To be honest, among the staff of amirisu, who are surrounded by yarn every day, I am the one who owns a lot of yarns. I have decluttered some of the yarns I used own before starting the yarn shop by knitting them myself, giving them to my mother, and giving them away as prizes, but I still buy a lot of yarns every time I go abroad. At first, I bought yarn to reference for stocking in our store and for yarn-making, and there were times when I had a suitcase full of yarn. Recently, I don't come across anything new anymore, so I don't buy as much, but I still do whenever I find some I like. When I go to a yarn shop, I unconsciously observe every aspect of the store, so I try to spend a certain amount of money as a way of saying thank you. It would feel bad if a competitor came in and left without buying anything, just saying, “Oh, well.” We sometimes get men like that in our store, though (haha).
So, my yarn stash grows.
I have such a large amount of yarn, but I remember almost all of them. I remember where I bought them or who gave them to me. I am very attached because I bought them since I like them.
In this series, I will introduce the yarn that has been sitting on my shelves in this way.
In this first installment, I'd like to introduce a relatively new one: Woolfolk Yarn's Luft. None of the yarns I have from Woolfolk were purchased from our yarn store, they were all given to me directly by the owner, Kristin Ford. We have a warehouse in Portland, which is also Woolfolk's home base, and we visit there regularly, though not every year. Whenever we go there, we always see her, and she always gives us yarn. When I get their yarn, I just have to knit with it. I especially like Luft, which is easy to knit, really warm, and doesn't pill easily.
I first met Kristin in 2013, a little over a year after starting amirisu, when I visited Portland for the first time to interview the owner of Shibui, a yarn company. Kristin, who was the creative director of Shibui at the time, picked me up and brought me to their company, which was located in the suburbs, and from the moment I met her, she exuded a wonderful aura, was stylish and nice. I fell in love with her immediately. Later, around the time that we launched amirisu as a company, Christine also went independent and started a new yarn brand called Woolfolk. We were able to carry their yarn in our store from the very beginning.
The pink Luft I have now was given to me in 2022 when we last met, and was a new color released that year (L20). I especially like the light shade. I am still trying to figure out what to knit with it.