Photographed in our studio with professional equipment, not the mill's stock image
Malabrigo Worsted is a single-ply merino wool, kettle-dyed by hand, and it behaves the way a good single does: soft, a little loosely spun, with the slight unevenness of handspun running through it. It blooms after a wash and fills in, so cables and textured stitches sit up rather than flatten. The color shifts in gentle bands and pools instead of holding one flat tone, which reads as depth in stockinette and as movement across ribbing. The hand is round and squishy, with almost no wiry spring.
Cabled hats, scarves and blankets suit it, and so do sweaters knit at a relaxed gauge where the fabric can bloom. Untreated merino means hand washing and drying flat, and it will felt on purpose if that is the plan. Colorways run from near-solids like Frost Gray and Pearl to deeper hand-painted variation in Rosalinda and Whales Road. With the more variegated shades, alternating a few rows from two balls keeps the color distribution random across a wider piece.
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A single-ply merino will pill more than a plied yarn, especially under a bag strap or at the cuffs. Knitting at a slightly firmer gauge than the band suggests and hand-washing helps; for a hard-wearing garment, Rios is the plied alternative in the same colorways.
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Malabrigo is a family-run dye house in Uruguay, and its kettle-dyed merino is the yarn people mean when they say "hand-dyed": every skein shifts through its colourway, no two exactly alike. Rios is the plied superwash worsted — machine-washable, crisp stitch definition, the Malabrigo for sweaters that get worn hard. Malabrigo Worsted is the original single-ply: softer, loftier, non-superwash, and the one to felt.
Below worsted, Arroyo is superwash merino at a sport-DK gauge for shawls and lighter garments, Caprino blends merino with cashmere, and Verano is hand-dyed pima cotton for summer. Rasta is the super-bulky single — a hat in an evening. We keep dye lots together on every Malabrigo order and stock the colour cards knitters ask for by name.
