Hoping to make some blankets from the wonderful Wendy Pure Wool yarns (100% British, 10wpi). Don’t have a 5dpi heddle yet, but will use the 7.5dpi heddle with a thinner warp.

The sample

Warping Stylecraft ReCreate DK in Cherry and a little Ink at the selvedges. Weaving with Wendy’s Loch and Snowy Owl colours. The Loch is mostly dark blue but also has some purple / dark red tinges - this led to me picking the Cherry for the warp, as it might bring out those warmer tones in the Loch. Weaving a pickup pattern with a stripe of leno after every 6 pattern repeats.

Learnings:

• This pickup patterns creates uneven tension in the back vs front of the cloth, so it wants to curl!
• The leno, while a nice touch, only makes the curl worse.
• I don’t like the white and blue wefts together - too much contrast for my liking for this warp

Lap / baby blanket

Originally, I wanted to make a shawl / wrap with the Wendy wool, but with the bit of yarn I bought to sample with, I didn’t have enough yarn for a whole shawl. So I decided to weave a small blanket instead, and try the shawl later.

I decided I didn’t mind a bit of curling, so stuck with the pickup pattern from the sample, but dropped the leno. I’m also sticking to the Loch (blue) weft, no Snowy Owl this time.

I ran out of Cherry warp while warping, but funnily enough, I was only short 2 ends! I was glad that I again used some Ink in the selvedges!

Final size after wet finishing: 97 x 56cm