花鳥風月 (Kachou Fuugetsu): experience the beauty of nature, learn about yourself

Posted on Sep 18, 2019 By

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) Yarnies! <3

This week at Yarnish, we were transported to the magical world of Noro. Here we learned to let go of all expectations and experience the beauty of nature.

However, we quickly discovered that actually entering 'The Land of Noro' isn't all that easy...as we first had to pay 'The Gatekeeper' to enter. The toll was ten bottom-scratches. Once 'we paid', Gatekeeper Miley was satisfied and let us pass.

Once we entered we discovered the most incredible world full of the most exquisite yarn.

Formally introducing Noro to the Yarnish collection. We began stocking this beautiful product a few months ago, but we have yet to do a full blog feature.

Be free from existing concepts and limitations

Located in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan, Eisaku Noro Company manufactures yarn under the 'Noro' brand name, as well as machine yarns for textile production under the Eisaku Noro name.

Noro aspires to create yarn which is gentle to both people and nature. It wishes to provide high-quality yarn, and in doing so wishes to bring joy to those who use it. Inspired by the beauty of nature, Noro embraces unevenness as well as asymmetrical design and complex colour.

Pursue the image in our minds

Noro selects raw materials from nature. These carefully selected materials are used to create yarn which does not lose its natural properties. For example, impurities in the raw wool are removed by hand, without chemicals or machines, thereby preventing any destruction to the fibres.

Several types of raw materials are used to create the yarn. It is of utmost importance to Noro that the yarn created combines softness, lightness, strength, touch, colour, luster and ease of knitting. For this reason, Noro must maintain a deep understanding of all characteristics of each material to remain faithful to these factors. Therefore, blends from batch-to-batch may vary slightly, similar to the slight variations you will see in one tsubaki flower to the next.

According to Noro, 'colour must be beautiful'. Noro yarn aims to bring us colour with strong luster and richness of quality, yet robust to prevent fading, discolouring or staining. They use a high-quality dye which has been perfected over many years to attain beauty and durability in colour for their yarn.

Noro otsukaresama deshita

At the heart of Noro lies the principle 'spin yarn by hand'. Noro only uses machines for what cannot be achieved by their craft-persons. Again, this is to prevent any damage to the yarn.

The yarn is hand-spun using a slow speed and, as a result, the natural luster and texture are maintained. The yarn is also lined up by hand resulting in a beautiful irregular arrangement of the yarn, thereby giving the yarn substance and bulk. You can see this when looking closely at each ball: there are some parts which are thick, and others which are thin.

A piece of Japan at Yarnish

Since arriving at Yarnish, we have been absolutely swept away by the natural beauty of Noro. Working with Noro is an experience in itself. I can say that I have never worked with anything like this before! I loooove natural fibres; wool, alpaca and cotton. But I have never worked with a yarn quite like this.

I am currently working with the Geshi Yarn. 夏至 'Geshi' means Summer Solstice in Japanese. This particular yarn is inspired by:

'the season when the daylight is the longest each year and everything seems brightest'.

My eye was immediately drawn to the Unzen colour. It invokes a super warm feeling, like the Hot Springs in Mt Unzen near Nagasaki, Japan. Each stitch I crocheted made me feel like royalty. This yarn is super luxurious, yet humble and organic. The only pressure I feel is finding that perfect pattern that will showcase the Geshi beauty.