Laura Zander of Madelinetosh and Darcy Cameron, founder of Shibui Knits who closed her business earlier this year, have agreed to transfer Shibui Knits’ product lines to Madelinetosh. Shibui Knits’ products will be remarketed as part of the Madelinetosh brand.

The agreement includes the handoff of Shibui’s entire portfolio of luxury yarns – including the wildly popular mohair-silk blend Silk Cloud plus Pebble, Lunar, Cima, and other favorites – along with patterns and signature colors.

Shibui Knits was founded in 2007 by Cameron in the basement of her yarn store in Portland, Oregon. 

Relaunching legacy favorites 

Over the next several months, Shibui products will be relaunched as part of the Madelinetosh brand. They will be available initially in 12 top-selling mill-dyed colors exclusively through a limited number of local yarn stores.

Produced at the same mill in Japan as the originals, the rebranded yarns are being spun and dyed to the exact specifications as their Shibui predecessors. Tosh mill-dyed yarns will only be sold at local yarn shops. Customers can begin pre-ordering the first run of mill-dyed rebranded yarns from stockists in mid-December.

“I’ve been chatting with Darcy since she closed the business about how to carry her vision forward while also making that vision work in the Madelinetosh world,” Zander said.

Both Darcy and I wanted to see Shibui’s beautiful yarns live on in the market. For our part, we were dying to reimagine these stunning products in Madelinetosh hand-dyed colors.

“When I closed the business, I didn’t just want to walk away from what we created at Shibui Knits,” Darcy said from her new home in Dijon, France, where she’s retired. “Shibui yarns, color stories, and designs have inspired knitters all over the world. It will be a thrill to watch what Madelinetosh and its dyers do with these yarns.”

Luxurious, hand-dyed yarns

Because of Madelinetosh’s dyeing expertise, next year the company will begin hand-dyeing the rebranded yarns and selling them through both Madelinetosh’s direct-to-consumer channel and Tosh retailers. Other rebranded yarns from Shibui Knits will follow.

“These are arguably some of the most exquisite yarns in the market, yarns that customers adored,” Zander said. “I’m thrilled that these gorgeous products will live on, evolve, and inspire new generations of makers as part of Madelinetosh.”

About Madelinetosh

Started as an Etsy shop in 2006 in Fort Worth, Texas, Madelinetosh has become one of the leading and most dynamic hand-dyed yarn companies in the world. In 2019, Madelinetosh joined the Jimmy’s Wool, LLC family led by Laura and Doug Zander who have preserved the Tosh legacy of inspiring knitters and crocheters with decadent yarn, explosive color, and quirky spirit. The company maintains the 1,700-color Madalogue library and launches dozens of new colors annually.