5 Travel destinations for fibre artists 2025
Me, knitting on a rock, at the top of Jurassic Ridge, BC. Enjoying the view and of course, knitting
Are you a knitter or crocheter with a passion for travel? If you’ve followed me for a while now, you know very well that I love to travel just as much as I love knitting and crochet! After an epic year of travel in 2023, it’ll be a while before I’m on another big trip, but I can certainly start to compile my next bucket list of places. In preparation, I thought I would try to niche down my destinations, by looking for places that the internet recommends visiting if you’re a fibre and textile artist- from knitters to weavers!
There are multiple retreats and fibre-based festivals all over the world, which I have covered in a previous blog post, but once I started researching places to visit for yarn lovers, I discovered multiple places with history and connections to the world of fibre and textiles.
In this blog post, I’m going to go over the five destinations that really piqued my interest when searching the top destinations for knitting, crochet and other fibre arts. .The destinations range from the cool and rugged Shetland Islands to the warmth of Peru. To date, I haven’t visited any of the places listed below I hope to change that in the future!
So pack your needles, grab your yarn, and get ready to embark on a knitting and crochet armchair adventure. I’m sure this blog post will spark wanderlust for you, like it has for me.
If you prefer watching over reading, I cover all of these destinations in the below episode on my Youtube channel.
Shetland Islands, Scotland
The Shetland Islands have long been associated with knitting, in particular famous for the Fair Isle technique. Through writing this blog, I have learnt that Queen Victoria loved Shetland lace!
Shetland wool is known for being fine and soft, but still gives great insulation against the cold weather. Did you know that in 2011, Shetland wool, produced in Shetland, became the first non-food product in the UK to be given protected geographical status with a protected designation of origin?!
Known for their rich knitting heritage and beautiful wool, the Shetland Islands are a paradise for knitters and crocheters. There’s the annual Shetland Wool Week - a celebration of “Britain’s most northerly native sheep” as well as the Shetland textile industry, which would be great to tie in to a trip there.
A sample Lopi sweater, from Iceland. Photo courtesy of Canva.
Iceland
Iceland is famous for its wool industry and stunning landscapes. A place where woollen outfits are a necessity rather than nice to have! The capital, Reykjavik is home to the Handknitting Association of Iceland. Established in 1977 by a group of (mostly female) knitters who wanted to increase their income by knitting and selling their special Lopapeysa (Lopi) sweaters and other garments. The Association has a shop where you can purchase these handmade items knitted with the unique Lopi yarn of the Icelandic sheep.
Lopi yarn is made from the dual-coated fleece of icelandic sheep. The fleece has a water-resistant outer layer and soft, short fibres underneath for warmth. These two fibres are spun together to create the yarn.
While exploring all the stunning scenery I have seen Iceland has to offer, a trip in early summer would enable you to attend the annual Iceland Knit Fest, hosted at the Iceland Textile Museum in a town called Blönduós, in northern Iceland.
Interested in more travel related content?
You may find my blog/vlog post sharing packing tip and tricks helpful
I’ve been lucky enough to visit many yarn stores around the world, you can read about many of them here.
Many of the patterns have been designed with travel in mind - small projects that are simple, meditative knits/crochet projects. You can browse them here.
Keep scrolling for the next three destinations…
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Peru
Evidence suggests that Peru has been in the textile production industry for over 10,000 years! It’s known for it’s alpaca and llama fibres. and their most famous knitwear has to be the colourful and intricate chullos (knitted caps).
Did you know Peru is also home to the world’s most expensive wool - Vicuna wool. From the lama family. Vicuna are the national animal of Peru and highly protected after 100s of years of hunting. The rarity of it is what makes it so expensive, the Vicuna does not have as much fleece as an alpacas and it takes 3 years to grow back after sheering!
Apparently it is a very soft, yet resilient and hard-wearing wool with exceptional elasticity.
Andean knitting often involves knitting with five, very fine, double pointed needles! Which is something to be admired, I haven’t even tried to knit with three DPNs yet, let alone five! I recommend reading this blog post by Cynthia Samake to read more about Andean knitting.
I saw that Peru was referred to as the knitting capital of the world- now there is a claim and a huge reason for me to visit!
A row of colourful chullos. Photo courtesy of Canva
Oslo, Norway
in my research this was another destination that came up as the “knitting capital of the world” so there’s obviously a little bit of competition out there!
However, the statistics that I found are in pretty strong support of it being the knitting capital- in Norway 43% of all women, and 30% of women under the age of 29, knit! To be honest I have no idea how that compares to other countries, but that feels like a high percentage.
There are multiple yarn stores around the city and locally produced wool. The Visit Oslo website has a dedicated “yarn store crawl” map to help you go on your own yarn store tour.
Apparently there are plenty of knit nights you could attend on your visit too!
Of course, Oslo has its own knitting festival also, although i couldn’t find any information for 2025 dates at the time of publishing.
Image courtesy of Canva.
Kyrgyzstan
Now, this final one may be a little less explored than the previous 4, but I saw that Madeline from Fruity Knitting recently visited and it had me intrigued!
Part of the historic Silk Road route in central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is a producer of cashmere yarn. Nomadic shephard communities, own the indigenous cashmere coats that are adapted to the cold climate, which results in the warm, silky soft fleece.
June cashmere is one example of a fibre business that started to help revitilize the countries fibre industry. . the team travel village to village to purchase the fibres from the shephards.
Now there may not be a fibre festival here, but I did see online some package tours that are specifically textile orientated. including this one from National Geographic.
There’s so much more to say about the history of fibre, textiles, knitting and crochet or all these places, I recommend looking more into each one yourself. Let me know which destination is going to be at the top of your list!
There’s also many more destinations, let me know if you’d be interested in a part 2!
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting that savings fund now!