Washing Your Handknits: A Cautionary Tale

Here you see my daughter's original bed socks, which pre-felting measured about 5.5" long and 2.5" wide.

I was in my daughter’s room the other day, changing her bedding, and on my way out of her room I saw the bed socks I knitted for her on the floor, so I picked them up and tossed them in with her bedding to be laundered.

When knitting kids’ items, I often choose to use a good-quality superwash wool.  Superwash wool is soft, easy to work with, and machine washable, which is always a plus for a kid’s item since it will (hopefully) get a lot of use and need to be washed regularly.  Thus, I thought1 I had used superwash wool for her bed socks.

You probably see where this story is going: when the washing was done, along with clean bedding I found felted bed socks.

Here are the bed socks post-felting. They are now 4" long and 1.75" wide.

Fortunately my story is not a tragedy.2 While not what I intended, there are “upsides” to the felting of my daughter’s bed socks.  Firstly, the felted bed socks are really cute and because they’re felted the fabric is now thicker and sturdy, which would be perfect for a pair of slippers.  I just may try felting an adult-size pair to see if it results in child-size felted slippers.  Secondly, my daughter’s favorite doll gets a really nice pair of slippers.  And lastly, because I have more of the yarn that I used for my daughter’s original bed socks, I can just knit up another pair for her.

So here’s the cautionary part of my tale: always double check the washing instructions for any handknitted item, even if you’ve made it yourself!

1. Or more accurately, I assumed, and we all know that saying about when you assume…. [↩]
2. It is more like a dramedy. I was quite surprised when I pulled out the felted bed socks from the washing machine. As anyone who has felted items before knows, the transformation can be quite astonishing. But I also chuckled and thought to myself what an idiot I am. [↩]