August 17, 2007

:: Fabulous News from Habu ::

About couple hours ago I got off the phone with Habu, I got a chance to speak to Takako Ueki, who is running the showroom in NYC and you can often see her during Habu Trunk shows all over the country and at Stitches shows. I have good and bad news, start with the bad.
The subject of my inquiry today was the information about Avril Anniversary Book by Setsuko Torii that was supposed to be getting translated and published in English hopefully next year. The mystrerious disappearance of the announcement has started to worry me. Unfortunately, things has changed, the publishing of the book has been postponed till indefinite time. Takako explained the reason I believe the designer (Setsuko Torii) is being very busy at this moment and it all depends on her. Do not lose your hope, folks, we will still be looking forward for the whole book to come into availability soon, but better BEST NEWS that took me hyperventilating today and up to this moment I am in shocke/awe/extatic..

Habu Textiles is now offering ALL kits from that book available for purchase...
my jaw slammed on the desk when I heard.
I wasn't believing my ears so I had Isel call and confirm it too.
Takako explained that she hasn't placed them on their website yet, but for example
Number 7 kit in Avril Book: Paper (washi) and tsumugi silk coat is kit#100 , for 105$ and is available in 4 colors: grey, green, charcoal and brick red.
Washi Bisu and Tsumugi Coat

Number 16 in Avril Book: Tsumugi Gradation Skirt is Habu kit#102 and costs $95.
Tsumugi Gradation Skirt

About 2 weeks ago, I honestly with the help of Priscilla was trying to find out how much will it cost to get the kits directly from Avril from Japan. We learned that coat's kit price for example was 90$ from Avril, now available at price only 15$ extra from Habu Textiles, trust me shipping from Japan directly can be about 80$ alone, plus all lost in translation rutine.

A Habu Enthusiast among us is going to visit Habu next week briefly to learn more about the details and I also informed Takako about our community here, so hopefully she may stop by and share extra information and see how keen we have grown.

Off to bed, for so many weeks I keep going there with my inspiration book. Don't take long to guess what that might be.

4 comments:

Carlene said...

That is so exciting! (I love that coat.) And thanks for the update regarding the book also. I hope Takako does stop by to say hi!

Alison said...

Just as well I haven't placed a new order yet...which would have included for a couple of the patterns in the book.
Thankyou for your effort behind the scenes with Habu and for updating us.

lomester said...

I am going to try and call today and find out the price for the shawl. MY shawl

juliblue said...

Hi I just was in New York and bought the Gradation Skirt kit. It is very nice but they gave me very thin English Instructions. I was wondering if you had any insight into how they knit the decreases on the side of the skirt....Is there anyone I can ask? Maybe someone out there has done it before? Maybe you could email me with the tag Gradtion Skirt and I could ask questions or you could tell me what you did.....help it is so lovely, and I have another skirt coming from them, so I am sure the problem will come up again.
Thanks in Advance, Juli -- juliblue at gmail dot com