Three Tips to Care for Your Sweaters
(video transcript)
Today I have three tips about how to care for your sweaters and other knitwear. I know that it's possible that you're not caring for your own clothing, that someone could be doing that for you. Or someone's managing your household and they're taking care of things and making sure that you can do your work. So please share this video with them so that they can make your clothing last even longer and keep it in even better condition, which of course is sustainable.
I also wanted to let you know there are subtitles on the film so you don't need to listen to it with sound, you can just read the subtitles. Thanks for watching.
Less Handwashing
Good news! You can start ignoring those instructions on the inside of your, for instance, merino wool or cashmere sweaters, that say hand wash most of the time. Unless it's an extremely delicate fabric I just washed them on the wool setting — so wool 30 degrees — that's Celsius of course — and cold water.
I used to do it on fine wash or even on 30 or 40 degrees, but the wool setting is very important, because the cylinder turns at a slower speed, and that's going to prevent your sweaters from shrinking. So — very important — wool 30 degrees, slower centrifuge, which means your sweaters will come out fine.
Gentle Cleanser
Along with that 30 degree, so cold, wool setting, I would suggest that you use a special liquid cleanser for wool. This is from one of my favorite sweater labels — Vanity, a Dutch brand.
Put two capfuls of cleanser into the soap container of your washing machine and set the washing machine on the cold wool setting.
Shave Your Sweater
Okay so all of us have a sweater with pilling -- that's what these little (in Dutch we say 'pluisjes') fibers are that you don't want. This does not look nice. It looks very worn. The solution to that is to buy a sweater shaver. This one works on two batteries.
You just take this cap off and basically you give your sweater a shave, like this. You'll hear it pulling off those bits of fibers so that in the end what you see is the difference between the part that's not been worked on and the part that has not. So this I've already done -- this is nice and smooth -- and this is still in need of a touch-up.
Snagged Yarns
Here we have a sweater with a pulled yarn. So if you wear jewelry like me, you do this often. It's easy enough to fix. Just take a crochet needle (‘haaknaald; in Dutch) and put your hand inside the area with the pulled yarn.
Stick the crochet hook inside, hook onto that pulled thread, and pull the hook through just like that, and you no longer see the yarn.
More Tips?
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