Bamboo Merino Yarn Review: Designing the Arlino Top with Wolhobby Merino Breeze

Some yarns have a way of making your mind start designing before you have even cast on.

That was exactly what happened when I first discovered Wolhobby’s Merino Breeze yarn. I was browsing through their collection when I noticed they had a bamboo blend, and my curiosity was immediate. I had heard so much about bamboo yarn over the years: its silky handle, cool touch, elegant drape, and suitability for lightweight summer garments. Yet despite my ongoing mission to try every fibre imaginable at least once, bamboo was one I had somehow never used in my own knitwear design work.

At first, I planned to use the yarn for an upcoming design I am currently calling the Arluna Top. When my order arrived, though, I realised I had enough yarn for two projects. At the same time, I had been working through some questions around the construction and drape of the Arlino Top, and suddenly this felt like the perfect opportunity to knit a new sample in a bamboo merino blend.

And once I started working with it, I finally understood the hype.

What Is Bamboo Yarn?

Bamboo yarn is often described as a natural plant fibre, but the reality is a little more complex.

Many knitters imagine bamboo yarn being made by mechanically extracting fibres directly from the bamboo plant, in a similar way to how flax becomes linen. In most cases, however, bamboo yarn is actually a regenerated cellulose fibre.

The bamboo is first processed into pulp, dissolved into a viscous liquid, and then extruded into long, smooth filaments that are spun into yarn. This places bamboo in the same broader fibre family as rayon, viscose, modal, and lyocell.

So, in practical terms, most bamboo yarn is technically bamboo viscose rayon.

The bamboo is the source material. Rayon is the fibre category. Viscose refers to the manufacturing process. Once you understand that, the silky texture and fluid movement of bamboo yarn start to make a lot of sense.

Why Bamboo Yarn Feels So Luxurious

Unlike wool, linen, or many other traditional fibres, bamboo viscose fibres are extremely smooth and even. This gives bamboo yarn its distinctive feel: silky, cool against the skin, fluid in the hand, softly luminous, and naturally elegant.

It behaves less like a crisp plant fibre and more like silk or viscose jersey. There is a softness and flow to the knitted fabric that feels very different from a more elastic wool yarn.

The drape was the first thing I noticed while knitting the Arlino Top sample. The fabric moved differently from pure merino wool. It skimmed rather than held firm. It flowed rather than bounced. For a knitting pattern designed around gathered fabric, gentle shaping, and elegant folds, that quality felt absolutely right.

Is Bamboo Yarn Sustainable?

Sustainability is one of the more complicated parts of the bamboo conversation.

As a plant, bamboo is remarkably renewable. It grows quickly, regenerates easily, and generally needs less irrigation than crops such as cotton. Those qualities are part of why bamboo has become so popular in textiles.

However, bamboo yarn is not simply harvested and spun directly from the plant. To become the soft, silky yarn many of us recognise, it usually has to go through chemical processing to become viscose rayon. The environmental impact depends heavily on how responsibly that manufacturing process is managed.

So the honest answer is nuanced.

Bamboo is not a miracle fibre, and it is not a scam either. Its sustainability depends largely on the production methods behind it.

I think this is an important reminder in fibre discussions more generally. Very few materials are entirely good or entirely bad. Most fibres exist somewhere in the complicated middle, shaped by how they are grown, processed, transported, used, and cared for over time.

Why Blend Bamboo with Merino Wool?

Pure bamboo yarn can be beautifully soft and fluid, but it can also become quite limp because it lacks elasticity and memory. This is where merino wool becomes such a useful partner.

In a bamboo merino yarn, the merino brings structure, recovery, bounce, and resilience. The bamboo contributes softness, sheen, fluidity, and graceful drape. Together, they create a fabric that feels elegant without losing all sense of shape.

The yarn I used for the Arlino Top, Wolhobby Merino Breeze, also contains nylon. In this blend, the nylon acts as a subtle reinforcement throughout the yarn. Even in relatively small percentages, nylon can improve durability and help support the weight of drapier knitted garments.

The final fibre blend feels thoughtfully balanced:

60% Superwash Merino
25% Bamboo
15% Nylon

For a summer knitting pattern or a lightweight top where both softness and structure matter, this combination makes a lot of sense.

Blocking Bamboo Merino Yarn

The biggest lesson from this project was simple: you cannot truly judge bamboo yarn before blocking.

Before blocking, the fabric already felt soft and smooth, but washing changed everything. The stitches relaxed dramatically. The fabric softened further, lengthened slightly, and developed an even more fluid drape.

This is the kind of yarn that reveals its full personality only after it has been washed and blocked. For garment knitting, that makes swatching especially important. A blocked gauge swatch will give you a much more accurate sense of how the fabric will behave, how much it may grow, and whether the finished garment will have the drape you are hoping for.

Watching the Arlino Top transform during blocking was one of the most satisfying knitting moments I have had in a while. The fabric settled into itself beautifully, and the design suddenly felt complete.

The Arlino Top Knitting Pattern

The Arlino Top was always intended to feel soft, elegant, and timeless. I wanted a knitted fabric that could gather beautifully around the neckline while still flowing gracefully through the body.

This merino bamboo yarn turned out to be the perfect match.

The bamboo added movement and softness, while the merino wool helped the garment retain enough structure to feel wearable and polished. The result is a modern knitwear piece with a gentle drape, a refined finish, and a fabric that feels wonderful against the skin.

The Arlino Top knitting pattern is now officially released, and I am so excited to finally share it with you.

This project reminded me, once again, that every fibre has its own personality.

Linen brings structure.
Silk brings luminosity.
Merino brings memory.
Bamboo brings movement.

Happy knitting!