Blogging with pictures saved by the geek! Go Richard! (Yeah, and somebody taller than me had reset my camera to a setting I didn’t even know it had. Heh.)
Okay, for fiber artists, you can skim past this first little bit, you already know this stuff: there’s a great myth out there that you handwash wool or cashmere sweaters in cold water. Balderdash. There are three factors that contribute to inadvertent felting: water, temperature change, and agitation. Cold water can shrink up a sweater just as fast as heat can. Sweaters should be washed ever so gently in tepid water–and yet, you can do it in a washing machine, IF: you put them in after the water is already in, you don’t let it agitate, and you don’t let any water spray on them during the spin cycle. But you can use the machine for soaking and spinning out, making sure you take them out of there while it’s filling up again for the rinse cycle.
So. Being raised by a knitter, my kids have each gotten that lecture. Wash them in the sink or the machine, I don’t care, but remember, tepid water, etc etc.
I was cleaning out the laundry room, getting to the long-neglected bottoms of the big hampers that my four kids used for all those years. Things had been frequently cycled through the laundry towards the top, but, I found, were turning into sedimentary rock way below.
This is what I found down there. In the home of a fiber artist whose kids were taught about wool as if it were a religion. At least, it’s still great for dusting; the little scales in the sheep hairs clean like you wouldn’t believe.
The rest of you can go feel better now about your own sweaters that came out of the dryer a toddler size 2.
