craft: life skill of laundering wool sweaters

I’ve become a fan of Rajiv Surendra, the Martha Stewart of his millennial generation. He makes these HGTV Handmade videos, not only of his calligraphy and pottery, but also of household chores like how to wash your dishes like a pro, perfectly make a bed, arrange a floral bouquet, and the one I watched on repeat yesterday—how to wash a wool sweater. The gray sweater below is one I bought 4 years ago at the Pike Place Market in Seattle and I hadn't washed it once. The neck is all stretched, but I still love the sweater and thought maybe I could shrink it to better proportions. I also wanted to use the bottle of specialty wool cleaner I bought from the Laundry Evangelist--and the instructions on the bottle indicated I could launder my sweaters by hand or by machine. First I filled the sink with warm water and two capfuls of the cedar-scented shampoo.        

 

I then put the sweater in the soap suds and swished it a little to dislodge dirt particles from the wool. Promising...I could see dirty water. But maybe it was a bit of the dye running into the water.

Surendra's instructions are to then let the sweater soak long enough for the water temperature to come down before rinsing. I vacuumed my living room and then unloaded my dishwasher. I let the dirty water drain before pouring a bucket of clean water into the sink. 

 

My sweater was pretty water-logged, and so I squeezed it in sections. I wish I had thought to squeeze the neckline more to shrink it there.

Per Surendra's instructions I put the sweater on a towel and shaped it a bit to lengthen the sleeves and widen the torso before rolling it up in a towel and squeezing more of the water into the towel.

  

I brought out the rest of my wool sweaters and bemoaned at the time it would take to soak EACH sweater by hand--that's six mornings eaten by hand laundry. No wonder people bring their fine washables to the dry cleaners. I decided to chance laundering them in one load on the delicate cycle of the washing machine.

While my sweaters were in the washer and dryer, I colored and watch lots and lots of television.

I love how colors made my zine look much better.

   

And I vacillated over putting my sweaters in the dryer instead of letting them air dry. Into the dryer they went followed by a couple hours of using scissors to cut all the pills and fuzz balls.

Despite all the snipping and cutting, there's still quite a bit of pilling on my sweaters, and so I may plan to buy one of those electric sweater shavers and next year when I wash my sweaters, to wash them inside out.