to kusha

after much lurking and drooling over alison's sensual descriptions and photos, i succumbed and took my first habu plunge with the kusha kusha scarf kit 78 (black ss thread and charcoal merino colour combination).

when the threads arrived, i was thinking i had perhaps taken on more than i could handle! i called my mother over to help me get started as it had been some 15 years since i had knitted...

considering my fears, i was amazed at how quickly the scarf grew and after one initial hiccup with my understanding of the pattern, i was hooked. (not literally.)

again, i wasn't feeling too confident with the felting aspect but after i found this blog and read some of the kit 78 posts, i just gave it a good rubbing and rolling on the drainer of my kitchen sink in hot soapy water. i didn't really work up the felting, i wanted to keep some of the open weave nature of the scarf whilst enhancing the merino thread.

end result: beautifully soft scarf that can be pinched and pulled into various forms giving a superb adaptability and textural quality. love it.

postscript: presently ordering kit 24. not bad for a novice!

Baby Steps

Before the summer of 2004 I was a relatively new knitter who'd never heard of Habu. That is, until I ran into an overwhelmingly interesting article on knitting with out-of-the-ordinary yarns, e.g., paper, stainless steel, and corn, in the Summer 04 issue of Interweave Knits magazine. I immediately fell in love with the idea of knitting with such unique fibers, but while it all sounded incredibly enthralling, back then I could barely get my run-of-the-mill wool stitches to behave, so I stored the intimidating magazine away, hoping to someday become a brave-enough knitter.

Three years later I still dream of making the bag that accompanies the Knitting Out of the Pantry article, especially now that the pattern no longer reads like a foreign language to me: Knot A Knitted Paper Bag (Setsuko Torii) A-1 Tsumugi Silk (100% silk; 455 yd [415 m]/50 g): #02 medium gray, about 3 oz (85 g). A-62 Paper Moire (50% linen, 50% nylon; 1080 yd [988 m]/1oz [28 g]): #05 mocha, #08 brown, and #06 charcoal, 2 oz (57 g) each. Yarn distributed by Habu Textiles.

In the meantime, I’ve started working on my first Habu project: a wonderfully sculptural piece that behaves as if it were alive, a.k.a. the Kusha Kusha scarf.


To say that I'm in love with the play of the silk stainless steel and merino wool used to make this scarf would be an offensive understatement. Yet, I am still a little nervous about the whole process…mainly because after seeing so many beautiful Kushas, I want mine to be just as stunning.


Nonetheless, my Kusha keeps growing. And as I get closer to the end, and start to worry about the felting process, Olga's words of wisdom have started to sink in: “It's OK! Every Kusha is unique. You are studying art; you of all people should know that we are all unique and that you are giving the thread, the fiber, YOUR mold.”

Ay, Olga. Where would my Kusha and I be without you?

Baby steps, people, baby steps.