Off the Loom: Textured Gray Fabric

Yesterday, I cut the second of two warps off my SAORI loom. I had the idea for this fabric back in February - a highly textured warp woven loosely with a plain weft. I also wanted lots of shades of a similar color. 

I found a couple of different textured yarns that I liked - Woolfolk's Flette and Plymouth Yarn's Arequipa aventura. I had two skeins of each, and each skein was a slightly different shade of gray. I set them aside to marinate for a while, and discovered I had lots of unplied CVM singles from the first fleece I'd ever bought. I went ahead a plied them to make some of the softest yarn I've ever felt. Then I did another stash dive and found some laceweight gray alpaca yarns - some dark gray and some a pale silver. I started warping and designing in the reed for a fabric the width of my Saori WX60  loom (60 centimeters, or about 23.5 inches). It was still missing something, so I hopped on over to Spun and picked up two skeins of HiKoo's SimpliNatural in a dark gray and light silver color.

Winding the warp for this fabric was no picnic. It wanted to tangle at every opportunity, and because many of the warp yarns were so thick, it wouldn't all fit on the warp beam - I had to cut off the last two yards and turn them into a separate warp.

There were also lots of different kinds of yarn in this fabric - some very stretchy wool, some a little stretchy, and some not-stretchy-at-all alpaca. This was challenging both in the warping and the weaving - keeping an even tension on all these yarns was difficult, and led to a higher-than-average amount of loom waste. 

Once I got the hang of it though, these pieces were quick and easy to weave. The weft is a wool/cashmere blend.

Above on the left, you can see the fabric as it comes right off the loom, and on the right, after wet finishing. The fabric is insanely soft and has the most fabulous drape. 

What will it become? I'd originally envisioned it as a throw blanket in three panels, but having to cut the warp in half may have thrown a wrench in that plan. So far,  only the smaller piece has been wet-finished. Once I wet-finish the larger piece, I'll know more about how much fabric there is to work with.