Our Story

Beata’s Story

My name is Beata Jezek. I was born and raised in Bratislava, Slovakia, and like many young, continental expats, I moved to Ireland seeking opportunity and improving my English. And like many, I fell in love with the place. I was never happy sitting around doing nothing, so when I was laid off during the 2008 global economic crash, one thing I did was YouTube a tutorial and knit my first item; a sock. I didn’t know that gauge was a thing, so it was admittedly a gigantic sock with aran weight yarn. Anytime I pick up something new, I need to perfect it. As I became a more confident knitter, I became more disappointed in the yarn I was using. Everything available was acrylic and scratchy and hampered the process. If I was dedicating my time and practice, I wanted to do it with materials and colours that I loved. I did lots and lots of googling trying to find something better. I didn’t dig the colours that were available so I researched the process and began to make my own colours. I tried using turmeric once and made the entire house smell like curry for a week. I modified over and over, for years, out of my bathtub at home and on my kitchen hob.

Sometime during this I’d joined a knitting group. They loved my yarn and offered to buy some from me. I decided this was it. It wasn’t a side hustle. My boyfriend at the time leant me €500 for a percentage as collateral. I told him “hell no” and just repaid him after I started selling on Etsy. Jezek in Slovakian means Hedgehog, so branded Hedgehog Fibres and off I went! I’ve never advertised. The product spoke for itself, people liked it and word-of-mouth picked up. I moved to my own website and opened a small studio in 2010. We’re a bootstrapped company, and employ a multinational team of mainly women who are mothers and young creatives and eventually hired everyone in my knitting group. We like each other and have a close-knit team (pun intended.) Through this I’ve gotten to steal great people out of unhappy jobs.

You can trace every skien of yarn to whoever touched it. We endeavour to improve sustainability all the time. We employ a rigorous 3x quality control from material to colour to make sure it’s perfect when you get it. We have eyes on every skein of hand-dyed, small-batch yarn. If we’re not happy with it, we don’t send it.

I stay involved in every part of the process with the team. We make our photos colour accurate and show the potential of what can be done. We want to under-promise and over-deliver!

We are Hedgehog Fibres. We make soft, squishy yarns in beautiful colours. It’s the colours I want to knit with, the colours I want to wear and the colours I can’t live without. Our range reflects my personal style. From dark, rich and earthy, to crazy, fluorescent and vibrant, depending on my mood, but always colours I love. We are often imitated but never duplicated. We make the best yarn in the world.

(No hedgehogs are harmed in the making of our products.)