Wovember 8 – Memory

Everything is a song…darn it. Now it is “Cats”.

Wool is elastic and will ‘snap’ back to it’s original shape if given a chance. Cotton doesn’t have this ‘memory’. So sweaters of cotton will sag out of shape, but wool ones won’t.

Okay there is a limit and if you want to mess up wool’s memory the things not to do are …

1)’agitate’ it vigorously or 2)shock it with going from one temperature extreme to the other (hot to cold or cold to hot…usually it is the hot to cold water treatment that ‘shrinks’ wool)

If you do both (agitate and temperature change) this is known as ‘felting’ and might be what you want to do but not if you want your wool knit garment to look like you originally created it.

Wool can go into water, it can be soaped (dish soap is useful) just don’t ‘work’ it hard. Let it sit in a huge vat of soapy water …drain…place it in a vat of water of similar/same temperature to rinse…repeat until the water is clear. Then lay out to dry on towels or screen – FLAT.

The magic is the shape of wool fibers and the scales that make them up. Both can work for you, if treated with care, or against you if you get overly vigorous and agitate.