Monday, August 20, 2007

No photo today. I am upset and I am not sure if I should be upset at me or at the yarn manufacturers. I washed my white socks yesterday. You know, the ones I made for me? The pretty lace socks that I wore only one time? Well, they were white so I washed them with the white clothes which I wash with bleach. Now the pretty white socks are an ivory color. It is not a bad color, quite nice actually. But it is not the nice white that went into the washer. Does this happen often with sock yarn? I don't think I have ever made anything out of white wool for myself or anyone in my household. I may have given some white knitted items as baby gifts. Are they ivory too? I read the label on the yarn and didn't see any "no bleach" warnings. Needless to say, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor blip and I will still wear the socks. I was just curious, does anyone else have this problem? Can I fix it and make them white again? Or should I get some dye and dye them a darker color?

Well, it's Monday morning and it's time to go to work. It's raining which made it that much harder to get out of bed and that much harder to actually do any work.....

8 comments:

Sheepish Annie said...

Hmmm...I wonder if the super-wash chemicals reacted with the bleach? I'm not sure. I hand wash my knitted socks and use washing soda, but I've never knit white ones so I can't say for sure what would happen if I used bleach as well.

Too bad, though...I hate it when the simple act of washing changes everything!

amy said...

I just read in the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules book that bleach dissolves wool. I googled "bleach wool" and this explanation came up.

So, in short, you shouldn't use bleach on wool. I'm so sorry you found out the hard way. :(

TinkingBell said...

I only hand wash hand knitted socks - I use wool wash which is a pure soap and eucalyptus oil number - requires very little supervision - but even my superwasah socks get hand washed - but Ivory is lovely - goes with everything!

Amy Lane said...

Well, I enjoyed amy's moment of science and after that I'm VERY glad they only turned a little yellow... ivory socks you can still wear...a goopy mess, not so much.

Em said...

Poor nice lady, it sucks that your socks ended up being the ones that turned funky colors. But hey, we learned something. Learning is fun! And besides, now you have an excuse to make yourself another pair next.

Mistrmi said...

Thanks for your comment over at MindFull. Economics always rears its ugly head. It's easier to shut people up than to listen to them. How very, very sad.

roxie said...

Ivory is good. Don't further insult the wool by dying it. It has had so many chemical changes already. I know that nylon yellows when brought to bleach. Does your yarn have any nylon in it?

You might try getting them wet, then putting them on the grass in the sunshine to dry.

MadMad said...

Oh, no, oh no! I was actually afraid to get to the "end" of the post and find out what happened. I'm so sorry! (But glad it wasn't worse!) Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to bleach your handknits... I once tried bleaching some cotton yarn on purpose (I wanted white and it was ivory-ish) and it turned.... pink. Of all things. So. But what a bummer. I'm sorry. I do machine wash my socks (because, really, handwashig would put me over the edge....) but not with bleach. What an awful lesson...! Hope the rest of your week was better!

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