Once you dive into the wonderful world of yarn and fiber—whether as a spinner, knitter, crocheter, needleworker, or weaver—you learn that many handcrafted projects can't handle machine-washing or dry cleaning. Maybe the agitation of a home washing machine or dry cleaning machine would destroy the item's delicate structure, shrink the item, or compress all the fibers together into something that looks like felt (known as fulling). Maybe prolonged soaking in water would cause dyed colors to run. In all these cases, wool wash can do the trick: it will safely clean your handmade projects whether you soak them in a sink or in your washing machine (follow the link for instructions on machine-soaking—you don't want to put your wool sweaters through a full washing machine cycle).
Protein fibers, such as wool, silk, cashmere, and angora, actually love a soak in water. They don't love exposure to perchloroethylene or even Woolite, which is harsher than wool wash and has to be rinsed out. Both the chemicals and the agitation involved in dry-cleaning can damage delicate fibers, so skip the dry-cleaners and try machine-soaking or handwashing your most luxurious garments in wool wash.
But wool wash can do so much more! If you're not familiar with this stuff, it's an alternative to laundry detergent specially made for people who make stuff from yarn, especially wool yarn (as the name implies). Once I started exploring wool wash in depth, I discovered many, many ways to use it.
I focused on 5 popular products below. All are easy to buy online. You may also find them in your LYS (local yarn shop) but you won't see them in big-box craft stores. Lifestyle blogger yookiwool compared these 5 brands for their stain removal capabilities. Ravelry users too use these products frequently; ask for reactions within any knitting, crochet, or spinning forum and you're likely to get lots of feedback!
