After completing your project, storing and washing your item will help keep them in in good condition. The key to keeping hand knitted items especially the wool and special natural fibres (alpaca, cashmere, mohair etc) is knowing when and how to wash them. If you live in a hot climate, the natural inclination is to wash a garment after you have worn it once. Its hot and humid, and clothes need to be washed after they are worn. For knitted garments, this will wear them out. Read more to find out how to care for them.
Storage
The best way to store knitted sweaters that are out of season or not in use is to put them into ziplock bags or vacuum bags, preferably after they have been washed. This keeps them clean and ready to wear when you are want to use them. It also keeps silver fish, moths and other insects away from your items. This is especially crucial for wool and other natural fibers. For things that are in season or used very often like light cardigans, fold them up and storing in the wadrobe. Hanging them up on a hanger seems to stretch them, which in some cases is not reversible.
When to clean your knitted items?
The best answer to this is when they get soiled! Basically try not get it soiled so that it will not need to be cleaned. Garments made from natural fibres tend to quite resilient can be worn many times before they need to be washed. No they will not smell if they are made with natural fibres. If they do smell of cigarette smoke or food, simply air them after they have been worn, ie place it on a chair and leave to sit in a smoke free clean place away from direct sunlight. Too much washing wears out the fibres. Rotate your pieces and wash them once sometime in April when you no longer need them and store them for the year.
Yarn labels
Make sure you keep one of the yarn labels in a safe place. These very very important information on how to wash and dry your items. Generally, the type of fibre and how the the fibre was spun determines cleaning method, which are:
- dry clean
- hand wash
- machine wash
Most natural fibres are best handwashed. Some specially spun wool yarn and man made fibres are machine washable, but it would be best if you don’t just stick it in the washing machine and hope for the best. All fibres can be dry cleaned, but should you?
Please see washing symbols for more information.
To dry clean or not
Most fibres used in hand knitting and crochet can be dry cleaned. The rule of thumb is that it is actually gentler to hand wash the item, rather than to dry clean it. I would only recommend dry cleaning if you are not able to hand wash them yourself, although it is much much easier to take it to the dry cleaners than do it yourself!
In Part 2, we will discuss how to hand wash and machine wash, dry and iron knitted and crocheted.
