A mother, a daughter and a baby on the way.

Knitting for Olive is a Danish company that designs knitting patterns and sells its own yarn. Its website says it was founded in 2015 by a mother and daughter, Pernille and Caroline; the two are named as Pernille Larsen and Caroline Larsen on the brand’s 2021 pattern book from Politikens Forlag. Accura, the Danish law firm that advised the family on the 2026 sale of the business, describes the start as a “hobby project” focused on patterns.

The name is a family one. According to Knit 2 Together, a knitting newsletter written by Aly Milich, it refers to Pernille’s first grandchild, whom the family called “Olive” before the birth. The company says its first patterns were for babies and toddlers, written when Caroline’s second baby was born; children’s designs followed, and the first patterns for adults came in 2018.

The yarn came early. The company says it created its own yarn in 2016, starting with a fine Merino, and has since added six more; NKP M&A Insights, a Nordic deal-news service, described that move in October 2026 as yarn production “through partnerships.” In 2022 Pernille’s son and Caroline’s brother, Alexander, joined the business — as chief executive and co-owner, according to Accura.

The company also opened physical shops: the first in Frederiksberg, the separate municipality inside Copenhagen, in 2018, and a second in Aarhus, it says. Accura describes Knitting for Olive as a premium yarn and pattern company with an international community of more than 700,000 knitters; we give that figure as the advisers’ and company’s own.

Merino, mohair and a colour system.

The yarn range is small and built around natural fibres. Alongside the original Merino, the company sells Soft Silk Mohair, a blend of kid mohair and mulberry silk; Pure Silk, made from bourette silk; and No Waste Wool, which it says blends leftover wool fibre from other yarn production with merino. Heavier and blended yarns — a Heavy Merino, a Cotton Merino and a cashmere — fill out the shelf. Many of its patterns are knitted with one strand of Merino and one of Soft Silk Mohair held together, a pairing the pattern pages repeat again and again.

On where the yarn is made, the brand’s product pages are specific, and we give them as its claims. The Merino, it says, is spun from wool from sheep in Patagonia and “produced in Italy”; the Heavy Merino uses wool from New Zealand and is also produced in Italy; the cashmere fibre “originates from China and Mongolia” and the yarn is produced in Italy. The mohair, it says, comes from angora goats in South Africa, “and the yarn is also produced locally.” The pages we read for Pure Silk and Cotton Merino do not name a spinning country, and the company does not name its mills.

Certification is central to the pitch. The company says its wool and mohair are certified to the Responsible Wool Standard and Responsible Mohair Standard through the certifier Control Union, that its yarns carry OEKO-TEX Standard 100, and that its silk is “cruelty-free,” taken from cocoons the moths have already left. It also says it has donated whole days’ sales to the Red Cross, UNICEF and the Danish Cancer Society.

Colour is handled like a system. Each shade page gives the colour a descriptive name — Peacock, Strawberry Milkshake, Olive Brown — and tags it with a “colour season,” such as Soft Summer or Bright Winter, a borrowing from personal-colour analysis.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make or sell yarn for hand knitting and crochet, and they come from five countries: Knitting for Olive from Denmark, Plymouth Yarn and Universal Yarn from the United States, Jamieson & Smith from Shetland in Scotland, Austermann and GGH from Germany, and Biscotte Yarns from Canada. Between them they show how differently a yarn brand can be built.

Some yarn brands are rooted in a single place — an island flock, a town, a regional wool tradition — and their colours and fibres grew out of what that place could supply. Others are names built around design and distribution, which develop yarns and colourways and may rely on mills elsewhere to spin them. And some are dyers, who buy undyed yarn and make their mark with colour alone, in batches small enough that no two skeins quite match.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now and where its yarn is spun or dyed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From family business to a Norwegian holding company.

In 2021 the brand reached bookshops. Politikens Forlag published Knitting for Olive, a 264-page Danish hardback by Pernille and Caroline Larsen, in September that year, with 20 patterns for sweaters, cardigans, tops, hats and scarves in sizes up to 4XL; the publisher says nine of them were new designs.

In 2026 the family sold the business. NKP M&A Insights reported in April 2026 that the owners were working with Grant Thornton to explore ownership options, and on 1 October 2026 that the Norwegian investor Hawk Infinity had acquired Knitting for Olive. Hawk Infinity’s own portfolio page lists the company with an acquisition date of 30 September 2026 and “100 % ownership,” describing it as a “family-run Copenhagen-based designer and seller of knitting patterns and premium natural yarns.” Knit 2 Together reported that the brand announced the deal on Instagram on 2 October, describing it as a majority acquisition and saying the family would continue to run the company.

Hawk Infinity is based in Oslo and calls itself “the long-term home for founder-led businesses.” Its portfolio page shows how broad that home is: in the summer of 2026 alone it lists purchases including Teemill, a British printer of organic clothing, and Den Lille Chipsfabrikken, a potato-chip maker in Kristiansand, alongside software and staffing firms.

For a design guide, Knitting for Olive shows how a pattern brand can turn a family story, a tight yarn range and a carefully named colour card into a recognisable identity. Compare Isager, another Danish yarn house with a distinctive palette, and Hjertegarn, one of Denmark’s older yarn names. For this guide we use olive, soft rose and oatmeal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Knitting for Olive’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.