Back in September, I placed an order for superwash wool (for sock yarn! Boogada boogada!) and some other things. The other stuff came right away, but the superwash was on back order. I emailed with the vendor, and we decided to have it shipped whenever it came in. But it never showed up. I wrote polite notes every couple weeks asking about it, but with the hurricanes, the stuff was tied up on a boat somewhere in the south. Well, it finally arrived last week! Huzzah!

I opened the package, now 2 months after I placed the order, and out tumbles 3 bags of creamy wool, all bearing the label “Merino 64 count.” Nowhere does it indicate superwash. Crap. I contacted the vendor, explained the mistake, and was told that it’s the right stuff with the wrong label. (Wha..?) He refunded my money while I “tested” it – if it’s the right stuff, I would just pay him again. I spun 10 feet of 4-ply cable yarn and knit a small swatch using that and 2 cabled yarns that should full easily.

The swatch went into the wash with some laundry, but at the end of the load, it looked almost exactly the same as it did going in. Even the I-know-it-will-full yarns were pretty unfazed by the laundry treatment. (You see, this is why it is always good to have controls! No matter what the experiment, you need to use controls!) I went after it in the bathroom sink with a bar of soap, alternating hot and cold water while I scrubbed the swatch ferociously.

A long time ago, before I was getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 AM on a daily basis, I watched an episode of David Letterman’s show where he did a little segment called “Will It Float?” If you haven’t seen it, DL and his sidekick Paul take some random object, discuss whether it will float in a giant tank of water, and then toss it in to see who’s correct. It’s incredibly dumb but somehow funny in a way that only Letterman can pull off.

Anway, I hummed the “Will It Float” riff (substituting “full” for “float,” but still) as I treated the swatch, and after 5 minutes:

Yes. It fulls.

Happy ending to the story – I get to keep the wrong fiber anyway. Hm, maybe there will be some turkey roaster dyeing in my future.