Artfibers in San Francisco

Link above to picture of Artfibers.

Kurasawa, originally uploaded by tdamommio.

I got a chance to go to Artfibers in San Francisco when I was there on vacation. It was so awesome! The building is tucked in between others on a busy street in SF's business/finance district. I sat for a long while in their yarn tasting section and swatched several other yarns before I decided on this one. It's called Kurasawa and is 50% Merino and 50% Silk. It feels absolutely luscious in your hands and on your needles.

My current plan is to dye this yarn in a color I haven't chosen yet. I am a little terrified about dying this because it was so expensive and I love it so much. Luckily, the lovely lady working there when I visited gave me the ball from the yarn tasting bin since I was taking the last of this color. So I have a little extra I can test on and experiment with colors.

This yarn will be used for the sweater pattern pictured which was custom designed for me on their software. First I chose the basic style, cardigan. Then I selected the pattern that appealed to me, lower half is ribbed. Then they took all my measurements, put them into the software, and voila! I was able to specify the type of neck opening, etc.

Now I just have to get up the nerve to dye it and knit it into my first ever sweater. I am hoping to knit this as part of a KAL (knit along) I joined on Ravelry that is going to correspond with NaNoWriMo. Should be a blast.