Smelly Yarn … It’s Not Your Fault

I have stinky yarn. About two years ago, I purchased four hanks of Araucania Ulmo 100% cotton yarn from a local yarn shop that has since, unfortunately, gone out of business. It was a beautiful, bright red clearance yarn that I just had to have for a summer tank top pattern. Since I’m not in the habit of sniffing my yarn before I buy it (is anybody really?), I wasn’t aware that it had a mildew smell, which only seemed to intensify in the next 12 months it spent in a plastic bag stored in a bin. When I decided it was time to knit with it, I was completely overcome with the smell, so I aired it out for a few days, and  although the smell became less strong, it was still there. I thought “oh, it’s not that bad, I’ll go ahead and knit with it anyway.” I wound the hanks into balls and started to work on the tank top pattern. I got about 10 rows into it when I started to get a headache and became very aware of the mildew smell. I unraveled the piece, put the yarn back into the bag and separated it from my other yarn. It sat alone for about another year.

The other day, as I was cleaning up my craft room, I rediscovered the bag of smelly yarn sitting in a corner. I opened it up and as you can imagine the smell hit me like a slap in the face. I decided to take the issue to Ravelry's yarn forum and asked for advice on the best way to clean it. I got a surprising suggestion—vinegar. I NEVER would have thought to use vinegar to soak the yarn, because, well, it seemed that the mildew smell was bad enough and who wants to smell like vinegar? I was skeptical.

Before washing it, I was also faced with another task—re-hanking the balled yarn. Thankfully the yarn swift made this task a whole lot easier. Once I was done with that, I filled up a sink with super hot water and a capful of lavender scented Eucalan. I let the yarn sit for about 20 mins, drained the sink, squished the soapy water out, and then filled another sink with just hot water to rinse. I let that sit for about five minutes, drained the sink, squished some of the water out, and then filled another sink (for the record, I only have two side-by-side sinks) with hot water and about 2 tablespoons (I eyeballed it) of white vinegar. I let that soak for about five minutes, then I drained the sink, squished out all the water I could from the yarn, pat-dried it in a towel and hung it up to dry. The smell is gone and there's no vinegar after-scent!

In other knitting news, I finally finished test knitting the Baby Bunny Woobie for KnitfyRed. It came out great. The pattern called for a couple of techniques that I had never used before, which I found challenging at times, but it was a wonderful learning experience and I’m thrilled with the end result.