Nauseating knitters since 2004.

I'm so proud.
And thank you all for responding to That Picture with all the horror I could have hoped.  It is nice to not be alone. 

Further adventures in yarn washing - and then I must leave you for a week or so.  I am taking a trip next week and there is no possible way I can go if I don't stop dicking around on the internet and get some work done. 

There is another reason to wash your coned yarn: sometimes it is filthy.  The Colourmart cones have all been immaculate, but that is not the only place to find this stuff.  The manufacturer might have used a different oil, or it might have been coned a long time ago and the oil has attracted dirt, or it was stored in a warehouse, or insert reason here.  A lot of coned yarns - particularly mill ends and closeouts - were meant to be used in industrial production where the important factor is that they move smoothly through a mechanical system.  Fuzz, bloom, softness - so desirable to the hand knitter - mean snags and machinery problems. Gunk in the works. So they are seriously coated. The end product would be washed thoroughly after being knit or woven, also an industrial process designed to remove whatever it had picked up along the way,  so the oil and whatever hardly matters.  To the machines.

This is the same reason I lost interest in spinning in the grease once I did a little reading about sheep dip and parasites.  Do I want to touch that?  I do not.

Dark brown 80/20 merino/cashmere from a Webs closeout a few years ago.  My first cashmere, I think.  I've done the calculations and I seem to have bought 2.97 pounds at 1000 ypp.  Worsted weight.  Perhaps something with cables, then?  (I think it was 14 bucks a pound. I wish I had gotten there in time to get more colors, is all I can say).

This was done in the sink with regular laundry powder (wool wash didn't make a dent in the oil), hot water and a plunger - the swatch I tried in the laundry bloomed a little TOO much.

Skeined.

Weighed.

The end result dried only one gram lighter.  An important gram.

Some of this is color run.

But not all.

It is not as soft as I expected considering the two fibers - and I did put hair conditioner in the rinse - but has great body.  Will knit into a nice cardigan someday.  No itch.

Pre and post wash comparison.

See you in a week or so. 

Comments

[lanea]

Hiya--I'm back and you're gone.
I want to eat the green yarn in your last post. I need to stay away from that demn website though. Evil. I am finishing projects, not starting new ones.
Coffee is my friend. You should give coffee another chance. Congrats on getting off the poison. I have brought Scott over to the iced latte side, which is doubly good because now he randomly makes me iced lattes on the weekend. Also, milk is very good for me, so the lattes give me lots of it. I sure can blather.

[Carla]

Ummm... scrolling through comments on the debit card/aspartame withdrawal post from a few days ago, I was rather stunned to see this one in response to the news that Juno's debit card had been charged one dollar to the "Islamic Friendship Society:"

Hang on, hang on. While I'm sympathetic about the depression and the cash and the being robbed by terrorists and the being an aspartame junkie thingie, what I'm really horrified by is the W word. We have to WORK for stuff?

Poop.

Probably this was just an unthoughtful joke, but even in jest, do we really want to go equating "Islam" and "terrorism?" Probably not, which is why I'm bothering to post on this. I am certain that if someone flippantly posted something that equated, say, persons of color and violent crime, there would be a storm of protest (as well there should be)...and this is no different.

[shelly]

I've discovered it's really important to wash the wool thoroughly, including rinsing, before dyeing. The spinning oils act as a resist and even if the wool is clean enough for knitting and I think I've gotten everything out of it, it still can have enough oil to affect the dyeing. I've tried many different processes and have found Bi-O-Kleen's All Purpose Cleaner and Degreaser (no affiliation) to be my favorite wool wash.

[Astrid]

They must have sold a boatload of that yarn! I've got three cones of the olive green and three cones of grey. And it will get used Someday. And very thoroughly washed!

[Romi]

Wow! What a *huge* difference!

[Judy]

Two great posts. Good info. You wouldn't by any chance be coming my way?

[julia fc]

jealous, of the trip you know. think of me.
And dude, what news about the yarn. I think I'll wash my angora stuff first before casting on for my Arwen. Given your experience, it seems such gestures can make a big difference.

[chahn]

Thanks for posting this! I have some coned merino I bought at an estate sale and had been boggling at how anyone could think merino was soft. Now I will have to give washing a try.

[Laurie]

Excellent science. Bon voyage! Must go look at your Ravelry stash now.

[David]

Godspeed.
I really never thought about all the potential crud in my yarn - you have given me a sudden desire to hose down my stash.

[charli]

You've mentioned this before, but now I have to ask: what do you do with the plunger? Are you joking? Sorry, but I am completely in the dark.

TIA!

[Gina]

I knew coned yarn scared me for a very good reason.

[Kristy]

So interesting! I currently only have one cone of yarn, but I imagine I'll get more at some point. This will be fun to try out.

[Adrienne]

Verrry interesting! I, too, have coned yarn from Webs that's been sitting around for ages b/c, to put it simply, it's not that nice. I will definitely try washing it!

[tsocktsarina]

I suppose this is NOT a good strategic moment to mention the ethical issues surrounding cheap cashmere these days - but what the hell. I haven't yet followed all the links in this post (http://fishwrapper.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/the-price-of-cheap-cashmere/), but I did hear about it live from Astrid when I met her a couple of months ago (at School Products, no less!), and I'm afraid it did make me... think. And if there's one thing I hate, it's being made to think, especially about the possible wrongness of something I love.

Hope it's a fun trip....

[Gwen]

Very dramatic couple of posts, and they go nicely with the laundry/blocking post.

Good vacation to you! And happy cashmere knitting. (Sheep dip - shudder!)

[Carrie]

Thanks again for the notes on cleaning coned yarn. I'm new to all this stuff and just dive in. It's nice to not reinvent the wheel when one is playing with laceweight cashmere. Whew.
Have a good trip!

[Lee Ann]

That Picture. All I could do was say to myself, brrrrraaaaaaiiiinnnnssss....

Because that's what it looks like.

Cashmere-for-brains is not, however, a bad thing.

[ivete]

I also bought that stuff from Webs, in black! I didn't wash it before knitting it and it was nasty to use, I made a shawl as a gift. When I washed it it bled so much I was worried it wouldn't be black anymore!! It was fine of course, but not as soft as it should have been . . . I guess that's as soft as $14/lb cashmere blends get! I had also bought it in grey for a sweater for myself, and proceeded to do what you've done to prepare it for sweater knitting. It ended up so papery-linty feeling and not soft enough (after all the work to skein it and wash it!), I just gave it away. Come to think of it, I've never liked any yarn bought as a millend on cones . . . I must be real spoiled!

Have a good week!

[Abby Franquemont]

You know, I bought some of that same coned yarn, back when... in black. And BOY was that fun to wash (and yep, I washed it aggressively first, because it was clearly crunchy and prepped for industrial type use). I wonder where that is now? It must be somewhere in my stash.

[Bethe]

Yikes! I have some of that merino/cashmere coned yarn from Webs in an olive green color (I seem to remember buying around 3 lbs. of it, too - it was so inexpensive!)...I think I'll be washing it before I use it...that's quite a difference.

[Cassandra]

Have a great trip! I'm fully impressed with your stash on Ravelry, I aim to be so organized.