View Full Version : Will someone please tell me what the heck happened?
12-20-2010, 12:03 PM
I made a sweater using Valley Yarns Colrain (http://http://www.yarn.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/categoryID/3DE2C30C-6D95-43DD-8AB5-B8DB265D6674/productID/E0EC294F-A514-4942-BE7E-692B25D952DC/). I put the sweater in my front loading washer, set to cold water. Ran it through rinse and spin on medium speed. Could someone please tell me what the heck happened that made the sweater felt?:cry: I've never felted but had always heard that 1) you needed VERY hot water and 2) front loading machines weren't very good at felting. Any thoughts?
12-20-2010, 12:28 PM
Everything you've heard about felting is wrong. It's not the temperature of the water that felts wool, it's the agitation. Next time you have a wool sweater, just fill the machine with water (you can use warmish) and your soap, then let it soak for a while. Drain and spin, rinse and spin, then lay out flat to dry. Since you have a FL machine you probably can't fill and soak though, and yes you can felt on purpose in a FL.
12-20-2010, 12:43 PM
I'm confused. I only ran it through rinse and spin with cold water. Why would it have felted? There was no agitiation-except now on my part with the whole situation.
12-20-2010, 01:11 PM
your spin cycle may have acted as agitation. I can certainly understand yours, too. :( :heart:
12-20-2010, 04:09 PM
I only ran it through rinse and spin with cold water. Why would it have felted? There was no agitiation-except now on my part with the whole situation.
Next wash watch through the windows during the rinse cycle. There will be agitation to "wash" the soap out of the clothes.
12-21-2010, 09:37 PM
Yeah, the yarn is 50% merino, 50% tencel, and the instructions say to hand wash. If the wool (merino) isn't superwash, it will felt with the agitation, even in the rinse cycle. It agitates in the rinse cycle to get the soap out of the laundry.
I'm sorry...it must awful to knit a whole sweater and have that happen!!