Last weekend was warm, so it was sweater-washing time.
Those labels in your sweaters that say “dry clean only”? They LIE. Dry cleaning hurts the Urfs, yo, and it’s terrible for your sweaters.
Cotton and linen sweaters should be washed and dried in the dryer: the dryer’s heat will pull the sweater back into shape.
Silk sweaters will stink to high heaven when they’re wet: wash them in the sink in cold water and a little lingerie wash, then rinse really well.
Wool and cashmere are hair – the best way to wash them is in a sink of cold water with a little gentle shampoo. Cold water will prevent felting. What you want to avoid is agitation: stick them in the sink and squeeze to get them really wet, then leave alone for at least 20 minutes (they won’t be hurt if you forget and leave them). Rinse well.
Take your wool or silk sweater out of the sink, squeeze out some water, then roll it up in a towel. At this point I stand on the towel a little to squeeze out more water.
Stick it on a dry towel and lay flat to dry. On a sunny day, I lay mine outside (inside out, so the sun won’t fade them), and at the end they smell lovely.
The process is more of a pain than flinging a sweater at the dry cleaner, but your sweaters will smell better, last longer, and pill less.
And with the shampoo I use, you won’t get sweater dandruff!
Well, and thank GOD for that. What’s worse than sweater dandruff??
Do you have any advice on un-felting a mohair scarf? It fell off my neck and into a deep puddle. I fished it out, but as it dried it shrank…and shrank…and now it’s like a belt. Woe is me!
I felted a sweater once – not all the way, in that there’s still a little stitch definition – and this is what I did to it:
1. Soak in a sink of tepid water with about 1/2 c. white vinegar
2. Soak in a sink of cold water with a nice healthy glug of hair conditioner
3. Rinse in cold water, squeeze out water
4. Lay on a dry towel. Stretch and pin and stretch and pin (through the towel into the floor or a bed): put pins close together, stretch like holy hell and let dry completely.
That’ll get as much “un-felting” as possible out of it. I got my sweater to a state in which I can put it on my body, but it is a totally different item of clothing than it used to be.
Felting is a process in which the scales on the hair open up and interlock among the fibers. There isn’t a way to really undo that process. The best you can hope for is to get it back to a reasonable size.
Or, you know, sweet-talk some knitting friend you might have into making you a new one.