Japonisme at Loop

Cherry blossoms are starting to appear in London, giving off a wonderfully calm and beautiful presence – could Spring finally be here?! This feeling puts us in mind of the quietly beautiful Habu yarns and Japanese knitting and crochet books we carry at Loop. Based in New York City, but with a heavy Japanese influence, Habu describe their yarns as ‘slow’ materials that give soul to the fabrics they produce.

 

Habu yarns open up all kinds of creative possibilities and are perfect for experimentation. They come in little bundles, or on cones, wrapped up in simple brown paper.

 

 

We worked up a few swatches of these unique and inspiring yarns to show you some of the possibilities:

 

 

 

Habu’s Silk Stainless is one of our most unusual yarns. Its core is stainless steel, which is wrapped with silk to create a luminous and also structured fabric. We’ve known it to be used for jewellery, mixed with a wool yarn for scarves you can ‘shape’ and even as trims on cuffs or the bottoms of sweaters.

 

Here are some other combinations of Habu yarns we think would look stunning:

More inspiration for how to make use of these beautiful yarns can be found in the Setsuko Torii Hand-Knit Works book or the lovely Ori Ami Knits:

Or if you fancy trying out some stitch patterns and applying them yourself, try one of our fabulous Japanese stitch dictionaries:

And for some really very gorgeous Japanese knitting and crochet patterns try one of these (bear in mind that although the writing is in Japanese the patterns use a very clever charted system you can follow with the help of this book):

 

We hope you feel as inspired as we do by these lovely bundles of yarn and beautiful patterns. We look forward to seeing where your creativity takes you!