Sunday, April 3, 2011

Washing wool... continued

Below are pictures of my washing exploits. I'm not convinced I'm doing it correctly ...

First, we put the wool in netting packages, lock by lock, and safety pined them down:


Then I put them in about 130 degree water with ORIGINAL Dawn dish detergent and let them soak for about 20 minutes, before repeating with clear water for rinsing:


(on this day, I put it on my electric griddle to keep it warm. For reasons you will see below, I didn't my second day.)

As you can see, it looks pretty funky. I have no idea if that's correct, and am concerned that I'm lightly felting it somehow. As you can see in the picture below, the edges don't look right.

So today, I washed in water never more than 130 degrees, put in the water and WALKED AWAY for 20 minutes (no pushing back down in the water, or swishing water), and the last two packages I did, I loosened the netting so it wasn't touching the ends. Here's those results:

Better? Suggestions? What do you think?