Hand-dyed merino
Malabrigo (Uruguay) is what people mean by hand-dyed: kettle-dyed merino where every skein shifts through its colorway. Rios is the machine-washable worsted and our best-selling Malabrigo; Worsted the softer single-ply; Arroyo, Caprino, Verano and Rasta the rest. The Malabrigo guide sorts them. Dream in Color (Illinois) layers semi-solid color onto superwash merino so it never pools — Jilly for socks and shawls, Classy for sweaters. Araucania (Chile) hand-paints Huasco Sock and its cotton twin. Artyarns (New York) dyes only luxury fiber: cashmere, silk, mohair and merino-cashmere blends.
Self-striping and gradient
Noro (Japan) feeds long color changes into the spinner by hand, so one ball knits its own stripes; Kureyon and Silk Garden are our two best-selling lines of any brand, and the Noro guide maps the rest. Schoppel Wolle (Germany) owns the slow gradient: Zauberball Crazy and its family, plus Edition 3 and a range of solids; the Zauberball guide is the family tree. West Yorkshire Spinners (England) makes the self-striping sock yarn with the famous color card, Signature 4ply.
American wool
Brown Sheep (Nebraska) spins Lamb's Pride, the wool-mohair that felts better than anything, and Nature Spun, the sixty-shade colorwork worsted. Blue Sky Fibers (Minnesota) is Organic Cotton, the Woolstok highland wools, and the alpacas. Plymouth (Pennsylvania) is where most knitters find their first good alpaca — Baby Alpaca Grande and Baby Alpaca Worsted — and the workhorse Worsted Merino Superwash. Juniper Moon Farm makes the yarns we sell most of: Cumulus, the blown cotton; Zooey, the cotton-linen; Herriot, the baby alpaca; Bud, the cotton slub. Ewe Ewe does one thing, superwash fine merino in a clean palette, in 50 g balls. HiKoo is Skacel's house brand: Simplicity, the machine-washable baby and blanket DK, with Sueño and CoBaSi above it. Berroco (New England) made its name on Ultra Alpaca, the half-and-half alpaca-wool.
British and Irish
West Yorkshire Spinners spins British and Falkland wool in Keighley. Studio Donegal (County Donegal) spins the real Irish tweed, Soft Donegal and Darnie; the Donegal tweed guide compares them. The Fibre Co designs its blends in the north of England; Arranmore Light is its Donegal-spun tweed. Sirdar is the British mill behind the Snuggly baby range.
European and Icelandic
Lopi is Icelandic wool from Ístex; Álafoss Lopi is the chunky the lopapeysa is knit in, and what weight is Lopi explains the family. Zitron (Germany) works only in extrafine merino it can trace: Feinheit for fine sweaters and babies. Lang Yarns (Switzerland) gives us Cashmere Light. Elsebeth Lavold (Sweden) designed Silky Wool to show a cable, and Hempathy for summer. Amano (Peru) spins Riti, a plied Patagonian merino, and Yana XL, the super-bulky.
Needles
addi (Germany) makes the nickel-plated circulars most fast knitters end up on — the addi guide sorts Turbo from Rockets from FlexiFlips. Crystal Palace bamboo is what many knitters learned on and kept; Reynolds rosewood is the warm, quiet hardwood. The material guide is the comparison, and Clover supplies the notions.
Where to start
New to all of them: Malabrigo Rios for a sweater, Noro Silk Garden for a scarf, Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride for a felted bag, Juniper Moon Cumulus for summer, HiKoo Simplicity for a baby, Zauberball Crazy for socks, and an addi Turbo or a Crystal Palace bamboo circular to knit them on. Every brand's own page has the longer story and all of its lines.