Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Good Thing It's Not Combustible!

The Girls* were talking about dyeing wool. The tall (5"5") one was considering wool on wool applique.

No need to buy wool to dye. I have plenty of wool scraps in the basement. As promised, I descended into the fabric storage cave and came up with a basket full of wool and wool blend scraps. Most of the pieces are dark because the non-scrap parts of them were or are slacks, skirts, jackets and coats. There was a fairly large piece of light beige wool melton whose other part was made into a very nice coat in 1978.

I washed the wool in my front-loader machine. There has been some discussion about whether wool will felt in a front-loader with no agitator. Due to the fact that I have only this particular washing machine available, I was unable to do a truly scientific experiment. I ran it through the express cycle twice, both times with hot wash and cold rinse and the highest spin speed.

This is the basket of wool.



Then I put it in the dryer on hot. I had a fleeting thought that I should clean the lint filter part way through the drying cycle, but, as is common with fleeting thoughts, the thought flit. When the dryer buzzed, I went down to the basement, and this is what I found in the lint filter.



Thank goodness wool isn't very combustible! One would not want to start the house on fire for ayrt or even for art!

*The Girls are in the last photo in the previous post. They are the ones on the far left (the tall one) and on the far right (the not tall one). The two in the middle (along with another person) used to be The Girls. The two in the middle have ascended to become The Mothers of the Girls. The one who is not pictured has ascended to become The Grandmother of The Little Girls.

3 comments:

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

Cool post Marty. I can't wait to see how you use it. I have never worked with wool except to sew clothes with it. Interesting.

PS, you cut the girls heads off in the pic!

Marty S said...

The photo was cropped to protect both the innocent and the guilty. Not to worry, nobody's real head was cut off.
Marty S

Timaree said...

Oh that part about who the current and past girls are is hilarious! Glad you didn't burn your house down.