D.Ilídia’s wool blankets

Before I went on vacation and while the Casa da Lã was closed, I went to Bucos to visit Ilídia at her house. It felt nice to have a slow afternoon just talking about everything. She was willing to tell me new things and I was eager to listen.
We started by opening the chest where she keeps her collection of blankets and carpets.
From her small collection of woolen blankets, she showed me a couple typical from this region, in the wool’s natural color with red or pink trims.
The wool for these blankets came from two yearly shearings, instead of only one.
From the first shearing, in May, they would spin the thread for the warp. Since they needed to make blankets to sell at the famous S.Miguel market and from Autumn and winter on, the sheep would be sheared again by the end of August and the weft would be spun from this wool. Because of this, the second wool is sometimes referred as S.Miguel’s wool.
The wool meant to be felted in the Pisão should be a little bit more twisted than the one spun to be knitted or weaved normally, but not too much - as Ilídia told me as she taught me how to spin.
After the last Pisão was deactivated in Bucos, the woolen blankets went to be felted in Tabuadela.
To show me the difference between a well felted blanket and a so not well felted, she overlapped the two blankets on the above picture. On the one on the top, the threads are still visible, but in the other one the felting process as covered the blanket completely.