Who we are
A small studio. One knitter. No shortcuts.
Cicikim started in 2019 when Elif Demir — who grew up in Izmir watching her grandmother knit in front of a wood stove — moved to Sneek and couldn't find baby clothes that felt worth keeping. So she started making them.
The name is a Turkish term of endearment for small children. The aesthetic is informed by both places: the pattern vocabulary of Aegean textile traditions and the restrained colour sense of Dutch interiors. This collision turns out to work well for baby hats.
Everything is made by hand. There is no production run, no assistant, no outsourced knitting. Each order is a single conversation followed by weeks of work. We take fewer orders because of this, but every piece gets proper attention.
What we care about
01
Natural fibres only
No acrylic, no blended synthetics. If we can't name the fibre and its origin, we don't use it.
02
Honest lead times
We say four to six weeks because that's how long good knitting takes. We don't speed up by cutting corners.
03
No waste
Yarn offcuts go into other pieces. We knit to order — nothing sits in a warehouse waiting to be discounted.
04
One honest price
No dynamic pricing, no seasonal markup. Materials and time cost what they cost — the price reflects that.
Who writes in Field Notes
Elif Demir
Founder & knitter
Elif studied textile design in Izmir and worked briefly in Amsterdam before settling in Sneek. She writes about materials, technique and the occasional frustration of sizing inconsistency in commercial patterns.
LinkedInRoos van der Berg
Contributing writer
Roos is a Frisian-born textile historian based in Leeuwarden. She consults on yarn sourcing and writes the more historically-minded Field Notes about Dutch knitting traditions and their relationship to trade routes.
LinkedInHave something specific in mind?
A first hat for a newborn, a birthday romper, a wool blanket for a particular cot — tell us what you're after.
Get in touch