Profile

Takako Ueki opened Habu Textiles in 1999 as a showroom for elegant, artful textiles imported from her home country of Japan. In 2000 she expanded it to sell more than 350 fine Asian yarns for knitting, weaving, and crosshair. The minimalist gallery space features wood floors and high-end textiles—most hand-woven or hand-knitted, some machine-dyed—hanging like paintings from the walls. A side room is filled to the brim with yarns in colors like oatmeal and grass green. All are limited-run and are catalogued in a 40-page sample set for sale. Also available are knitting and crochet garment kits, Japanese ribbons, and a small selection of how-to books on knitting, crocheting, weaving, and hand-dyeing. But most visitors come for the one-of-a-kind fabrics with which to make clothes or, more simply, to hang on their walls as artwork in its own right. — Caroline Kinneberg