50% eco linen 50% lambswool
Yes, you read correct: linen and wool. No cotton. Nope. Nothing. Excuse my excitement but until now almost every single wrap I had in hand had cotton in it. I think the only exception was an Oscha made of 100% linen. So this tester was really refreshing and I was super curious when I was asked if I want to try it.
I already followed Sjala on facebook and Instagram for a while. I think I saw it for the first time through my dear friend’s blog ELK market who made amazing photos of some of these wraps. I also have a friend here in Berlin who always told us about the 100% Merino stretchy wraps from Sjala. So I was already very intrigued.
But before I will tell you everything about this special blend I want to talk about the other facts of this wrap. First thing: I love the design. I know, it’s no news anymore that The Dukes like geometric patterns so of course this one immediately catched my eye. It is perfectly sized and not restless or static. The lines have a nice width so that both sides of the wrap look very harmonic. The colours are difficult to describe. It is not just two colours in combination, there many many shades and little flecks. It’s like a grey melange together with heather which has a tiny bit of pink shades in it. All this gives the wrap a little shimmer and a very interesting look. The combination is soft, elegant and warm. Sjala wrote “Kanerva is a beautiful color that reminds me of Heather, hence the name Kanerva, which is Finnish for Heather.”
Okay, are you ready for the wrapping qualities? I got a size 3 to test and it challenged me bit. Kanerva is a medium thick wrap which feels pretty heavy in hand. It has very less stretch and bounce so when you first wrap with it you might need a little time to get to know it. Give yourself some time to try, to feel and to appreciate it. It is special.
It arrived here ready to wear so I tried it as soon as I got it from the post office and arrived back home. Most of the time I wrapped a Front Wrap Cross Carry tied under bum. It was easy to tighten the different parts of the wrap and it wasn’t very stiff. But scratchy. You can definitely feel the high amount of wool and I think when you or your little one are sensitive to wool, you should only wear this with a long sleeve shirt. I am happy to test this in this time of the year because I can imagine that it would be a little prickly on naked shoulders in combination with sweat on hot summer days.
After a few days I washed it a second time to see if there are any changes and it definitely helped breaking in the wrap. The fabric fluffed up a lot and the scratchy feeling disappeared a little bit. It is now much smoother in hand so I think that a wrap with a lot of wool in it definitely needs a few washes until it is ready to be broken in completely. Kanerva is a wrap that really needs time and patience. But with every wrapjob I felt like I tamed it a bit more and it got softer every day. I think there is still some work to do on it but my experience tells me that it will be soft and less scratchy soon.
The fuzzy wool made it difficult to wrap second passes like in a Pirate’s Carry or a Semi Double Hammock. The fabric gives the wrap a lot of structure and grip and doesn’t let it glide smoothly over the first wrap pass so you need some work to get the slack out of it and wrap it tight. But if you have everything in place it won’t move any millimetre! This wrap is amazingly supportive. I didn’t feel much cush, it is pretty flat on the shoulders but the child felt weightless in it. I also tried a Robin’s Hip Carry and used a ring to make it easier to tighten and it worked great! The knot is pretty big and I always just made one know instead of two because it was holding like nothing before.
I don’t know exactly what it is that amazed me so much but I really really like this wrap although it isn’t a big pile of kitten belly soft fluff. It somehow has a character and it is different. Maybe that’s what it makes it so sympathetic to me. It’s challenging, interesting.
