Knit City 2014

The Knit City conference took Vancouver by storm over the past weekend - Oct. 4 & 5. This year it moved to a new a much larger venue, having completely outgrown their original venue in just 2 years. Although everyone complained about the horrendous lighting, the spaciousness of The Forum at the PNE was much appreciated.

We had many-many visitors to the Sanjo booth. Lots of people buying silk for special projects, kits (so appreciated for their simplicity - all you need except the knitting needles, in one box), spinning fibre, and lovely silk bits and pieces. Lots of new customers, learning about Sanjo and silk for the first time; lots of returning customers, enjoying the plentitude of saturated colours we had this year to compliment the always-beautiful natural, undyed yarns.

We loved the diversity of the knitting crowd gathered at Knit City. There were young and old, steam-punk and handbag-ladies, traditional and uber-innovative. So great to have this mish-mash of creative minds in one place, all looking for that thing that would push the Imagination Button for them.

Thanks to everyone who came by to say hi. We had a great weekend. And thanks to Fiona and Amanda of Knit Social for another Herculean job!

Thank you, Handwoven!

 

Handwoven Magazine has included us in the "Goods" page of their brand new issue - yowzah! Thanks for that, Handwoven! We haven't even seen it yet, but we're already getting enquiries. If you don't know which yarn they're enticing you to investigate, it's this one: 10-006

This is a very unique yarn. It's a 20/2, but it's uneven spun; some parts are somewhat loosely spun, and others are more tightly spun. The result is a subtle variation in texture when it's woven. Lovely in both warp and weft, I often combine it with the regularly spun 10-007   Here's an image that shows how these look when woven together. 

 If you look closely, you can see, in the floats, that the yarns look different from one another. And that the texture is just a bit more varied than what you might anticipate when using regular 20/2. That's because of the uneven spinning. Cool, huh?

Also available in colours 

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.