Ship carrying pale blue soft material (9)
I believe the answer is:
swansdown
'soft material' is the definition.
'swansdown' can be an answer for 'material' (I've seen this before). I'm not sure about the 'soft' bit.
'ship carrying pale blue' is the wordplay.
'ship' becomes 'ss'.
'carrying' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'pale' becomes 'wan' ('wan' can be a synonym of 'pale').
'blue' becomes 'down' (I've seen this before).
'ss' going around 'wan' is 'swans'.
'swans'+'down'='SWANSDOWN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for swansdown that I've seen before include "Material" , "soft cloth" , "fabric" .)