silk Tag

Zealana Air

Even without knowing what's in it, you instinctively know this yarn is something special. The skein sits in your hands like a hummingbird nest, and it feels just as exotic and precious. Each fine strand nestles within its neighbors, and together they reflect light in

August 14, 2013

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Windy Valley Muskox Qiviut Royal Blend

Consider the Arctic muskox, a majestic mammal that lives in extreme conditions. To stay warm in the dead of winter, it produces one of the finest fibers grown by a living animal: qiviut. Softer than cashmere and eight times warmer than wool, qiviut is also

October 18, 2012

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Sincere Sheep Luminous

[caption id="attachment_7401" align="alignleft" width="400"] OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA[/caption] The Sincere Sheep was launched by Brooke Sinnes in 2011. Based in Northern California, Brooke focuses on carefully sourced natural fibers—in both yarn and roving form—to which she applies color using only natural dyes. Her taste in fibers is exquisite, a

December 15, 2011

Blue Sky Fibers Techno

Whenever you take a single strand of continuous fibers and apply twist, you get something innately vulnerable and unbalanced. We have all sorts of tricks for beefing up the fibers, adding secret plies and twists and whatnot. But ultimately, such a yarn is so ill-suited

August 18, 2011

Filatura di Crosa Nirvana and Superior

Superior has long been one of my favorite yarns. It's an airy confection of cashmere fibers that are held together by a luminous silk core and then brushed to produce a soft, ethereal yarn with a gossamer halo. That same heavenly lightness keeps Superior from having its

May 24, 2010

Handmaiden Swiss Mountain Cashmere and Silk

Most cashmere yarn is good, and some is even really good. But very, very rarely do you encounter extraordinary cashmere. This is the yarn that, when you touch it, causes time to stand still. Your fingers sink effortlessly into the skein, and you are overcome

January 10, 2008

Artyarns Silk Rhapsody

Many people reserve the term "novelty yarn" for fluffy synthetic concoctions. But Silk Rhapsody proves that you can have a novelty effect with entirely natural materials. It's no coincidence that Silk Rhapsody has risen in popularity while synthetic novelty yarns have declined. As people discover they

April 5, 2007

Hand Maiden Sea Silk

For months, knitters everywhere have waxed poetic about a new miracle yarn made from seaweed. Years of being pitched the latest "revolutionary" new products have made me a bit of a skeptic, but I finally succumbed. I had to see what Sea Silk was all

October 5, 2006

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Noro Transitions

We've seen yarns that shift from color to color, and even from texture to texture—slubby to smooth, bouclé to bumpy. But Noro has just upped the ante with a yarn that not only shifts colors but actual fiber content: wool, silk, cashmere, alpaca, angora, kid

December 16, 2004

Lorna’s Laces Helen’s Lace

Few companies can produce consistently beautiful hand-dyed yarns in quantities sufficient enough for large-scale distribution. Lorna's Laces is one. The color combinations range from brilliant to bare whispers, with a small line of single colors that still carry subtle variations in hue. Although some catalogs and Web

July 18, 2002

Rowan Kidsilk Haze

Kidsilk Haze belongs on that short list of exquisite, special-occasion yarns. It combines two delicate strands of silk with the very finest mohair fibers an angora goat ever produces. The silk glimmers through the gentle mohair fuzz like San Francisco's city skyline through the fog. Did

January 31, 2002