This post is a long time coming: I did several projects in two different lines of Lion Brand’s Superwash Merino wool. One is their hand painted line, Anya, and the other their LB Collection Superwash Merino Wool that comes in 26 solid colors.

Here’s the only challenge I had with these yarns: Anya is a listed as a size 4, but it’s not really. It’s really more of a size 3.25, if that makes sense. LB Collection Super Wash Merino Wool is totally a size 3. You can use a 7.5 dent heddle, but I the Anya (the thicker one) ended up too loose for my liking- but a roll in the dryer tightened them up nicely.

My first project was with Anya on a size 7.5 heddle in my Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom. I have some good news: Lion Brand’s hand painted hanks palindrome. Which means you can use them to color pool your scarves! If you want to learn more about palindrome warps, read this amazing article by Seine Mitchell here. Pretty cool huh? But finding these skeins can be tricky, so it’s nice to find a place where you can buy and experiment with them at an affordable price. Warping like this takes some practice and I have thrown in the towel more than once with much more expensive yarn I purchased just to try to this technique.

Anya color way “Mango Tango” ready to wind on.

This is when I learned an important lesson, however. If you take the time to carefully color pool your warp- don’t use the same yarn as a weft. Oops. It ended up hiding all that work, and while the finished weaving was wonderful, it was boring. I ended up hand dying the shawl with black to give it interest.

Lesson learned. I rewarped with Anya in Trick Or Treat and tried the solid LB Collection skein as weft on the size 7.5 heddle and realized that though they are similar, the LB Collection is smaller than Anya and it created a more weft faced cloth than I was expecting. Of course if I read the labels I would have seen that one is a 4 and the other a 3, but anyway…I still like it a lot, it’s textural.

LB Collection Super wash as weft and Anya trick or Treat as warp- size 7.5 heddle.

I had another skein and a half of the Anya left, so I warped up my 10 EPI heddle. As you can see on the finished cloth, it was a much more balanced weave. I really like it with the burgundy from my LYS. The weave was solid enough, it didn’t need to be abused to felt it up just a bit. Just hand washed and hang dried.

Lion Brand Anya weft, LB Merino Wool Warp (yellow), wool from my LYS- brand unknown.

So what about the solid skeins on their own? I warped up a log cabin using a skein each of LB Super wash Merino wool and wove up this little 13” x 55” beauty. Size 10 EPI is what you want for this yarn.

For the color selection and the price- it can’t be beat. It’s totally worth scooping up a collection of colors to add to your stash to blend with your fancier yarns or to use on their own.

Yeah, I don’t iron after wet finishing..can you tell? I do like my natural wrinkles!

Ready for the breakdown so you can move on to weave your own projects? I am going to rate both of them, since beside the color and the weight, they are similar yarns:

Lion Brand’s Super Wash Merino Wool Line

PROS:

Really good price point! Especially the solid color line.
Beautiful color selections on both lines. I appreciate that LB will make some wild and crazy colors.
Consistency: I love a good artisan hand painted yarn, but it can be hard when you need several that about the same dye structure and the one you love is one of a kind. All of my Anya skeins matched each other pretty well so I could pair them in my warp without any trouble.
Palindroming for color pooling (Anya line only).
Dyeable! And quite frankly, the solid line is almost less expensive than many dyeable goods if you don’t have the ability to buy in bulk. Ever wanted to see if that koolaid dye hack works? LB Super Wash Merino wool will only take you back about $9 for 300 yards (less if you use the weekly coupons they offer).

CONS:

Really, I don’t have many cons. I do wish they offered merino wool in a truer worsted weight. The Anya is close, but it seems thinner most size 4 wool yarns I have worked with.
So that’s it for this post! I have a few more projects on the loom using Hand Dyed Heaven, Coboo and TerrySpun (which might come with a pattern!)

Super Wash Super Star