Kurasawa

Kurasawa is a 50/50 Merino wool and silk blend from Artfibers.com, and it's a dream to knit with. I've used it to make Fetching from Knitty, and it's got a lovely sheen, does not split easily, and is soft as buttah. The color I used is black- here is a photo of cables done in it. Sorry for the poor photo quality, it was taken with a camera phone. But this yarn offers great stitch definition! $13 for a 131 yard skein, and worth every penny.

Noro Silk Garden

This is the only yarn by Noro that I've actually knit with, and I've knit several hats and scarves with it. One annoyance with this yarn, or maybe I'm just a heavy handed caster-on-er, is that when in the middle of casting on with a long tail cast on, the yarn I'm working with just pulls apart. Uggggh. Not a problem when actually knitting, but had this problem several times when casting on. But maybe it's me.

The colorways are lovely and varied, and the yarn gets softer when washed.

Alchemy Bamboo

The color of my photo is more true to life than the color on the WEBS site, but it's still a lovely colorway.
When I first felt the skein I thought it felt a bit rough, but knitting it up has been fantastic. It's very smooth and the finished product is soft with a fantastic drape and lovely sheen. But for $28 a skein, I don't know that it's that good! It's certainly a fun yarn to work with, but if you need more than one skein of it, I'd think of a substitute, unless money is no object for you!

The yarn doesn't split much, and had no knots or oddities in the skein.