If you’re a knitter, I’m sure you’re familiar with the Sandnes Garn yarn line. I was lucky enough to get a behind-the-scenes visit.
Perhaps you’ve knitted Petite Knit’s Olga Jacket with Peer Gynt, or Midori Hirose’s Ranunculus in Line, or a Summer Lee sock pattern using Sisu.
Sandnes Garn has been operating since 1888. Today, it is the largest producer of hand-knitting yarn in Northern Europe and one of the oldest factories in Norway still running.
There’s no question that Sandnes Garn is iconic and, if you are planning a trip to Norway, I can’t recommend a visit here highly enough.
Embarrassingly, until I visited Sandnes in 2025, I had no idea that Sandnes is the name of a city.
I found out in the most random way: When I was searching for hotels in Stavanger, where my family was planning a visit, hotels in Sandnes started popping up as choices.
I can still remember thinking in a startled way: “Could it be?”
It could, and it was. Sandnes is a suburb of Stavanger, Norway, and with a population of 85,000, it is the country’s eighth-largest city. When combined with Stavanger, the Stavanger–Sandnes urban area is the third largest in Norway.
Fun fact: Did you know the Norwegian word “garn” translates directly to “yarn” in English? So when you say “Sandnes Garn yarn,” you are literally saying “Sandnes yarn yarn” in English. (I know, just like I did in my headline for this post!)
As soon as I discovered that I’d be within a bus ride of Sandnes from my base in Stavanger, I knew I had to visit the fabled Sandnes Garn factory. But then I found out that tours are only offered occasionally.
Vetle Gjevestad Agleda of Visit Norway kindly helped to facilitate my visit, and I was able to tick a gigantic bucket-list item off my list when I got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Sandnes Garn factory.
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| Sandnes Garn production manager Terje Hovland |
Huge thanks to store manager Lone Wedtfald Sørensen, who made the arrangements, and especially to production manager Terje Hovland, who took my family on a tour of the factory just as it was starting operations for the day.
Let’s take a look at my visit to Sandnes Garn.
Paradise! The Sandnes Garn factory produces 14 million 50-gram skeins of yarn per year, totalling 700 tonnes.
The site, which includes its plant, factory outlet and office space, is 22,000 square metres in size. However, only 14,000 square metres are in use now, as machines have become more efficient.
Production manager Hovland says that the last decade alone has produced greater advances in machinery than the previous 40 years combined.
In fact, in 2025 the company invested €3.5 million (CAD $5.7 million) in a new line of German- and Italian-made textile machinery to produce its Sunday 100% merino yarn as well as other merino and alpaca yarns.
Some 120 staff work at Sandnes Garn, with about half working in the plant overseen by Hovland. From washing and carding to spinning and twisting, the entire yarn production process is handled under one roof.
Meanwhile, the company’s design department creates patterns for knitters who are constantly seeking new looks; these in-house designs are augmented with designs purchased from freelancers.
The yarn produced at the Sandnes Garn factory is mostly wool-based, with 250 tonnes sourced from Norway. That’s about 30% of its total production.
Increasingly, raw materials are being sourced from around the world: Wool is purchased from Australia (22% of total production), fine wool from Uruguay (16%), alpaca from Peru (16%), cotton from India (12%), and mohair from South America (4% of total production).
While industrial yarn is sold directly to factories, hand-knitting yarn is sold directly to shops in Scandinavia. Sales to other countries are made through wholesalers.
Videos above and below show the intricate machinery that is used to process wool and other fibres into yarn.
By the way, I asked production manager Terje (below) if he was a knitter — and he is not! Imagine being surrounded by all that yarny goodness day after day and not taking advantage of it! I can only hope that he knows people he can buy yarn for, using his (probably) sizable company discount.
However, I’m happy to report that Lone, the store manager, is a major knitter!
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| Production manager Terje Hovland |
The containers below hold fibre sliver, a loosely twisted strand of fibre used in the spinning process. Raw, tangled fibres like cotton or wool are passed through a carding machine, which separates, cleans and condenses them into a single, uniform sliver.
Ring spinners (shown below) twist and wind fibre into yarn. The vertical metal components are spindles that hold the bobbins as the yarn is spun onto them at high speeds.
Sandnes Garn has over 1,000 different colours across its various yarn lines.
These machines are also part of the yarn-production process. Note the stacks of raw material alongside the walkways.
At the end of the production process, machines ball the yarn, apply labels and pack it for distribution. Watch below as skeins of Sandnes Garn yarn are packaged to be sent to your local yarn store.
Boxes and boxes of yarn are now ready for export. Sandnes Garn exports 47% of its production, with Denmark, Sweden and Germany as its top three European markets.
Canada is the top customer in North America, while in Asia, South Korea is No. 1.
Sandnes Garn’s factory outlet, which is on the same site, has yarns, knitting needles, buttons and sewing accessories. Shoppers can also pick up bargains on second-grade yarn, ready-made knitted items and even housewares.
It was an incredible experience to get a private tour of the Sandnes Garn factory, and I’m so grateful to Terje and Lone for their kindness.
If I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t stock up on some of the yarns that we can’t even get here in Canada, like Alpakka Følgetråd and Fritidsgarn. What was I thinking?!
I guess it’ll have to wait until next time.
With additional information from Sandnes Garn, Visit Norway and Edge of Norway
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