Can I safely dry wool on my dryer's air-only setting?

[Saartje]

Or is the tumbling action liable to be an invitation to felting?

Just wondering, because I've started drying a few things of mine (mainly a particular pair of pants) on the air-dry setting rather than hanging them to dry, with no ill effects (or at least, none that are visible yet). And it's taking a couple of days for my wool to dry when I hang it outside, these days.

[mudder17]

Do you have a drying rack for your dryer? If so, I would try that--put the covers on the drying rack and put it on air setting. FWIW, my wool stuff dries quickly, but I put it on the drying rack in a sunny window (which is sometimes sunny) and just put a fan on it. It takes less than 12 hours to dry even the Aristocrat.


Eileen

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[Saartje]

Alas, the dryer in this apartment does not have a drying rack. :( Otherwise, I'd have used it in a heartbeat.

The problem with hanging them to dry inside, with a fan on them, is that it's hard to arrange them in a place where the cats can't reach them. And if the cats can reach them, one of them is bound to try to play with them (either the covers or the fan).

[mudder17]

Hmm...I put them on the drying rack and most of the time they stay put. Occasionally one of the cats will knock it off when she jumps on the top (she likes to balance on the little tiny pole), but they otherwise will leave things alone. Now, Kaya, on the other hand, will occasionally get it in her mind that she needs to pull things off to either play with them or put them on. Both she and the cats leave the fan alone, but the openings are too small for either them to get their fingers or paws in them, so I don't worry about it. I think it's just something she and the cats have become used to since I've been using the drying rack since Kaya was a newborn. The youngest used to jump on top far more than she does now, so I think once she had a chance to explore it, it wasn't quite as fascinating any more.


Eileen

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[Saartje]

(Only have a sec to post)

No good. I put in the items I care least about, two Sugarpeas wool covers and a pair of longies I knit for Ish that he's outgrowing anyway. Took them all out when they were still quite wet, but drier than they had been. Sugarpeas were fuzzy, though they didn't seem to be felting; the longies OTOH were definitely on their way to felted status.

[Saartje]

And now that I have one more sec -- sometimes they'll leave it alone, sometimes they won't. One of my roommate's cats, though over a year old, seems to be permanently a kitten in behaviour, so you can't predict what he'll get into, just that he will.

[psophia17]

I have had luck with drying my wool by washing by hand, then putting the wool between thick layers of bath towels, and then standing on them to dry out as much as possible. After that, it only takes a little while for them to dry the rest of the way...

[mudder17]

Yes, I always roll my wool in between a folded towel and it takes out most of the water. I think my 'crat dried in 2-3 hours w/the fan blowing on them. It depends on the humidity in the house, though, and whether there's sun. Sarah, do you have an outdoor plug where you could plug in a fan?

Sarah, since a washer spin works differently from a dryer (it doesn't tumble on the spin cycle), could you try spinning your covers in the washer to help get off most of the water? I think I've done that, although I've only done it with my angeldry (which I do put in the wash occasionally).

Eileen

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