I wove a winter kerchief for my husband. Together we looked at many types of yarns and patterns and finally decided on using Malabrigo Rios a superwash merino yarn. This Malabrigo yarn was so neat to work with that we decided to make a little video to share our excitement about this new yarn we found.
Let us know what you think of the video and if you want to see more videos like this.
Photo Gallery
Here are a few photos of how my husband plans to wear his kerchief while snowboarding.
Video Transcript
Hello! Hello! In this short video I am going to talk about and review a new yarn that I discovered, Malabrigo’s superwash merino yarn, Rios. I tested this yarn out by weaving a kerchief for my husband, and we were not disappointed.
So let me just tell you a little of the backstory on this cool yarn company. Malabrigo is a family owned company based in Uruguay that has created 17 lines of yarn in over 300 hand-dyed color-ways. The company employs mostly women, trying to provide job opportunities for those who are less likely to find work. Malabrigo also employs environmentally safe practices trying to use as little water and as few chemicals as possible.
All of this is just icing on the cake of this delicious yarn. I wanted to try it because of its superwash quality and rich color options. The end result of the original project was to create a kerchief that my husband could wear snowboarding and not have it be completely felted on him by the end of the season.
I wove this kerchief with a solid black for the warp and the glitter color-way for the weft. It was so much fun to weave with! I used an advancing twill goose-eye to really showcase the glitter color which is really neat, it actually transitions from yellows to ochres creating an additional level of depth to the final fabric. This yarns' thick and squishy nature also makes it really satisfying to see it being created on the loom.
This is the final product measuring around 35 by 35 inches.
The final kerchief is thick, squishy, and unbelievably warm. Because this yarn does have a fair amount of stretch, I wove this piece fairly loose expecting some shrinkage when it came off the loom and it was wet finished.
I was right. The width of the kerchief shrunk 31% and the length shrunk 11%. However, after I wet finished it, it fulled up and came together really nicely. After some testing we have concluded that it is great at blocking out the wind while keeping your warmth in. Its one of those pieces that after you wear it for a while and you take it off, your body misses the heat that it trapped.
The Rios yarn was really great weave with, it created an amazingly dynamic and beautiful fabric with a great drape. Its so amazing in fact that I am currently creating a production run of these so that you can purchase your own kerchief for winter, and soon we will be carrying a variety of Malabrigo yarn so that you can create your own unique piece.