Et viola

[j4]

Good karate lesson last night. Because I'd moved my lesson at the last minute (bad j4!) I ended up sharing a lesson with a blue belt and a brown belt (that's the two grades below black) who were revising stuff for their upcoming gradings. Which meant that while they were going through a lot of stuff I already knew (the syllabus is cumulative) they were going through it at a much faster pace -- hard to keep up with but sometimes it's useful to try to push myself a bit more. I thought I was doing pretty well at nearly-keeping-up until I realised they'd already been going for 2 hours when I started... and in this heat! Phew.

Rest of the evening was moderately productive: phoned a friend, phoned my mum, told my mum it was unlikely that I'd make it home this weekend to sort out books and stuff which have been tagged for possibly getting rid of (or at least relegating to the loft) but I do want to do it a.s.a.p. to free up space in their house. There's certainly no more room for books in sion_a's house so they can't come here!

Phone-calls dispensed with, I had an unsuccessful attempt at ironing my 1950s rock'n'roll skirt (which I want to sell on eBay) -- it's made of Shiny Stuff which seems to be completely iron-resistant. Gave up on that and fiddled (hah!) with stringed instruments instead. Tuned my old viola (not the nice one that nou gave me, but the orange-varnished one I bought for 20 quid from my school) to C-G-C-G (instead of the usual C-G-D-A) just to see what it was like playing it like that, and found that it made it much easier to improvise random folky stuff. Which was nice. I still can't improvise well, but I'm really just trying to get through the mental block that says if-you-can't-do-it-well-don't-do-it-at-all -- I figure you have to do it badly first.

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

Just dampened it on the inside and ironed it in the end, & it seems to have worked, more or less.

I've often wished that I understood a bit more why things are given the washing instructions that they are -- so that I could make a more sensible judgement on whether to take notice of it or not. I mean, what I want to be able to determine (on a case-by-case basis) is: if I ignore the washing instructions, what will happen? Will it just wear out or fade a bit quicker? Or will it melt, or disintegrate, or shrink to the size of Barbie clothes? Or what?

I don't remember ironing my school skirt but they were made of such hideous hard material that I suspect they just needed sanding down occasionally... Oh, actually, I do remember ironing the pleats, so I must have done it once or twice. The material really was completely indestructible, though -- you could file your nails on it!

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I've often wished that I understood a bit more why things are given the washing instructions that they are -- so that I could make a more sensible judgement on whether to take notice of it or not.

Well, my experience goes...
1. Knowing what the fabric is is good (should say on the label, unless you've got hold of a hand-made thing). Whatever a care label may say, wool, velvet and silk *can* be washed in the machine (on the delicates setting) - in general. Occasionally you'll come across something that has some kind of special finish which the machine will kill. But anything like that probably cost a bomb to begin with.

2. If you don't know what the fabric is (garment is hand made, frex), you have to go by trial and error. If I don't care that much, I'll stick it in the machine on the delicates setting and see what happens. I haven't ruined anything yet...but it may be a matter of time!

But in my experience, manufacturers seem to say hand-wash or dry-clean only on an awful lot of things for which this is not warranted. Now, I'll grant you, pressing my velvet blazer was a pain in the neck, and having the thing dry-cleaned would have been way easier. But washing and pressing it myself was just so much cheaper.

As far as I can tell, "dry-clean only" often means "you'll make a pig's ear of pressing it, so let the experts".

I mean, what I want to be able to determine (on a case-by-case basis) is: if I ignore the washing instructions, what will happen? Will it just wear out or fade a bit quicker? Or will it melt, or disintegrate, or shrink to the size of Barbie clothes? Or what?

In general, my experience has been that washing the thing on the delicates program and ironing it on the lowest setting is not harmful to most things. And when in doubt, I *always* use the delicates setting; wool will shrink in some areas and stretch in others (so you can end up with a sweater that barely covers your boobs, but is wide enough for three of you and has sleeves long enough for an orang-utan!) if you wash it or iron it too hot, while synthetics tend to melt when attacked with a too-hot iron (which makes an awful mess of the iron as well as ruining the garment!).

Overall, I'd say take instructions with a pinch of salt, but experiment on clothes you don't care that much about. I've been lucky so far; the worst I ever did was melt a teeny bit on the collar of my cloak when I was applying iron-on decoration to it.