Our First-Ever Superwash Wool is Here!

We’re so excited to bring you Berroco Ultra® Wool, our first ever 100% superwash wool yarn. Now you have another affordable option for all-wool, easy-car yarn that can go in the washing machine without fear of felting.

Berroco Ultra Wool is 100% Peruvian wool, processed and spun in Peru. In working to develop this yarn, we wanted to create the best superwash wool that we could. For starters, the yarn is incredibly soft, due to the low micron count (the lower the micron count of a fiber, the softer it is). Then we created a palette of 64 beautiful shades to start with, covering almost every single color you could ever want or need. We made it easy to knit with—taking time to develop a method to create an easy-pull center ball in which you can easily find the tail, so you can get started knitting or crocheting without the dreaded “yarn barf” that can happen with other center-pull balls.

Here we have a brand new skein of Ultra Wool, just off our warehouse shelves. You see that strand of yarn running “against the grain” at the bottom of the photo?

See how it goes directly into the center of the ball?

All you have to do is slip your finger under that strand of yarn, pull it out, and start knitting. That’s all! No digging around the middle of the ball or working from the outside and having the yarn roll around everywhere. Easy peasy.

So Ultra Wool is ultra easy to use, but how does it hold up in the wash? Is it truly machine washable? To answer these questions, we did extensive testing. These are just a few of the swatches we knit and washed, with varying methods, to see how the yarn would hold up before allowing it to be produced.

The swatch above was steamed this morning to help even out the wrinkles from storage. The fabric is nice and soft and has a lot of drape.

I didn’t steam the swatch above because I wanted to show you what it looked like without additional water and heat. This swatch was run through the washing machine AND the dryer, but placed in a garment bag. The yarn has fuzzed up a little bit, but it hasn’t felted at all—if I pull at it, the fabric stretches and each stitch becomes easily discernable.

This swatch (sorry it’s so dark) was washed by hand, but then run through the dryer. It’s about as fuzzed up as the swatch that went in both the washing machine and the dryer.

While we don’t recommend putting yarn in the dryer, as you can see, Ultra Wool holds up when it happens. This makes it a great choice for anyone making projects as gifts for people who maybe are less likely to hand-wash and lay flat to dry.

Have you knit with Ultra Wool yet? It’s showing up in yarn stores now—use our Store Locator to find the nearest store to you that carries Berroco Ultra Wool!