Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Help! Wool shrinkage

Talk about a bone-headed mistake worthy of Lois. Last night, I decided to wash my favorite shawl since it had a lot of cat hair on it. The tag said dry-clean only, but since I'd thrown dry-clean only stuff in the washer and dryer before, I didn't think anything of it. Until I pulled the shawl out of dryer. Now the fabric which used to go past my knees would barely cover my shoulders, and it's a lot thicker than before.

Does anyone know how to de-shrink/relax wool?

You could soak it in Woolite(tm) and stretch it to the proper length, but I bet a dry cleaner would have a better solution.

TEEEEEJ

After looking through some knitting forums and other stuff I found online, it seems like you need to soak it (just water, nothing else seems to be necessary/recommended) and then re-block it. For a shawl, that presumably means stretching it somehow -- be careful to do it evenly in all directions.

And, no matter what you do, it will probably never be quite the same again.

The wool may have a memory of the trama and may bounce back to its small self after blocking it. If I remember correctly - that's laying it flat between thick stacks of wet towels for around a day. I've always been told never put wool in the dryer. Who knows. My mum is a knitting finatic and told me that. Hopefully that is wrong, for the sake of your shall. I'll keep searching too.