, I encountered this link, saying “Headline Generator.

My curiosity was piqued, so I gave it a click.

It’s one of the funniest, stupidest so-called tools I’ve ever seen.

First click created the headline I used for this article, then…

“The Truth About the Beanie Industry”

“5 Things the Media Hasn’t Told You About Beanie”

“How Beanies Saved My Life”

“How to Have a Healthier Relationship With Beanies”

“11 Ways Beanies Can Suck the Life Out of You” — this one gave me a chuckle for sure.

“The Devastating Environmental Impact of Beanies”

We could go on forever. I was chuckling every time I hit generate titles.

The funny thing is, I would have loved to read most of those articles. And I could write them if I wanted to. Maybe use The Truth About the Beanie Industry to expose how my mother’s wrists aches from knitting too much. Or 11 Ways Beanies Can Suck the Life Out of You to tell of how my dad, groaning, has to size-test a new beanie design yet again.

I mean, I’m already writing from the first generated title.

How to Have a Healthier Relationship With Beanies

Four colors of hand knit wool beanies
Our collection is always growing.

There is always something to learn (one of my core values) even in a stupid title generator. There is something there about how we humans are wired, and what we find interesting.

But more than anything, I am learning more and more that Red Hat Factory is no longer my company. It belongs to each of you beanie and handcraft enthusiasts out there, who have taken part by getting one of our beanies.

And I’ve learned that writing what you like to read, doesn’t have to oppose what I like. We’re all human, and we can find something beautiful we call common ground.

The common ground we aim for is well wrapped up in the words patience, passion, hiking and handcraft.

Patience, because we honor old tested and tried values — like the patience it takes to develop a skill and craft a good product.

Passion, because we love other humans, and are interested about the moments when they create something with passion.

Hiking, because we love the outdoors (as every Norwegian is obliged to say).

Handcraft, because we believe there is something special about things made by human hands, and not machines.

Since we’re building this brand as a community, I hereby invite you into an open conversation — any and every feedback you have (whether on email, Instagram, or right here in the comments) is valued and considered carefully. And if many speak the same thing, I will more easily find those things that both you and I like.

As long as we center around the core values of patience, passion, hiking, and handcraft… and of course beanies.

Do you feel a little less afraid of beanies now?

I thought so.

What to Wear in the Summer Rain

When the rain is such that you don’t see the need to carry full rain gear, it’s great to have something versatile. A wool beanie stays warm in the rain, and handles the light summer drizzle perfectly.

A beanie tested in the Norwegian summer rain

The weather in Norway, along with all the other Nordic, coast-long countries is always shifting. A hike might not be in the rain, but you never know if rain will pay a short visit as it passes by (probably on its way to Bergen — but that’s another story).

The reason Norwegians love wool is because it keeps you insulated even when wet. So for the misty moist mountain trips (yeah, that sounds nasty, I know), or a shifting summer day with a risk of drizzle, we could simply not come up with anything better than a wool beanie.

The perfect beanie hat for the rain

Mist, moist, rain — one beanie hat to cover them all

Norwegians also very commonly wear wool underwear through cold winters. The reason it works so well is that wool draws moisture away from your body at the fibre level. Meaning that even when you grind the wool down to thin layers of fabric, it keeps this feature.

So whether it’s a light summer rain, moisture from sweat or mist, the wool does the job fantastically.

Røldal Part IV — Sheep Day

The soft, constant murmur of countless waterfalls is the first thing that reminds me where I am when I wake up on the final day. Then, to my delight, I hear bells.

Norwegian hills are riddled with sheep. Even when you’re on a wild mountain, completely off the beaten path, there is a high likelihood that a shepherd has been there before you.

Mountains in Røldal, Norway.
Somewhere along this lake is the cabin where we’re been spending some days. This photo is from a hike one of the days before.

Some of my first childhood memories, traveling around Norway in our red bus, is about chasing sheep over mountain slopes. So when the bells ring, I am flooded by memories of times with family and friends in the mountains.

Ringing bells under braided birch⁠
The call of God’s own roofless church⁠
Awake to water murmuring⁠
And rustling leaves begin to sing⁠
⁠
My eyes still closed, the walls so thin⁠
Every sound of nature invited in⁠
I stay in my bed, my ears alive⁠
Each sound turning into a memory revived⁠

Two is better

Friendship and family is at the heart of every trek and every cabin stay, and this time is no different.

The final day of this cabin stay with Asbjørn — the Norwegian bear of the mountains — is over, and today is the day of the return.

Soon we’ll pack up, and my trip to my wife and home in Stockholm will commence. Hours of riding back over the mountains to my parents place, then a sleepover, then a lonesome bus ride to Oslo, and a train back to Stockholm.

And the whole trip alone.

At a friends cabin in Røldal, Norway.
What would a cabin trip be without a friend to share it with.

Alone versus together, is a topic I could talk about for ages without coming to any sensible conclusion. I love being with people, but sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I hate it, but I need it, so when I do it I love it. So I love it. And sometimes I hate being with people, but then I realize I just hate being with me.

Anyway. Investing in friendship is something that gets more valuable as I age. My relationship to stuff and belongings gets gradually more relaxed, and just sitting down and looking another person in the eye, increases in value. So when I’m drawn between choosing alone, or with a friend — I’ve never regretted choosing the latter.

Let me live, days without end
Give me endless gardens to tend
Hills to conquer, cliffs to ascend
Unchartered road around the bend

Give me space to heal and mend
Vast views I cannot comprehend
Rivers snaking, falls descend
Dawn-brought fire to darkness rend

But give me none of these
If not with a friend

The road goes ever on

As I said, the road finally turns homeward. To Stockholm, alone on a bus and a train. Plenty of time to reflect on this year’s trip to the mountains.

Leaving the mountains behind, we snatched photos from the car. Too many photos — and with little care for each one. There was a time there were it was more of an impulse for me — hey, nice mountain, let me snatch you!

A mountain pass in Røldal, Norway.
Blurry mountain, snatched in passing. Picture became kinda cool anyway more due to nature than my skill.

I’ve learned better since this trip. First I had a long time on the opposite side of the pendulum, refusing to even raise the camera to my eye, religiously enjoying the moment. But I soon landed somewhere in between.

There are moments meant for the camera, and they should be captured only when you have time to enjoy the process, and work until you’re satisfied with the results. All the other moments that fly by and are only captured on your retina, those become memories, exclusive to the ones who were on the trip together.

They become another bow that ties the friendship together.

So on we go. To a home that awaits, away from these mountains that always will own a piece of my soul.

“If It’s Not Beanies, I Don’t Care” — A 2021 Recap

The picture above marked the beginning of an incredible journey. But before that, we did something we should have done a long time ago — hone in our focus on one single thing: Beanies.

This article is a look back on 2021, but to get this story right, I have to rewind to something I merely brushed past in our 2020 recap article, but turned out to be pivotal.

“This fall, I chose to put many side projects on ice, to let Red Hat Factory get the love it deserves.”

Meself

That right there is the greatest choice I have done in many, many years. Focus, it turns out was the one missing ingredient to bring Red Hat Factory from a side gig, to something that has started snowballing.

A terrible summer with great results

I was honestly doing terrible the summer of 2020. The last month before vacation, I woke up with panic attacks more nights than I didn’t, feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

So when vacation time arrived, I took a firm grip. I uninstalled social media and embraced the feel of grass beneath my feet and spent hours just looking at my nine month old son trying to traverse the lawn outside my parents’ house.

Honestly, as much as I don’t want to admit it, I needed a severe stress detox.

I decided to take exercise more seriously. I began running, though my asthma threatened to choke me every time. And I added some healthy food habits to complement it.

It was immensely hard to change those few core habits, but eventually it began paying off, and many of those changes have stuck with me, so now I’m stronger than before this panic ridden season began.

It was also an amazing summer, as described in that 2020 recap — but reading that article now, I feel like I painted a very one-sided shallow picture.

Playing in the garden of the beanie factory
My little guy helping my dad with garden work. (Photo is from 2021).

It’s better to have one bird in the hand

Me and my wife usually do a yearly review of all the activities we’re doing. We just sit down and rattle off everything we do, while the other takes notes. Are we doing too little of something, too much of something?

This year, I was tired. Tired of trying too many things. Tired of seeing a low return on work hours. I arrived at an epiphany. If it doesn’t hurt, I’m not killing my darlings properly. So I gathered up all my little pet projects, said a teary eyed goodbye, and promised myself I would not touch them ever again.

And I haven’t.

There were a lot of small projects that hurt to let go, but most painfully, I decided that I would stop pursuing new clients for my freelancing, and only focus on the ones I have, plus Red Hat Factory.

Red beanie
This is me focusing.

This freed up about 50% of my work time for Red Hat Factory. In the beginning it was yet another detox. I had to let idea after exciting idea die. Then a few days later that energy would resurrect inside of the confines of Red Hat Factory.

“I had to let idea after exciting idea die.”

There is a Norwegian proverb that translates to it’s better to have one bird in the hand than ten on the roof. Turning my back on those ten birds to nourish the one in my hand, is the best choice I’ve ever done.

Since then, the continual challenge has been not to heed their desperate bird calls. But the more I fall in love with that little bird in my hand, the less the call beckons.

Kevin — the best beanie photographer known to mankind

Ok, let’s get back to 2021.

I’ve learned since we began in 2016 that it all stands and falls on the presentation of the product. Our beanies have always been the same (with very minor adjustments), but our presentation has gotten better over time — and with it the reach of audience has grown.

That brings me back to that photo in the header.

I first heard of Kevin through a friend of a friend. It came to my ear that some guy in America (who happened to have a Norwegian heritage), loved what we were doing, and wanted to exchange product for photos.

Gray beanie
Kevin drinking soda on a hike in Maine.

So I sent him a beanie or two.

What I got back would actually change the course of Red Hat Factory. This was at the very tail end of 2020.

It is the picture we’ve been talking about all the time, and this picture marked the first time we got a Facebook ad to actually sell to you guys. We (both me, and you reading this) probably agree we have great beanies. But as I said, it comes down to the presentation. And on Facebook you have a split second to make that impression.

So long story short, we are working with Kevin all the time now. He now works with us, and crafts about 80% of all our content. He is just a swell guy, and the Norwegian heritage of this American fellow makes him an even more fitting member of the crew.

Do yourself a favor, get to know this man if you ever have a chance.

Kevin wearing the Westcoaster beanie
Kevin out doing one of his favorite pastimes.

The focus compounds — if it’s not beanies, I don’t care

“So we decided to just become the best hand knit wool beanie provider the internet has ever met.”

If the first stage of focus was Red Hat Factory. The second stage was honing in on beanies only. 2021’s mantra soon became, “if it’s not beanies, I don’t care.”

In 2020 we introduced wool socks and sweaters. Guess how many pairs of wool socks we sold… One pair (let me know if it’s you that have them). And wool sweaters? Zero.

With my newfound time to pour into Red Hat Factory, I had time to think things through, and look at analytics to find out where you guys actually connect with us. And I realized a couple of things.

You that find us on Google mostly care about beanies (and many of you love Steve Zissou and/or Jacques Cousteau, which is why our paths collide).

So we decided to just become the best hand knit wool beanie provider the internet has ever met, then we can consider other endeavors after that.

What is life without a mate?

In the summer time of 2021, the snowball had been rolling for a while, picking up speed, and we began talking to an old friend of mine about an investment into the company. He runs a business that further ahead in the tracks than ours, and I have often gone to him for brand building advice.

The conversations stretched out, and it took quite an unexpected turn. By the end of 2021 my old friend became a partner in Red Hat Factory — and he brings a lot of goods to the table: Experience, feedback, and most of all the sense of strength that is only found in companionship.

We’re growing, and it’s a lot of fun to have y’all along for the ride.

It was together with him that I made the final decision — to hide away the socks and sweaters for later, and have one single focus — beanies, beanies, beanies.

To clean up our trail

So what have we actually done in 2021? It’s simple.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process. Main thing being that focus is a key to combat stress.

If I can manage to let a good idea go, I am set for success. We all have our cruxes to get to the next level —this one turned out to be mine. If I can’t do it properly, I’m not doing it. And if anything steals focus from presenting those beanies in the best possible way, I’m scrapping it.

“If I can manage to let a good idea go, I am set for success.”

Hopefully you notice that this article is more worked out than earlier ones. And this is due to one thing: Focus.

Man lærer så lenge man lever. That’s a Norwegian proverb, and it simply means you learn as long as you live. There is no “reaching the top,” so why stress to get there. I’d rather do a few things well, than spread all my energy like butter scraped over too much bread.

And if Bilbo (the hobbit behind that butter-allegory) would pick a beanie, I pray he’d pick a Red Hat Factory one.

Yeah. That’s a good focus going forward.

In Search of Stories — Behind the Westcoaster Film

“The eastern face is rotten. It falls apart beneath your fingers.”
I was listening to an experienced mountain climber as he dreamed about about an old rugged mountain he had conquered near the western coast of Norway.

“The other side of the mountain however,” he continued with stars in his eyes. “It’s west-facing, you know. One kilometer of straight climbing, and not one rotten section.”

The finished Westcoaster video.

Instantly my mind wandered to the western fjord-ridden coast line of Norway. And I saw the dark storms; the hurricane gales bringing along a whipping sea spray, scouring clean the western cliff faces, until climbing conditions become pristine.

I might be completely wrong about why the west face is scoured clean — but about the gales roaring, and the sea rising to beat against mountain sides, I am not.

I have been in the midst of hurricane gales, braved dizzying heights, and stared out over inaccessible, bare cliff faces. And it was in this landscape the Westcoaster was conceived of.

Beanie in Norwegian fjords

One long beckoning coastline

The West Coast entails so much when one speaks of Norway. We’re a long, narrow country, and the coastline runs all the way from deep in the eastern Oslo fjord, around the southern tip of Norway (where I grew up) and continues all the way to the northern tip, and even beyond, wedging down south against the Russian border.

Once we Southlanders travel west, and round the south-western bend, the weather becomes wilder. The mountains steeper. The road starts needing ferries, bridges and unbelievably long tunnels to connect. And the further north you go, the more dreamlike it becomes.

I have not spent half the time I want in the fjords of western Norway, or on Lofoten, the northern protruding island cluster, famous among Norway travelers, but any chance to go there, I take.

So when my mom and I started developing a new beanie model, I looked for an opportunity to travel out there again to go and tell the story. And what a story it became!

Beanie testing in Norway

To the West Coast in search of stories

We tell each other stories to enrich each others’ lives. When it came to bringing the Westcoaster to the public, I wanted it to come along with a story of Norwegian heritage. Or rather, I first and foremost want to tell a story of my Norwegian heritage, and the beanie is there as a tangible touch point between you and our tale.

A thick beanie to face the wild winds of the West, was the concept we came up with. And we crafted our first winter beanie — inspired by the wild weather of the Norwegian West Coast.

And here came my excuse to venture out once again. We needed a video to present the project, and I instantly knew where to go.

The iconic Pulpit Rock. On normal days, it’s full of like minded adventurers, but since we were travelling in the thick of winter, we hoped we would be alone. It turned out our wishes would come more than true, but more about that later.

The new Westcoaster beanie in a Norwegian fjord.

First things first — a knitting mother documented

From we started Red Hat Factory, we knew we needed a brand that was as hand crafted as the beanies we knit. I want every picture, every graphic to be original content. So of course, we use my actual genuine mom for the knitting shots.

Filmed in my parent’s house, with my mom knitting a Westcoaster, this was a project for the history books.

Me and my good friend Ethan travelled from Stockholm, Sweden where we live, a ten-ish hour road trip to my childhood home on the Norwegian South Coast. We rested for a while, prepared a studio (moving furniture, decoration and lights around, getting it all right for the shots.) Then a day later the videographer arrived from Sweden as well.

We filmed all evening, trying to keep track of all the necessary shots, get the lightning right, nieces, nephews, children running around. (My mom suddenly wanting to go on an errand, and we having to deflect her.)

It was a wild ride, but it was just the beginning.

A Westcoaster beanie being knit.

The West Coast in a day

6AM the day after, we had uncovered our cars from the heavy snow fall of the night, and we travelled the nearly 5 hours to the foot of the Pulpit Rock hike. Daylight wastes quickly in a Norwegian December, so I was a bit stressed to capture the good light before it set.

When we arrived at the parking lot (conspicuously empty) we were first met by a woman coming out of a booth and looking us up and down. “There is a man,” she said, “that walks up to the Rock every day. He says the winds are particularly violent today, and he wouldn’t recommend anyone going up. And absolutely not going out on the Rock!

She looked us over again.

“At least you’re well dressed. If you go, at least rent some spikes.”

A few moments later, four guys (me, Ethan, videographer Simon and his cousin Emanuel) ventured up into the mountains dressed in four pairs of brutal looking ice spikes.

The hike is first on the lee side of the mountains. It wasn’t until we were near the top that the wind picked up. When we crossed the threshold of the storm, a grin spread across my face, as the wind violently whipped icy grains into my face.

The Norwegian was back in his element.

The Westcoaster beanie braving hurricane winds.

Hurricane winds and the might of the mountain

Before you go out to the Pulpit Rock plateau itself, there is one single place where you have to go past a narrow ledge. On one side a 600 meter drop, on the other a straight wall that you cant go around or up.

And this is the one spot that still haunts my dreams after this trip.

The gusts reached what we later learned were actually near hurricane speeds. And we were literally pushed around out there. But I had seen a gorgeous light on the other side of the Pulpit Rock plateau, and I wanted desperately to get out there and see.

So we moved out past the narrow point, crawled our way out and lingered.

I looked at the edge. And everything within me wanted to get out on the rock and just stare into that enticing light. There was something about the unreachability of it. The exclusiveness of the mighty mountain in a storm.

But right before I went for it, I was called back by my friends. And the chilling words that brought me back still gives me a shiver.

“If the wind picks up more than this, we’ll be stuck here.”

The Westcoaster beanie almost blowing off.

I knew it to be true, so we began fighting our way back. And all the while we shot footage here and there. The golden light lay over the fjord on the other side. The wild winds of the Norwegian West Coast truly blew — more than we could have asked for, and though none of our plans came to fruition, I think the film followed the script even better than planned.

And that final moment when I had to watch the others wait for the gusts of wind to die down, and leap past the narrow point — that is what still haunts me. It’s just too easy to imagine a hurricane gust pounding into my friends just at the right time, and down they go.

But we are all still here.

That same night, Simon and Emanuel drove all the way back to Sweden, spending 13 hours in the car tag teaming behind the wheel, and me and Ethan drove our 5 hours back to my parents.

We were spent! And I can’t imagine how the Swedes felt.

Gales of wind.
The yellow warning showed up on our phone. The numbers in parentheses are the gusts. 24–27,5 m/s equals a 10 on the Beaufort scale, and comes with the following warning: “Trees uprooted, considerable damage to buildings.”

Epilogue — it’s not over yet

The following day we rested a bit and cleaned up the studio. Then we travelled back to Sweden. And the day after that, we all (me, Ethan, and my wife) played our instruments at a Christmas charity concert.

The only reason we managed the trip was due to meticulous planning. But no matter how much one plans — one can’t tame the mountains. And my biggest memory from this trip is the feeling of exclusivity. We fought our way up in hurricane winds, where no one else went. And we were alone, above the golden light of the fjord, knowing we were at a place and time that will never be experienced again.

And the respect for the might of nature, and how small we are when the winds pick up in exposed places, is now ingrained in my Norwegian soul, deeper than ever.

Beanie is the Word — The Linguistic Roots of Beanie, Hat, Toque and Cap

When we first began to shape the language around Red Hat Factory, there was one word in particular that became a struggle — and it’s right there in our name.

A car is a car, a shovel a shovel, but a beanie…

It can be a beanie, a toque, a hat, a regular cap, a watch cap, a knit cap (all kinds of cap really). Some have told me “beanie” sounds cheap, but then “hat,” to me, just sounds like a brimmed hat a la Indiana Jones.

So what were we to choose? I went back and forth many times, changing wording on our website, until I finally did the rational thing. I checked what shows up in search results for the different words, and went with the one that fits best our product.Beanie” is now our main word, but with the occasional “hat” or “knit cap” to spice things up.

Red beanie hat in canoe
Whatever the name, the beanie hat is there to heat your bean. Photo: Kevin Erdvig.

The etymology of beanie

I love to look into the meaning of words every now and then. I am writing a fantasy novel on the side, and the quest to find the most precise word for the situation, is something I often indulge in.

So where does the word “beanie” come from?

Short answer: Nobody knows. But that doesn’t stop language professors from speculating. And speculating is fun.

Oxford English Dictionary says it probably comes from bean as a slang term for head. Pulling out the good old Occam’s razor, we should maybe surmise that this is where our search ends. (Though in truth, it ended at “Nobody knows.”)

“The fact that the slang term bean was used for head as early as 1905, is fascinating to me.”

There are other theories, but let’s ignore them. The fact that the slang term bean was used for head as early as 1905, is fascinating to me. I might have read too much Lord of the Rings, but I always had the sense that in the early 1900’s nobody used slang, and everybody were well versed in proper use of grammar and walked around in suits, checking their little pocket watches at every street crossing, while the camera dramatically pans in at their shocked faces when they realise they’re late.

A beanie
A beanie for your bean! Photo: Kevin Erdvig.

Well, we all have different kind of assumptions about history, and it’s healthy to poke holes in them every now and then.

The terms was originally a baseball term. A bean-ball was a pitch thrown at the batter’s head. From there we see it used more generally as in Bill the Conqueror, a novel (that I have absolutely not read or ever heard about) from 1924: “Have I got to clump you one on the side of the bean?”

So it makes total sense that a beanie would be the little thing your put on your bean.

The etymology of hat

Going to our second most used word for our head-apparel, I assumed we would be brought much further back in history. And in fact, we were brought so far back that the trail vaporises into the mist of history.

“From hat to hæt to hattuz, all the way to Proto-Indo-European root kad.

From hat to hæt to hattuz, all the way to Proto-Indo-European root kad. And that root word might, in my opinion, have the best, simplest and clearest meaning to what a hat is: “To guard, cover, care for, protect.”

So if you’re one of those non-existant people who insists on calling their bike-helmet a bike-hat. Well, you won! Enjoy it.

A beanie hat
A hat cold be so many things. Photo: Kevin Erdvig.

The etymology of toque

Going into this one I was curious. From interacting with Red Hatters across the globe, I’ve understood that the Canadians use this term. Canada has French parts, and toque sounds very French.

“It turns out I was right (pat-pat).”

It turns out I was right (pat-pat). The etymology of the word is simply “from French with unknown origin.” So that’s boring.

But don’t despair. There is fun to be had here too. I learned that in all parts of the world except Canada, the usage of toque refers to a cook’s hat. If you google “toque,” a lot of beanies with Canadian flags show up.

Given this, you understand why we refrain from using the word toque overly much.

A classic toque
If this man was a Canadian, he might call it a toque. Photo: Kevin Erdvig.

The etymology of cap

My favorite term to use for our beanies is the most precise one: Knit cap. Since our beanies are actually hand knit, this suits us exceptionally well. The common terms watch cap and knit cap both have one thing in common: Cap.

Cap is also, like hat, a very base word.

We can trace the roots of this word through Old English cæppe to Latin cappa, through some uncertain paths that lead us all the way back to Proto-Indo-European kaput — which means head.

Funny in and of itself that kaput means head. So if you say, “is your bean kaput?” you’re literally saying is your head head?

Anyway. Don’t go around saying that to each other.

Hope you enjoyed nerding out with me.

2021’s Best Outdoors Giveaway — Grease Point Workwear, Misc. Goods Co., VSSL, Hikers Brew, WESN, Sarva, Red Hat Factory

Normally I wouldn’t go straight up and call our giveaway the best there is, but this time, it’s not only us.

This giveaway has ended.

Together with a bunch of brands thsat we love, and that we think you’ll love too, we put together the Norwegian West Coast Explorer Giveaway.

Run time: 1st of December 2021, to 1st of January 2022.
Value: 800$.

Wool Shirt from Sarva — straight outta Sweden

Legendary Swedish family brand Sarva. Careful crafter of clothing locally made in Sweden. The name Sarva comes from the indigenous Sámi language.

The Henry — a slip joint pocket knife from WESN

WESN is our partner in hosting this giveaway, and we got to pick our most rugged, classic favorite — the Henry. A knife inspired by WESN’s own Swedish grandpa.

VSSL JAVA — a coffee grinder for the trails

Sleek is the first word that comes to mind with VSSL. Beyond the clean lines and absolute minimalism, there is a very human core and an obvious obsession with product design. It shows.

VSSL have a sweet origin story to share with the world.

Grease Point Workwear — providing a tote bag and a handkerfchief

Shaped by a farm-life upbringing, Amos and his crew at Grease Point Workwear create by the mantra of beautiful, functional, and enduring.

Read their story in their own words here.

Our own Westcoaster hand knit wool beanie

This entire giveaway is hosted by us as a part of the release of our new beanie model, the Westcoaster — inspired by the fjord-ridden Norwegian West Coast. That is why the giveaway is entitled: The Norwegian West Coast Fjord Explorer.

The Red Hat Factory Westcoaster.

A sleek leather wallet from Misc. Goods Co.

Dedicated to the wholesome task of providing the world with goodness, Misc. Goods Co produce good goods. Simple and clean.

Misc. Goods Co.’s origin story, is a great read!

Whole beans from Hikers Brew

Hikers Brew is exactly what it sounds like — coffee, roasted, packaged and branded with the hiker in mind… Or in this case, The Norwegian Fjord Explorer.

The entire giveaway

Giveaway
The Norwegian West Coast Fjord Explorer giveaway.

The Wheel of Time — Two Rivers Woolens and the Esthetics of Handcraft

Criticism, what is that? How about a bout of pure fanboyage? If you’d like that, you’ve come to the right place. And if you don’t like it, what can you do about it? The wheel weaves as the wheel wills.

Update: After watching past episode 4, my fanboyage has unfortunately dropped to a meh level at best. The only reason I don’t go to outright criticism is because this is no review blog, and I probably won’t revisit this. The books are amazing, read the books!

Wheel of Time… There are only two book series in my life that cuts that deep — and if you’ve followed us for any time you know which one the other is. (A hint — it also involves a wheel, inside of a mind that also contains metal.)

Anyhow, we went to the premiering of the two first episodes of the Wheel of Time at Stockholm Film Festival, and saw the thing in its full cinema glory. And it far exceeded every expectation me and my wife had conjured up.

First of all, we came with the rather tempered expectation that it is an adaptation. You don’t grieve over the plot lines that are lost, you praise those they nail, in understanding that they can’t film it chapter by chapter (though some of us would have consumed every bit of that).

The Wheel of Time Amazon Prime Series Casting.
The Emond’s Field Five, plus entourage. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

Casting — optimal.

Two rivers culture and architecture — whoa!

The attack on Two Rivers — it was shockingly emotionally impactful. Maybe because I was pretty tired and also in an epic movie theater being physically blasted by every sound, but hey.

Egwene and Nynaeve al'Meara from the Wheel of Time TV Series on Amazon Prime.
Yes, that’s pretty much how I felt too, watching the attack. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

Foreshadowing aimed at book readers only — yes! Give me more. More wolves. More Perrin and axes and smithies.

Yes, Perrin is my favorite guy. And that brings me straight to the “criticism”.

I won’t spoil anything, but there is this thing you’ll definitely notice with Perrin and his… altered relationships. It was the first thing that passed through my shield of positivity and caused a skeptical wrinkle on my nose. (My wife felt the same). But then I said to myself, hey let’s see why they did that change. (My wife unbeknownst to me did the same). Once the episode was over, I understood why they did it, and I applaud it as an immensely impactful way of setting up Perrins big future tool/weapon dilemma and character growth arcs.

Seeing that my wife came to the exact same conclusion, and went through every step that I did while watching, I can only conclude that these folks know what they’re doing, and they have won my trust for the future of the season.

But I’ll always keep the book in a separate category, and the series on it’s firm “adaptation shelf” — it’s the only way to not criticizes every change.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine Damodred in Amazon's Wheel of Time adaptation.
Two Rivers, prepped for Bel Tine. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

Okay, but why would Red Hatters care for The Wheel of Time

I hear you, loud and clear. Now, let me weave the threads of the pattern together for you. I have plenty of justification for allowing Wheel of Time into RHF Stories.

In the Two Rivers where our main characters are from, there is something called Two Rivers woolens. The place is known for frequent wearing of wool apparel. And that in itself should be enough — wool is after all our bread and butter. But there is so much more.

Rand al'Thor in WOT on Amazon Prime.
Rand al’Thor in his Two River’s knit wool shirt. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

There is something about the Fantasy genre that caters directly to people like us. The sense of adventure, the esthetic of old rugged sturdy village craftsmanship. In the Two Rivers you’ll find thatchers, cobblers, smiths and knitters — all crafts that Red Hat Factory loves to celebrate.

Amazon Prime's depiction of Wheel of Time's Perrin Aybara.
Perrin in his blacksmith’s workwear. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

And then the simple act of reading a book series of 14 books — it takes patience. The same virtue required to craft something with excellence and keep doing it.

It’s easy to make the connection why we love the Wheel of Time, and my final words would simply be — get an Amazon Prime account and give it a try. Then you might just find yourself being drawn into the longest written adventure tale you’ve ever consumed. 4,410 036 words over the course of 14 books plus a prequel.

Bon Appetit.

The Amazon Prime Wheel of Time series looking forward to the next episodes.
They caught the sense of adventures awaiting, so well. Photo: Amazon Prime Press Kit.

Who Decided the Pom-pom was a Good Idea?

Since childhood, I’ve seen the pom-pom as a completely natural addition to any winter beanie. Now that I’ve been delving into the history of beanies and their making for years, I’ve begun questioning the seemingly useless, dangling ball of thread.

When researching the history of the pom-pom, a wide variety of sources pop up. Historically armies have worn them into battle. To what end? Scaring their enemies? “Hey, yeah, I thought we’d put this ball of thread on top of our attire. It will rattle the bones of our enemies.”

Red beanie with pom-pom on top of mountain.
Our modded Southlander (which occasionally appears on Mom’s Market) on the Pulpit Rock.

A pom-pom has been used to denote all kinds of rank, including marital status. The latter reminds me of a weird concept the Norwegian Tourist Union came up with, where people were supposed to state their “dating availability” by the color of their beanie. Red: Taken. Green… Yeah, you get it. Traffic lights and all.

Anyway.

At the root of all these sources we find a little statuette claimed to represent the norse god Freyr, and, you guessed it, it’s wearing a pom-pom. Even the gods wear it! And good for us, as a Scandinavian brand, we can claim it for our own.

Pom-pom on a red beanie
Claiming the pom-pom for our own!

Pom-poms against depression

There’s a nice little article overviewing the use of pom-poms in various historical and cultural contexts by Danil Zhiltsov. One thing that stood out to me was that while talking about the pom-pom on a traditional Scottish hat, Danil says that “they enjoyed their biggest rise in popularity during the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

It makes total sense. Who needs anti-depressants when you can just put a pom-pom on your headgear? And look at it — there’s a pattern here. It’s on the war attire as well. Conclusion: If you head into great darkness, wear a pom-pom to cheer you up.

When we were in the southern Norwegian mountains shooting some photos of our own take on the pom-pom beanie, I noticed some sort of soothing effect. As the ball rolled around on my head a slight massage occurred. Maybe this was the original idea, lost in time.

Hand knit beanie with pom-pom in the mountains.
Peering out towards the great depression in the mountains — also called a valley.

Willem Dafoe’s pom-pom — Steve Zissou and Life Aquatic

Now, let’s reel this article back in.

We’ve long drawn inspiration from Life Aquatic and Steve Zissou. One day we looked at this image, and Willem Dafoe’s pom-pom embellished beanie. And we thought to ourselves, maybe this ridiculous dangling embellishment from our childhood could be kinda cool.

Red beanie Life Aquatic

So long story short (just kidding, we’ve already made it long), we made a limited run of Southlanders modded with a pom-pom to commemorate our childhood, and also send a nod towards Mr. Dafoe. These beanies might occasionally resurface on Mom’s Market.

How Lykke Kaffegårdar Wants to Change the Coffee Industry

Lykke Kaffegårdar means Lykke Coffee Farms, and that is precisely (but not all) of what we are. What started as a crazy idea on a mountain top in El Salvador is now a thriving business and passion project with farms in El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, Uganda and Panama. 

But first things first. 

We are a bunch of coffee roasters who decided to become coffee farmers, in order to make a bigger impact in our industry. An industry that has a history of being pretty shitty in a lot of ways. Some noteworthy examples being; the fact that coffee is sold as a commodity where price always is the main focus, meaning the people growing the coffee can seldom make a worthy living.

The hunt for a lower price point brings production to an industrial scale, where coffee plants are grown in a monoculture*, in order to facilitate machine harvesting. The plants grown in such an environment become weak and dependent on chemical fertilizers and pesticides in order to continue producing at volume. The monoculture also means deforestation and impacts wildlife as well as people negatively.

*Monoculture = the cultivation of a single crop in a given area.

Lykke Kaffegård in Rwenzori, Uganda.
The view from our farm in Rwenzori, Uganda.

At Lykke we decided to change this. To work in different and smarter ways with the ambition that nothing and no one gets harmed when you enjoy a good cup of coffee. And that is also the origin of our name.

Lykke — a name to fit the cause

Lycka or lykke is an old nordic word that describes a closed-in plot of farm land. It is also the word for a type of knot shaped like the number eight — a loop that never ends. But nearest to the heart of Lykke Kaffegårdar is the more common modern meaning of of the word: Lycka means a feeling of well being. A feeling we are all striving towards: To feel good by doing good things.

“Lycka means a feeling of well being. A feeling we are all striving towards: To feel good by doing good things.”

Those good things are a constant work in progress, but they include making smart business decisions and questioning the normal way of doing things. Like when we decided to build a smaller roastery for ourselves to save on resources, but tying connections with other friends and roasters that have over-capacity that we can use for when we have peaks. 

“We absolutely did not go in to the coffee growing business with some colonial ambition of owning a bunch of land.”

Another important thing was the way we setup our farms in the coffee growing places. We absolutely did not go in to the coffee growing business with some colonial ambition of owning a bunch of land, but rather we see our farms as inspirational hubs and education centers where we can set a standard for sustainable farming practices and inspire our neighbors to do the same. And when our neighbors are on board we are happy to buy their excellent coffee at a premium, selling it under the Lykke brand without middle persons.

Nerds at heart

Lykke Kaffegårdar, coffee types in branded coffee bags.
We are complete nerds when it comes to presenting the coffee in the coolest way possible.

Apart from the coffee growing side of the project, which is our cornerstone, we are all nerds at heart and take the pride and craft of coffee producing through in all things that we do. Be it roasting and quality control or finding the best compostable bag with the coolest design to present the coffee in. It is all a craft. It all takes time. But it is totally worth it in the end.