I think I have discovered the best brand of yarn EVER for jewelry designers - Habu. It is imported from Japan, where it’s sold under a different name, and the line has more thread-weight and lace-weight yarns than I’ve seen anywhere else. Also, they have really interesting fibers - one yarn is a silk and stainless steel blend, there’s a wool/stainless blend, and I just heard about one that contains copper…

I bought a few skeins of assorted Habu yarns locally, (if you live in the Berkeley/Oakland area, Stash on Solano and Article Pract on Telegraph both carry a selection of Habu and have some swatches you can look at to see how they knit up) and I’m now swatching with them to see how they look, and how I can hopefully use them to make some really fun necklaces.

Is anyone else knitting, crocheting, or otherwise using Habu? I’d love to see what you are making, leave a link in the comments if you’d like to share. There’s a great sweater made out of one of the stainless steel blends in the summer issue of Knitty - I can’t imagine actually knitting a sweater out of that yarn, but how cool would that be?

If you are on ravelry.com (an online fiber community - mostly knitters, but there are plenty of crocheters, felters, etc as well) there is a Habu group - I love seeing the garments people are making out of these very interesting yarns. (*I’m on ravelry as leahmichon if you’d like to be friends - and by the way, there are plenty of groups for people who bead and do other jewelry-type fiber crafts, so don’t be intimidated if you, like me, are more of a jewelry person than a fiber person.*)

I’ll share some of my swatches & thoughts on how I’m going to use these, once I have a better idea of how they work up. I have a thread-weight wool, some silk/stainless, and some ramie that I’m playing with. So far, the silk/stainless is much easier to work with when held together with a strand of very fine wool. That’s as far as I’ve gotten…