A Tweedy New Colour

We've got a brand new colour in our 100% Silk Noil Tweed yarn - 30-011. Previously we had the 2 delish browny-grey colours - Medium and Dark. Now we have the perfect partner, Natural undyed. All three are shown in the above photo. The Medium colour is on top, the Dark is the cream in the Oreo cookie, Natural undyed on the lower level.

the new Natural undyed colour

This yarn almost has to be seen to be fully appreciated. But we do our best to make our photos as close as possible to the being-there-touching-it experience. People buy a skein of this yarn, and then we see them racing back into the shop the next day to buy several more skeins before someone else buys it up. It has that effect on people.

 the subtle and quiet Medium colour...

We've also dyed and painted this yarn - absolutely scrumptious. We hand knitted it, machine knitted it, woven it. We can't say enough good things about it. Japanese origin. Simply beautiful.

the rich, moody Dark colour

Dreadlocks, mon

We've been waiting a long time for this yarn, and it has reggae-ed its way into our hearts in finest style. It's 100% Tussah silk, and of course, we call it Dreadlocks. Bob Marley would have been proud.

This crazy yarn gets more attention than any other yarn in the studio, hands down. Well, it's just so weird and wonderful, isn't it? Use your imagination for this one. It's stiff when you get it, but softens when you soak it in water; create in whichever format works for your creation. We'd love to see what you do with it. Email us with images at info@sanjosilk.com.

See it on the Sanjo Silk website (40-017) for more images. Jah love, mon!

What do you do with those?



We're often asked, about many of our yarns and curiosities, "What do you do with those?" There is possibly no other item in our entire range that elicits this question more often than the Cricula cocoons. These are the beautiful little golden lace caps that are produced by the wild Cricula silkworm of Indonesia. They're most beautiful just the way they are. They don't spin well, and lose their gorgeous golden lustre when simmered in hot water, the way you'd prepare cocoons for spinning. What to do? What to do?

While on a recent trip to Japan, Lady D (Sanjo partner) went to a spectacular museum featuring an exhibition of woven yardage, hand-wrought pottery teabowls, and intricately made shifuku (teabowl pouches, usually handwoven).

Well, how about that? There was a shifuku made from Cricula cocoons! Isn't it stunning? Made with great skill by TSUCHIDA Hanshiro.

We're limited only by our imaginations.................

New Paper Yarn

We have a pretty yummy new paper yarn in our stable. This one is a bit softer than "Russell" (our previous paper yarn). But we can call this one Russell too, as it rustles just as beautifully as the Old Russell. Because it's softer, it's more wearable. And it's really strong. The new number is 30-501, and it's available in 2 sizes: 25g and 50g skeins. These sound like small skeins. Don't be fooled! 25g of this yarn is over 300m! And all that fun costs only $3.75! 

Painted Loop Fringe Yarn

Oh my. This is the latest thing that has us quite breathless with adoration. We recently had one of our now-famous yarn painting sessions, and we painted some of the Loop Fringe yarn. Is this not gorgeous?

We're at the testing stage of a knitting kit for this yarn. It will be a drop-stitch pattern that takes great advantage of the looping, curving, sinuous qualities of this luscious yarn. We'll keep you posted of the progress with this project. But don't wait! Buy some yarn and play with it! It's so lovely, you almost can't make a mistake. The only way you can go wrong is to knit it too tight and too controlled. It's a yarn for playfulness and looseness. Let your inner goddess loose with this one.

Again, this is only available at the Silk Weaving Studio, Granville Island, Vancouver, Canada - not online, so sorry. The painted stuff is difficult for us to represent online, but we'll keep trying.

E-Silk - Wonder Yarn

Hey, this is one of the yarns we sold out of at Convergence 2014 in Rhode Island. It was a bit viral... Once a few people bought it, word got around and before you know it, we were sold out! We brought a bunch of our handwoven pieces with us to the conference to show people how to use the more unusual yarns, and this e-silk - 10-205 - got oohs and ahs.

This is such an amazing yarn. We use it in the weft. I've used it in the warp, but it's not for the faint of heart - weft is a no-brainer. You can just weave it as though it was any old silk yarn. But when you wet-finish your piece, ooh-la-la, the texture!

This scarf shows wide bands of solid e-silk in the weft. This creates bands of very elastic weaving, which gives a very refined texture, as you can see. The contrasting yarns are forced up into relief, and create bumps, ridges, bubbles and all kinds of fun.

Here's another one, where elastic has been used in part of the scarf to create abundant texture.

We have it in 2 colours - Ivory and Black. The yarn is very, very fine, so we find that these 2 colours work well with all the many-many colours we use in our weaving. It comes pre-wound onto bobbins, so all you have to do is start playing! So c'mon! Get some!

Convergence 2014!

Wow! Sanjo was just at Convergence 2014 in Providence, Rhode Island. The conference was from July 16-19, and we had a smashing time! Sanjo was something new for the attendees, something soft, natural, beautiful and completely irrestible. The result was that we sent a lot of people home with lovely new silk yarns to play with, inspired by the weaving and knitting we had to show.

The most popular yarns were 30-011, 20-090, 10-205 and 40-001. You can see that people were buying interesting yarns for creative pursuits - you people have good taste! We also sold out of our quality cards, which we will have on the website asap.

By the way, we have put the e-silk (silk-wrapped elastic; makes crazy textures. more on this later) to the website. This was such a popular yarn at the conference that we sold out almost immediately, so now you can get this great yarn online.

We're exhausted, but thrilled that you gave us such a great welcome. Thank you to everyone who came to Convergence and helped make out journey to Rhode Island such a success.