Washing and storing knitted things

Wool fibres are covered in overlapping scales. Heat, moisture and agitation together cause those scales to catch on each other and interlock, and once interlocked they do not come apart — the fabric shrinks, thickens and stops being knitted fabric. That is felting, and it is the mechanism behind both a deliberately felted bag and a ruined jumper.

All three conditions are needed, which is what makes it avoidable. Cool water removes the heat, no agitation removes the friction, and the wool survives the moisture perfectly well. This is why hand washing is not fussiness: it is the removal of the one variable a machine cannot help adding.

Superwash wool has been treated so the scales no longer catch, and it can be machine washed. That is a real difference and it is stated on the ball band, which is one of several reasons to keep the ball band. Untreated wool, alpaca and most other animal fibres are hand wash, and cotton and acrylic do not felt at all and can go in the machine on a gentle cycle.

The method is the same as blocking, minus the pinning. Soak in cool water, press the water out against the bowl, roll in a towel and press again. Never wring, and never lift a wet knitted garment by the shoulders — wet wool is heavy and the fabric will stretch under its own weight and stay stretched.

Dry flat, always, in the shape you want it. A hanger puts the whole weight of a wet garment on two points and produces the characteristic dropped shoulders and lengthened body that nothing fixes. A drying rack with the garment supported along its whole length is the alternative if flat space is short.

Wash knitwear much less often than other clothes. Airing overnight deals with most of what makes a jumper feel unfresh, and each wash costs the fabric something. Spot-clean marks rather than washing the whole thing for one of them.

Pills are short fibres that have worked loose and tangled at the surface, and they form where the fabric rubs — under the arms, at the sides, where a bag strap sits. They are a property of the yarn more than of the knitting: softer yarns made from shorter fibres pill more, which is why the softest yarn in the shop is often the one that looks worn out first. Remove them with a fabric shaver or a comb rather than by pulling, which drags more fibre out of the fabric.

For storage, the enemy is clothes moths, whose larvae eat animal fibres and are drawn to anything with body oils or food on it. Everything follows from that: wash before storing rather than after, store folded rather than hung so nothing stretches, and keep it in something sealed rather than on an open shelf. Cedar and lavender are widely used and are a deterrent rather than a treatment — clean wool in a closed box is doing most of the work.