So…my boyfriend just gave me a $200 shopping spree for my birthday. Of course, some of this has to go to yarn…so I’m going to make a sweater! The question is…is making a sweater in a wool that is not superwash worth it?
Sweaters
Yes! You have a lot more yarn choices in non-superwash, that is for sure. I hate, hate, hate taking care of clothes. We have a cleaning lady who does our laundry, that’s how much I hate doing the wash (in my defense, our condo doesn’t allow washer/dryers in the units, so it is a lot more of a pain than in a regular house). The upshot is that I DO still have to do the handwash/dry cleaning myself. I haven’t minded taking care of my hand knit sweaters a bit. First, I always wear something underneath so I don’t have to wash them every single time I wear them. Then I usually Dryell them several times before they need to be actually washed. I’m not actually sure they ever really need to be washed, but I just have this conviction that at some point they need real soap and water. If I didn’t wash them, I would send o the dry cleaners, but I’ve heard of sweaters coming back felted. If the sweater is going to get ruined during cleaning, I’d rather it be me that did it!
Drying is kind of a pain because our place is small and lacks a nice, out-of-the-way flat suface.
Anyway, this is the opinion of the laziest person on this entire bb when it comes to washing/taking care of things, so I say go for it!
Definitely. I live in a cold climate and like the outdoors, so wool and alpaca etc are nice and warm. I usually wash my sweaters no more than twice a winter. Like bip I wear a t shirt under my heavy sweaters. I also have an armoire full of sweaters and can air them out and rotate the wearing. I just wash in my bathroom sink with Woolite and I have a couple of sweater racks from KMart that straddle my bathtub, so I can lay them out to dry.
I don’t have any sweaters that I machine wash. After all that work I’m afraid to trust them to a machine.