The chart room
Why SELVANUI knits sea areas, coastlines and depth contours into jumpers, and what goes into each piece.
Names you already know by heart
Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight… Anyone who has fallen asleep to the late-night radio, or stood on a harbour wall checking the weather, knows the sea areas around Britain in the order they are read out. They divide the water from Iceland to Biscay into named pieces, and each name carries a picture: a shallow bank in the middle of the North Sea, a headland in the Atlantic, a rock with a lighthouse on it.
SELVANUI takes twenty of those names and knits them. Every jumper and cardigan is named after one sea area and carries something of its chart: the ring of depth contours around the Dogger Bank, the coastline that runs from the Frisian islands up towards Jutland, the waves and lighthouses of the Fastnet rock, the islands and soundings of the western isles.
Charts, not souvenirs
We wanted the pieces to look like they came off a chart table rather than a gift shop. So there are no anchors, no rope borders and no ship’s wheels. The colours are the colours of an old printed chart — paper beige, deep navy, the grey-green of shallow water — and a single red, the colour charts use for lights and warnings.
How the pattern gets into the knit
The patterns are knitted in, not printed. Two colours of yarn interlock on a flat knitting machine, so the lines are part of the fabric and the inside shows the pattern in negative. On each product page you can see one full repeat of the pattern unrolled and laid flat, next to the composition, the weight in grams and the care instructions.
Most pieces are a blend of wool and acrylic, which keeps them warm, easy to wash on a wool cycle and steady in price. A few heavier pieces are pure wool, and the summer cardigans are cotton. We state the composition of every piece and only describe what we can stand behind: a pattern “in the Fair Isle style” describes the look of the yoke, not where it was made.
Same sea
A beanie, a scarf, a pair of socks or a canvas tote can share a sea-area name with a jumper. When they do, they share its contours or coastline too, so the pieces can be worn together as one set. Each sea area has its own page with everything that carries its name.
Read out, north to south
The shop is ordered the way the areas are read out: Viking first, then down the east coast, along the Channel and out to the west. If you know the list, you will always know where to find your piece. If you don’t, the chart on the home page shows where each name lies.
The chart on this site and the charts on our pieces are drawings, made for knitting. Please never use them to navigate.