KATHMANDU:

Woollen clothes keep you warm throughout the winter and you make sure that they are of latest cuts, design and of in-colours. Be it the home knitted sweater your mum knits for you or the expensive ones you buy, they will get pills and lint with time and looses its charm. Pills are those tenacious little fuzz balls that sometimes appear on woollen garments. Garments with soft, fuzzy surfaces tend to be more susceptible to pilling. The fibres that create those beautiful surfaces become tangled during wear and cleaning to form pills or smoothes out surface tangles before they become severe and more difficult to remove. Defuzzing, defurring, or fur ball removal are all terms to describe a technique to remove the small wool balls. The cuffs, sides of a sweater or jacket where the arms touch, and around the collar are all places that can develop tiny wool balls. The area above men’s back pockets, where the wallet is kept, and the arm where women carry a shoulder purse are frequent areas that need ‘defuzzing.’ Here are few points that will help you get rid of the frequent problem that arises with woollen clothes.

• Use a small razor to cut the balls from the wool, but be careful while doing so since it is easy to cut into the wool fabric underneath.

• If insects damage wool, it can be repaired quite easily. Wool clothing usually comes with a small package of fabric threads. Take a small number of threads and carefully interweave them into the fabric. It is impossible to find the repair, when done well. When the repair is made, professionally dry-clean the item.

• To avoid the lint issue with future wool garment purchases, you might want to consider worsted wool garments. The worsteds, such as gabardines, generally have smoother, more tightly woven surfaces and rarely attract lint (even in dark colours). Worsteds also tend to be lighter in weight, so are comfortable for year round wear.

• Woollens with a soft, fuzzy surface, such as flannels, sometimes

have a tendency to pick up lint. In dark, solid colours, any lint attraction is more obvious.

• Avoid wearing dark woollen jackets with light colour, lint producing blouses or tops. Avoid wearing lint-sensitive fabrics in situations where there would be a lot of contact with lint sources.

• Carry a pocket size lint brush or use scotch tape for quick touch ups.

• A lint brush or bristled garment brush are effective on most fabrics. For more delicate fabrics, a natural sponge can be used.

• Sweater or garment combs grab pills and pull them off the fabric surface. Pumice-like bars work in much the same manner, but sometimes leave gritty ‘crumbs’ on the fabric surface.

• Some individuals use scrubber pads for pill removal. And for very stubborn pills, fabric shavers will usually do the job. It’s important to remember to try these products first on an inconspicuous area of the garment; some fine fabrics can be damaged by the abrasion of pill removers.