OK, all you magnificent do-it-yourselfers, here’s one for you.
I just received a nice big piece of wool tweed fabric, which I intent to make into a poncho for bowhunting in the rain. It will be very effective camouflage, it’s very quiet, and should repel water quite nicely.
While hemming up the edges, though, I noticed that it has that strong, “old wool” smell.
Now, it wouldn’t do at all to go sneaking around the mountains smelling like a combination of a dead animal and an old lady’s closet. It’s a little known fact that Rocky Mountain Elk are not particularly fond of dead animals or old ladies. When I’m hunting, I try very hard to smell like nothing.
So, short of washing it a couple dozen times then staking it out in the sun for a couple weeks, does anyone know a good way to get rid of this smell?
Tie the tweed around an elk. Retrieve it after a couple of weeks. Now the elk will smell like old wool, too, and won’t notice the difference. Or you could tie an old elk skin to a sheep for a couple of weeks before making the tweed. No, wait! I’ve got it! Staple the sheep to the elk, mail them to Scotland and demand your money back.
One piece of advice I heard was to sprinkle it liberally with unscented talcum powder (such as the stuff pipers use!). Leave it for a couple of days and beat it out/off.
However, if it’s made of old wool, I’m not sure you can prevent it smelling like old wool. Old, Woolly, Smelly things do creep around mountainsides. If it disguises your smell, that is an advantage.
Edited to say: It’s the lanolin that gives it the smell, and repels the water. You can wash the lanolin out, but then it will not be waterproof. The talcum-powder approach may remove some of the lanolin too.
My Irish sweater from 2003 (given to me by my cousin in Dublin, I don’t know how long she had it) has always and probably will always smell like sheep, but it’s not an entirely unpleasant smell nor an overwhelming one.
PS the smell gets a lot more noticeable when it’s wet. Something to consider if you’re making a rain poncho out of yours!
Woudn’t the wool smell like elk, than? That would be good. Of course, if I could catch the elk to wrap the wool around it, I could just shoot the elk and get it over with…maybe if I staple the old lady to the dead animal…no, wait…
Maybe I’ll just hope for dry weather.
Seriously, I do have some wool items that loose that smell after a time. I’m hoping there’s a way to expedite that. As for loosing the lanolin, don’t they take it out in the process anyway? Even processed wool seems to repel water. I’m not worried about total waterproofness. I just want to stay warm.
That’s the difference between Aran sweaters and the rest of them. Aran sweaters (Aran wool) still have (has) the lanolin. My mother knitted me one (which I still have) and was at pains to warn me to add lanolin to it after it was washed.
The general industrial process of spinning wool removes the lanolin. But you can add your own.
My own “Waterproof” is a Tunisian riding-cape - in brown wool. It operates on the Filabeg principle. It may not be waterproof, but still keeps you warm when it is wet through.
“Filabeg” - I don’t know why the distinction, but it’s always spelt “Philabeg” - a long, woolen, plaid blanket wrapped around the body, precursor to the tailored kilt.
I’m alergic to wool, so the topic is somewhat of a non sequitor for me.
The spellings are variable, but you’ll always get more search results with “filibeg”. Anyway, it’s properly the other way around, kilties. The filibeg is nowadays usually the tailored kilt (from the Gàidhlig fèileadh beag, beag = small, and fèileadh = kilt, actually “pleat”) although the original filibeg (filabeg, phillabeg, philabeg, philibeg, fillibeg, phyllo-beg, what have you), though still the small version, was untailored; and the mongo untailored wrap-around pleated so-called “great kilt” would be the filimore (fèileadh mòr, Gaeilge filleadh mór).
Most cleaning methods attempt to remove grease, and lanolin is a kind of grease (as far as cleaning agents are concerned). Yes, dry-cleaning would remove the lanolin.
I don’t think there’s any lanolin in it now anyway, since it’s processed, spun, died, woven wool. Wool woven with the lanolin in it seems a rarity these days.
I just want to get the mothbally, dead animally smell out of it.
Tom
p.s. Wiki is wrong and Nano’s right on the kilt. -mor means big, it’s the Great Kilt that one pleats onself out of, essentially, a big wool blanket (or plaid, to be proper). The fillibeg is the small kilt, that is usually pretailored and only covers from the waste down.
Niether of them, in my experience, smell like mothbally dead animals. Maybe I should take my kilt bowhunting.
Hi. I’m a full time handspinner, and work with wool every day. If it is pure wool, no matter how much it is washed (and if you’re not careful, you can ruin it pretty easily) it will always have a “wooly smell”. There will always be a small amount of lanolin left in it.
You can wash wool, but you’ve got to be really careful with it. I would only do this as a last resort with tweed.
Use warm water, with some shampoo dissolved in it. GENTLY swish the fabric in the water. Make sure it has plenty of room and isn’t all squashed in a small basin. DO NOT rub, or agitate the fabric, as the heat and agitation will cause it to felt and shrink. GENTLY squeeze the water out, and rinse in cool water until the water runs clear. Pull the fabric back to it’s original shape. Hang up the fabric to dry. Don’t tumble dry it. Press it with a damp cloth when it is dry. If you are scared to do this, maybe you could cut a small amount of fabric from along the edge, wash this and see how it goes.
Dry cleaning it won’t necessarily get rid of the smell. When you are storing it, you’ll have to protect it from moths…you can get lots of different moth repellents now…they don’t all smell of mothballs!
Alternatively, you could try hanging it on the washing line for a couple of days and see how it goes. I’d be tempted to do this…the smell will soon be unnoticable once it is being regularly used outside.
Hope this helps.
Cass.
ps…if it all goes horribly wrong…don’t come running to me!
