Noro

Noro yarn is spun in Japan under Eisaku Noro's eye, and it is unlike anything else on the shelf: long, slow colour changes fed into the spinner by hand, so a single ball knits its own stripes and no two balls read quite the same. Kureyon, the 100% wool original, and Silk Garden, its silk-mohair-lambswool sibling, are our two best-selling lines of any brand.

The newer lines stretch the idea: Ito is a 200 g wool cake with colour runs long enough for a whole sweater panel, Madara blends wool with silk and alpaca, Tsubame is a silk-wool DK, and Kakigori a cotton-silk for summer. The Haunui family — wool, wool-silk and wool-cotton — comes in large put-ups for blankets. Noro is thick-and-thin by design; knit a swatch and let the colour do the work.