L'AGRATY Chunky Knit Throw vs a Fleece Throw Blanket

Two blankets, two jobs. That is the short answer, and it took me most of a year to be able to say it that plainly.

I bought the L'AGRATY chunky knit throw, 50 by 60 inches, in the first week of February, along with a few other things for the small bedroom I turned into a quiet room. The fleece throw is a gray one I have owned for years. It has lived in the hall closet since before I retired and it still does its job. When a friend asks me which blanket to buy, I ask a question back: is this blanket going to sit in a room you look at every day, or is it going to sit folded in a closet until somebody is cold? Those are different jobs, and after nine months of evenings with both of them, I do not think one replaces the other. But if you are only buying one, and the room matters to you, the knit is the one I would spend on.

	L'AGRATY Chunky Knit Throw	Gray Fleece Throw
How it looks left out	Chunky knit weave with texture and shadow, reads as a layer someone chose on purpose	Plain fleece, reads as a utility blanket waiting to be put away
Warmth on a cold night	Medium weight and breathable, takes the chill off an evening of reading	Traps heat fast, the warmest thing in the closet
Cleaning	Machine wash cold on gentle, then lay flat to dry, about a day and a half	Washer and dryer, back on the sofa inside an hour, no ceremony
Holding its shape	4 pounds with real body, still on the sofa arm at supper where I left it that morning	Goes limp and slides off the arm, ends up on the floor
Pilling and shedding	Soft chenille, pulled and tested by the maker to resist shedding and pilling, and mine has held up at the elbows	Pills where arms and elbows rub, and leaves fuzz on dark trousers
Year round use	Breathable medium weight, works in October and again in April	Too warm in summer and clammy against the skin
Feel against skin	Soft chenille with a little weight to it	Soft, light, slightly slick
Best for	The room you look at every day	The closet, the car, the porch, the guest bed

The table is the summary. What follows is the part that actually decided it for me, which is how the two of them behave on an ordinary Tuesday.

Where L'AGRATY Wins

The knit wins on the thing I did not expect to care about, which is how the room looks when nobody is in it. A chunky knit weave has shadow and texture. Folded over the arm of the sofa, it reads as a layer someone chose. The fleece throw on the same arm reads as something waiting to be put away. That is not a knock on fleece. Being unglamorous is what fleece is for, and I mean that as a compliment.

The size is worth a word, because 50 by 60 inches is a specific thing and not a vague one. It is not a bed blanket and it is not a lap square. Folded in half, it covers my legs from the waist down with enough left to tuck under my feet. Draped over the back of the reading chair, the corners come down about even with the seat cushion, which is the look I wanted and could not describe before I had it. I measured the chair before I bought it, because I have made that mistake before with a throw that arrived the size of a large bath towel. Fifty by sixty is what they say it is, and it is what arrived.

It also stays where I put it. Four pounds of soft chenille with a real weave to it holds a drape. I fold it over the sofa arm in the morning and it is still there at supper. The fleece slides. I have watched it go to the floor three evenings out of five, and Dale has given up picking it up, which tells you something about a man who spent thirty years in a machine shop and still picks up screws he finds in the driveway.

The third win is durability, and I say that with nine months of evenings behind it rather than one weekend. The listing says the chenille was pulled and tested many times so it would not easily shed, pill or tear, which is the sort of claim I normally ignore. Mine has not pilled at the elbows and it has not left fuzz on my dark trousers. It is also medium weight and breathable, so it works in October and again in April, not only in the dead of January. That last part matters more in a small room with a radiator than I expected.

Where the Fleece Throw Wins

Warmth, and it is not close. Fleece traps heat. If the house is cold and I am going to sit still for an hour, I want the gray one. The knit keeps the chill off, but the fleece makes a small climate. On a January evening when Dale has turned the thermostat down to prove a point about the gas bill, that matters more than texture.

Here is where fleece quietly earns its keep in this house. Dale leaves at 5:30 most mornings, and in February that means a dark, cold kitchen. The fleece went over his shoulders at the table more than once while he waited for the coffee to finish. I would not put the knit through that. Crumbs work their way into a weave like that and I would be picking them out for a week. The fleece, you shake it out the door and it is fine.

Cleaning goes to the fleece without an argument. It goes in the washer, then the dryer, and it is back on the sofa inside an hour. The knit is machine washable too, and I have done it once, in February, on cold and gentle, then laid flat on a towel across the guest bed to dry. It took a day and a half and I checked on it the way I check on a cake. It came out fine. I still would not do it casually, and I would not do it the week before company.

And the fleece is forgiving in a way the knit is not. Mine has been out on the porch, in the back of the car, folded under a window that leaked, and washed with things it should not have been washed with. It has no ceremony about it. If your household uses a blanket hard, or if a dog or a grandchild is going to drag it across the floor, that forgiveness is worth a great deal. It is also the one I hand to a guest without a word of instruction. When my sister Joan stayed over in April, I put the fleece on the guest bed and did not think about it again. With the knit I would have said something about the wash first, and then felt silly for saying it.

How Nine Months of Evenings Actually Went

I started the quiet room in January. Smallest of the three bedrooms, a reading chair, a mat on the floor, a shelf with a lamp and a few things. The throw was not part of the original plan. I bought it because the sofa arm in the living room looked bare and because I wanted something soft under my hands while I read. Most evenings it stays in the living room. Two or three nights a week it comes back to the chair with me, and that is when I notice the difference between the two blankets most clearly.

What I tried first, and why it did not work: I had an old afghan my mother crocheted, and for about two weeks in January that was my blanket. It is beautiful and I am not giving it away, but it is thin, it is scratchy at the neck, and it is too small to cover my legs and my shoulders at the same time. I kept pulling it up and it kept sliding down. That is what sent me looking in the first place. The knit solved both problems at once, being big enough and heavy enough to stay put. The afghan is back on the guest bed where it belongs.

Here is the honest version of how it went. In February I used the knit constantly and thought it was the better blanket. In March I got cold one night, got the fleece out of the closet, and remembered what warmth actually feels like. Since then I have stopped pretending it is a contest. The knit is the one that lives in the room. The fleece is the one that comes out when the room is not enough. Nine months in, both are still doing exactly what they were bought to do.

Dale's opinion, since he will give it whether or not you ask: he thinks the knit is fussy. He also reaches for it every Sunday afternoon when he falls asleep in the chair with the newspaper, so I have learned to weigh his words against his behavior. He does not touch the fleece in the living room because it is not there. It is in the hall closet, which is where he goes when he is genuinely cold.

Nine months of evenings, one cold gentle wash, a day and a half flat on the guest bed. The knit still looks like it did in February and I still would not treat it like the fleece.

How I Clean Each One

The knit gets shaken out on the porch rail most weeks, which is the whole of my routine. Spot clean with a damp cloth if something lands on it. Once, in February, it went in the machine on cold and gentle with a small amount of detergent, no fabric softener, then flat on a towel to dry. No dryer, no hanging, no wringing. That is the care the label asks for and I am not going to argue with it. It is not difficult. It is just a day and a half of a blanket occupying the guest bed.

The February wash was a Saturday, because I wanted a day to watch it. Cold water, gentle cycle, a small amount of detergent, no softener, and I ran it alone, which felt wasteful and was not. It came out heavier than it went in, which I expected and which briefly worried me anyway. I laid it flat on a light-colored towel across the guest bed, straightened the edges with my hands, and left it. By Sunday supper it was dry at the corners and still damp in the middle. By Monday morning it was done. It came out the same size it went in and it did not shed into the towel. That was the test I actually cared about, and it passed.

The fleece goes in with the towels whenever it smells like the closet. Washer, dryer, done. If you are the kind of person who wants to be able to throw a blanket in with a load on a Saturday morning and forget about it, that is the whole argument for fleece, and it is a good argument.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the L'AGRATY chunky knit throw if the blanket is going to be visible. If you have a sofa or a reading chair that looks unfinished, if you want something with weight and texture that stays where you drape it, and if you are willing to wash it cold, gently, and let it dry flat once or twice a season, it does the job well. It suits a calm room because it looks calm. It is not the warmest thing you will own and it is not meant to be.

Stay with a fleece throw, or keep the one you already own, if what you want is heat and convenience. A closet blanket for cold nights, a car blanket, something for the porch, something for a guest bed that might get used badly. Fleece is the one you can replace without a second thought, it washes and dries without thought, and nothing about it asks you to be careful. If you are outfitting a room where nobody is looking, fleece is the sensible buy and I would not talk you out of it.

If you are weighing it, ask yourself one question: when someone walks into this room, is the blanket part of what they see? In the quiet room, the answer is yes, and the knit is what is on the chair. In the hall closet, the answer is no, and the fleece is what is on the shelf. That is not a compromise. It is two blankets doing two jobs in the same house, which is the least complicated arrangement I have found and the one I would set up again tomorrow.