PHEW

[yuuago]

Over the last few days, I've been washing out some of my grandmother's old handmade house linens. Crochet tablecloths, table runners, that kind of thing. After she died, these were put in an old bin in our basement, because mom understandably didn't want to deal with it at the time.

We figured we might as well take care of it now. Upside: I'm going to get some gorgeous stuff out of this. Both my grandmother and my great grandmother did some very fine work. There's a tablecloth that's going to look great in my kitchen.

Downside: My gran had a pack-a-day smoke habit, and oh boy, can you ever tell.

With most of the things, I've been able to get the smoke out - the cotton stuff was dealt with through a sequence of soaks and scrubbing (gentle laundry soap soak, then Fels-Naptha bar scrub, then Eucalan soak, then vinegar soak, then once more with the laundry soap).

There was also a baby sweater in that bin, and that's proving more stubborn, though. A few rinses, and it still smells smoky. Bleh. It's wool, so obviously I'm not going to scrub it, but I do foresee more vinegar rinses in my future.

That said, does anybody have any suggestions for getting extremely heavy cigarette smoke out of wool, specifically? Aside from Eucalan and vinegar soaks, that is.

Comments

[kanadka]

I'm astonished Eucalan works so well! Best of luck getting the smoke out - alas, I have no recs for you on that note (baking soda? It works for fridges. Maaaaybe not in conjunction with the vinegar, tho), but that is just so incredibly cool you have so much handmade grandma/great-grandma stuff now. I bet they're beautiful!! (Pics at some point? :D)

[yuuago]

HMM... Now that you mention it, for a while there, my mom was making her own laundry detergent out of a mixture of heat-treated baking soda and grated Fels-Naptha. Soaking it in that just might work. TY for the suggestion.

They ARE beautiful. Hopefully I'll be able to get some photos once it's all clean and ironed.