Fifteen Years with Our Christmas Balls

The Quiet Thread
Issue No. 05 – Fifteen Years with our Christmas Balls
Stories from our home at 682.5 metres above sea level

The story of our Christmas Balls begins in Paris in 2008, though at the time we had no idea we were beginning anything at all. We were still in the fashion industry then, running ARNE & CARLOS as a knitwear brand, showing and selling our collections at Rendez-Vous, a trade show for independant designers.

Imagine a giant hall buzzing with chatter, the sound of high heels on concrete, the faint smell of expensive perfume mixed with burnt espresso. Everywhere you looked: fashion victims in black from head to toe. The uniform was strict — different designers, same silhouette. Everyone looked like clones, only in extremely expensive fabrics.

Paris, 2006: During the trade shows we often sketched what we saw around us. Most people looked like clones in all black, but every now and then someone appeared who was simply too good to be true — and sketching them was far more fun than filling out order sheets.

And then, into this sea of seriousness, wandered two young men who looked as though they had taken a wrong turn. Friendly, quiet, soft-spoken — and wearing jeans and sneakers. Not the usual Paris fashion types at all. And they were so nice. We talked about everything except fashion, although we couldn’t help noticing that while the conversation meandered, their eyes kept drifting back to our designs. Only when one of them handed us his card did we realise who they were: the managing director of Dover Street Market in London, part of Comme des Garçons.

A few days  later came a Japanese couple — she dressed in Comme des Garçons, he in Junya Watanabe. Impeccably turned out, but with the same gentle way about them as the two young men before: kind, soft-spoken, genuinely interested. Again, the conversation wandered easily, and again, their eyes kept returning to our work. Only later did we discover that all four of them were scouts — sent out to look for the next big thing. And somehow, astonishingly, they picked us.

A few weeks later, an email landed in our inbox. It was from Dickon, the manager of Dover Street Market, asking if we would like to work with Rei Kawakubo herself — one of the world’s most influential designers, shaping fashion since the 1980s. We could hardly believe it. And there she was — well, not in person, because she is famously a recluse — but there she was, wanting to work with us, a small brand tucked away in the middle of nowhere in Norway.

Of course, Rei Kawakubo doesn’t send emails. She remains elusive, and we have never met her — nor will we, as no one does. But her team was fantastic, and always seemed to carry her spirit with them. For a brief moment, it felt as though we were close to her — and that was more than enough.

The requests kept coming: scarves, hats, accessories… and perhaps a tote bag. Without much thought, we sent them a crocheted prototype we had designed and made ourselves at home, thinking it was just to show the idea. They ordered a hundred. How were we going to make them? Peru came to the rescue.

“We will have 100 of these, please!” The first hand-crocheted tote we designed and made. The other 100 were created by highly skilled artisans from a wonderful women’s cooperative in the Peruvian Andes.

Then they said, “If you have any other ideas, feel free to suggest them.” So we did. We suggested they decorate their stores with knitted Christmas baubles. They ordered five hundred. How were we going to make those? Peru came to the rescue again.

We had never worked with a company of this calibre before, so we didn’t always think ahead. We said yes, and only afterwards asked ourselves how to deliver. Luckily, we had Peru — and an endless supply of good humour.

When the collection launched in Tokyo, London, Paris and New York, we timed a trip to Paris to see it. The theme was Crystal Journey. Our sweaters and scarves sparkled with crystals, and there, hanging among them, were our knitted baubles. Only they weren’t decorations. They were for sale. €80 each. Machine-knitted in fine alpaca in Peru, not hand-knitted — but still, €80 was (and remains) a substantial price for a Christmas ornament. We laughed at ourselves as we left the shop, and said: perhaps we should turn the idea around. Instead of selling finished baubles, why not publish the patterns and let knitters make them themselves?

The OG Christmas Ball. Price: €80. “Who would be so silly as to pay that much for a knitted ball?” we said — as we walked straight to the cash register to buy one for our archives.

Back in Norway, we began redeveloping the design. The Peruvian baubles were flat-knit and seamed — efficient, but not very Norwegian. We wanted them round, seamless, and true to tradition. The solution came quickly: the ball could be knitted in the round and constructed like the toe of a sock—twice. First, with increases as in a toe-up sock, then with decreases as in a cuff-down toe, leaving space in between for a traditional Norwegian motif. Once we had the construction, the variations poured out. We stopped at fifty-five motifs, but could easily have gone on much longer. And so the idea of our Christmas book was born.

Cappelen Damm, Norway’s largest publisher, loved the concept but already had a Christmas book lined up for 2009. Could we wait until 2010? They slid a contract across the table with generous numbers and offered to pay an advance on the spot. We agreed. Fashion was faltering anyway — the financial crisis had made fashion unfashionable — and we didn’t want to risk our producers’ livelihoods on orders that might never be paid for. We wound down the brand and started writing. Unsure how to begin, we followed advice from a television programme: write for five minutes a day. We did, and before long we had a manuscript. In January 2010 we photographed the baubles. On September 20th, 2010, the book was published.

Knitted Christmas baubles with motifs inspired by Norwegian and Northern European knitting traditions.

To our amazement, it shot straight onto Norway’s bestseller list for non-fiction — number three at first, then number one — and it stayed there well into the following year. The first craft book in Norway ever to do so. Soon the rights sold abroad: English, German, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, French, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Estonian, Swedish, and Italian. By 2011, we were back on the road, this time not to fashion fairs but to book launches in Frankfurt, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Sotckholm and Berlin.

The translations brought their own surprises. In Norwegian, Julekuler means Christmas baubles. That is what we assumed the English title would be. But when the first American copy arrived in the post, we found ourselves staring at 55 Christmas Balls to Knit. A completely different Christmas item. We laughed, and so did many others. That odd little title became part of the book’s charm.

The cover was another chapter. We thought the balls themselves should be front and centre. The marketing team disagreed. “Let’s put you on the cover,” they said. “Two eccentric designers in the mountains — that will sell.” We gave in. Ten years later, the American publisher decided to reshoot. If you ever wonder whether to put yourself on a cover, don’t. Because you will never be able to recreate the exact same photo. On the other hand, we did have more hair in the updated image, unlike most men, who tend to go the other way. Readers laughed with us, which is perhaps the best outcome of all.

The before and after. Well… at least we have more hair now!

Since then, the balls have rolled further than we ever imagined. Many knitters tell us they learned to knit with them. Others say they are addictive, that the book should come with a warning label. A nurse in Norway even told us about a patient who was knitting a ball as she was given anaesthetics before surgery. When she woke up after a very successful procedure, the first thing she asked for was her knitting — she wanted to finish the ball she had started. We’ve seen trees covered from top to bottom, homes decorated with Norwegian motifs from Iowa to Tokyo, and knitters gathering around them like old friends.

What began as a chance encounter at Rendez-Vous in Paris has become, fifteen years later, a worldwide tradition. The Christmas Balls are no longer just ours. They belong to all of you who knit them, gift them, and hang them on your trees year after year.

P.S. To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary, we’ve added 24 new Christmas Balls to this year’s collection — as we do every year — and are offering 30% off all previous designs until Sunday September 28th, 2025. A small way of honouring a tradition that began with a crocheted tote bag, a Paris trade fair full of fashion victims in black, and an order for 500 balls we had no idea how to make.

👉 [See the Christmas Balls collections here]

A younger version of ourselves. Creating Christmas magic for Swedish viewers in a Stockholm TV studio, 2011.