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For one knitter, the road to Calgary was paved with yarn stops, scenic vistas, and moments that would shape her next design.
Karen Bourquin6 min read
Editor‘s note: Knitwear designer Karen Bourquin lives in a small seaside city on Vancouver Island, where she and her husband operate a year-round resort. She draws inspiration from the ocean and surrounding forests in every season.
In the fall of 2025, the couple took to the road, in part to visit Lanaknits Hemp Yarns in Nelson, British Columbia to pick up yarn for her Breezy Pullover (featured in the Summer 2026 issue). Here, she shares with us a journal of her “knitting journey,” and how it ultimately fueled her creativity.
In July 2025, my husband and I finalized our plan to take a knitting journey in our camper. To be fair, he might not have thought it was going to be a knitting journey, but this trip had percolated with me for a couple of years and now we were finally about to hit the road.
The plan was to leave our home on the central east side of Vancouver Island and cross over the Rocky Mountains, taking the southern route through British Columbia to the town of Nelson. We would then move on to our destination, Calgary, Alberta, before heading back home to the Island.
When the end of September arrived, we left early on a sunny fall morning, drove down Vancouver Island to Nanaimo—about an hour and a half south of our home—and caught a ferry to Vancouver. We were on our way!
Life in a camper offered the perfect rhythm for knitting—long scenic drives by day and quiet stitches by night.
For me, the primary goal of this trip was to travel to Nelson, British Columbia, to visit Lana Hames at Lanaknits, even before I received a note from the team at Farm and Fiber Knits saying that my Breezy Pullover design would be accepted for the Summer issue. What amazing timing!
Like a film director knowing which actor would be the perfect fit for portraying a character, once I had sketched the Breezy Pullover, I was sure that it needed to be worked in hemp yarn in a lovely shade of green. As we were planning this trip, heading to Nelson was an inevitable stop to connect this design with Lanaknits hemp yarn and see Lana at her studio.
I had met Lana once before at a Knit City fiber-art festival in Vancouver after I had designed a men’s sweater called Gone Fishin’ using her delightful hemp yarn. Now I was looking forward to seeing her again and finally see the Lanaknits studio.
A visit to beloved yarn studio, Lanaknits, provided lots of knitterly conversation with owner Lana Hames.
Lana’s studio was perfection, with warm autumn light pouring through the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows. The studio was so well organized, with workspaces for Lana and her daughter. Shelves built by Lana’s husband held glorious skeins of colorful hemp yarn in various weights. Many of Lana’s designs were on display for the intrepid knitter that had sought out the studio—knitted examples using this special fiber that they could see up close.
Lana welcomed us into her calm and creative world, her studio tucked away in a side alley just steps from the buzz of Nelson’s busy Baker Street. As we chatted, Lana shared more about her yarn and knitwear business, which has been around since the year 2000 and is now one of the leading hemp yarn companies, distributing throughout North America and international markets.
Sneak peek! Karen's Breezy Pullover will be published in the Summer 2026 issue, which will be available at the end of April. Karen says of the yarn she chose, “Hemp yarn has a soft and silky hand. I love its comfortable and comforting weight as I knit, and
it is interchangeable with linen or cotton in many knitting patterns.”
For my Breezy Pullover design, I used Lana‘s 100% hemp yarn called AllHemp6Lux in Green Tea. Lana describes this yarn as having “outstanding drape and strength for a finished garment,” resulting in a knitted piece that will look new for years to come, without pilling, stretching, or shrinking. Lana also describes this yarn as soft and easy on the hands—a perfect fit for my Breezy Pullover.
This hemp yarn has a special feel and weight to it that is somehow so satisfying in a tactile way, while producing such a lovely fabric. It may feel quite different to work with at first, but it’s very easy to knit with and has such a lovely hand. Once knitted and blocked, the garment will feel soft and have a perfect drape.
The town of Nelson itself was a treasure. The warm afternoon provided my husband and I with plenty of time and daylight to explore the downtown area, with its lovely architecture and vibrant collection of stores, including the Nelson Stitch Lab, specialty shops, and restaurants. After exploring all that we could, we settled in for an amazing al fresco dinner at Cantina Del Centro on Baker Street, soaking up the positive vibe of both the place and the people.
Upon leaving Nelson, our journey to the Rocky Mountains was still ahead. We stopped for the night at Kootenay Lake Provincial Park. In the morning, we traveled just a few miles to the Balfour Ferry Terminal, where we armed ourselves with hot coffee and cinnamon buns from the Old World Bakery for our journey across Kootenay Lake to Kootenay Bay. The M.V. Osprey provides the longest “free” ferry ride in the world—a five-mile trip that takes 35 minutes and deposits its travelers on the other side of the lake, saving both time and miles while providing incredible views of Kootenay Lake.
Interior view of the Balfour-Kootenay Bay Ferry, which provided stunning views of the lake.
Each day of our journey was full of sunshine, and I found the changing landscape and multitude of lakes, mountains, and valleys to be simply breathtaking. Along the route, we spotted bears and mountain goats and deer. I found it hard to take my eyes off of the endlessly changing panoramic views, so my knitting production took a significant drop! Knitting was my evening relaxation once we were settled in the camper each night.
At Canal Flats, we stopped to check out the headwaters of the mighty Columbia River at Columbia Lake. To witness the beginning of this powerful river that travels over 1,200 miles in length was amazing. As we travelled further east over the next few days, the Rocky Mountains rose higher and higher. Soon we were at Lake Louise and then the resort town of Banff. We spent the night in Banff and explored the town alongside happy crowds of people late into the evening.
Get a closer look! Click any image in the gallery below to open it in full-screen mode.
Our next stop was the lovely town of Canmore, where we found another well-stocked yarn store, the Sugar Pine Company, with everything imaginable for the avid knitter, quilter, and sewist. Finally, just in time for a family birthday celebration, we arrived in Calgary—we had reached the turning point of our journey. Now heading west, we stopped at Rocky Mountain House, a town in west-central Alberta, for a night and then on to Revelstoke high in the mountains, where we stayed overnight and enjoyed yet another jewel of a town.
Heading toward the coast, we soaked up the all-day sunshine on the amazing Coquihalla Highway—a road with steep grades and some of the most challenging highway passes at almost 5,000 feet in elevation. What a spectacular drive we had toward Vancouver.
At last, we headed straight through Vancouver to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal near Squamish to board our final ferry back home to Vancouver Island, having fulfilled this wonderful and inspiring knitting journey over the mountains and back again.
Learn more about Lanaknits at lanaknits.com.
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