Saturday, March 10, 2007

Stretchy Wool

For my dinner last week, I borrowed my colleague's lovely soft shawl to match my dress. Even though I didn't use it, it absorbed all the cigarette smoke in the room so I didn't want to return it as it was.

I insisted on taking it home to wash, which I did over the weekend. And discovered it was wool. And that you should NEVER put wool into the washing machine. That wool shrinks dramatically (in this case, 1/3 of original size). And the texture changes from soft to coarse. And that you can't iron wool if you hope it would help straighten it. And no amount of www.chacha.com with a guide can help you.

Stretching it the whole night only brought about uneven edges and well, it's no longer rectangular. Of course my colleague was sweet about it and refuses my offer to replace an exact one by not telling me where she got it. But I can see she's upset about it so my hunt for a similar shawl starts real soon.

3 comments:

MlleMonster said...

Why don't you take a picture of the scarf and put it up online so that if any of us actually see it, we can let you know.

Anonymous said...

It probably costs US$400 or something like that.

Karen said...

That sucks....

You should really only dry clean wool items...

Or next time you want to get rid of the smokey smell off the wool, just air it out for a couple of days outside.