Talk to me about wool...

[e_roehm23]

I've never used wool before. We are trying to get back to cding at night and are low on cash, so I bought a few 100% wool sweaters from Goodwill and sewed up some longies.

I lanolized them using the fern&feirie woolwash recipe.

However, after only one night they were smelling like pee. Ds is a heavy wetter which is why we got away from cding at night in the first place. We're using a bamboo pf w/ bamboo doubler, a microfibre Fuzzibunz insert w/ fleece liner and his dipe is soaked in the a.m.

I ordered some hemp fleece so that i could make him some hemp doublers, but do you all have any other suggestions on how to make my wool more efficent?
I've heard some ppl can go a whole month w/o washing! I dread washing bcause it takes so long for the wool to dry (which is why I've never used it)

Also, would heavy lanolizing make it more pee resistant?
sorry it's so long THANKS!

[lapis]

[cristeen]

Yes, heavy/repeated lanolizing. And felting (although you want to felt before sewing).

For drying, lay the item flat on a towel (I use a big one folded in half long-ways) and roll the towel up around it. Then walk on the roll. You'll be amazed at how wet the towel is and how much drier your wool is. It will seriously decrease drying time. Drying outside with the sun/wind is also much faster.

I'm betting that your longies just need to be lanolized a few more times. I can go weeks-months before washing when my woolies are new, but after that it seems like I'm washing a batch every week (I wash 1/2 the stash at a time).

[e_roehm23]

So, it's more common for me to have to lanolize them each week? Lanolizing them and using the wool wash is the same right, because the wool wash has lanolin in it?

I tried to lanolize them heavily by using about 2 pea size lumps of lanolin in the wool wash. Does using too much soap in the wash decrease the power of the lanolin?

Yes, I felted them before I sewed them up, and they are a double layer in the body. Do you think they need more felting? They're still pretty stretchy, but I don't want to felt them so much that they're too small.

[poppan]

The wool might just need a heavier lanolization but it could also be that you need more absorption in the dipe. The only times my wool has gotten so wet that it stank in the morning was when the pee somehow leaked out and got on the wool directly. Stink could also happen if the dipe is completely soaked and the pee has nowhere to go but on the wool.

[poppan]

In my book wool wash is a light lanolization at best. I rarely got away with just using wool wash -- even the ones with high lanolin content weren't enough for us.

[e_roehm23]

So then how do I lanolize them and lanolize them heavily?