Alpaca Merino Shawl

I finally finished the shawl I was working on. The draft is an advancing twill from Twill Thrills. The warp was Angel Face, a lace-weight alpaca from Briar Rose Fibers, and the weft was merino wool from Jaggerspun. I used this fiber combination on some scarves a couple of years ago and was really pleased with the results, and I am just as happy with this shawl.

I thought I would share some of my observations from using this yarn as warp.

First, the yarn is sticky. Not sticky, as in I couldn't get a good shed. Rather, sticky, in that little fuzz balls kept forming at the lease sticks while I was beaming the warp. I was continually separating warp ends with my fingers because they were being glued together with all these little fuzz balls. I didn't remember this from last time I used this warp. But that was a warp of narrow scarves, and this warp was a shawl, about 28" in the reed. Probably the width made it more noticable on this warp.

Second, the yarn is fragile. On both projects, I used louet looms with texsolve heddles and the louet raddles. I also used the paper clip temples on both projects. I would hate to try this as a warp on my baby wolf, which has flat steel heddles. When I wove the scarves, the selvedges broke often, so when I planned the shawl, I used a double strand for the floating selvedge. That seemed to do the trick. The only reed I had that was wide enough to weave this shawl was a 6 dpi, and I sleyed five per dent. I had several broken ends throughout the shawl, and I found it interesting that every broken end was one of the outside ends in a dent. I don't remember this happening with the scarves, which were woven with a 12 dpi reed. Next time I use this yarn again, I will use a finer reed and see what happens. I also had broken ends more frequently when I got to the end of the warp, where I didn't have the warp spread perfectly when I beamed it. Next time I will pay more attention to spreading the warp. I'm glad I used the louet raddle because the warp was spread much better than it would have if I had not used it. If you're not familiar with the louet raddles, Cally gives a fabulous explanation here.

Anyway, below are a couple of pictures of the shawl. I wish you could feel it. It is very drapey, very soft, very light weight, and very warm. I just ordered a skein of the alpaca in another colorway and see another shawl in my future.