An Easy Way to Remove the Pilling on your Sweaters

Way back in the late 1970's, I got a bee in my bonnet.  I wanted a knitting machine in the worse way.  I liked knitting but over the years it had become boring.   I figured a knitting machine would speed up the knitting process, but I could still come up with new ideas and be creative.  They were pretty expensive for the time, but eventually I got one.  I took lessons.  I dragged it to Janesville Wisconsin for all day seminars.  It was fun, and I made a lot of things.  It wasn't as easy as it would seem.  There is still a lot of hand work and transferring with the machine.  Now they have computerized machines that you can program and walk away for a while.  Mine is a basic machine and is almost an antique.  I rarely use it anymore, but keep it for some reason.

At some point, I learned how to make yoke sweaters and I made several.  Recently I was exchanging summer clothes for winter clothes, and I came upon two sweaters that I had made for my mom.  They are at least 20 years old, maybe more.  She would baby them and wear them on the holidays.  When she died, I kept them.  Now I think I am ready to wear them myself. The first one was a basic cardigan.

The red sweater she wore the most.  She hand washed it and took care of it, but it still became very fuzzy over the years.  Wearing sweaters under winter jackets make them pill no matter how you take care of them.  Some yarns are worse than others.

This sweater has a fine sparkly thread in the yarn so it pilled easier.

I found a very easy way to remove pilling on sweaters.  I started out with a lint removing device.  It worked but it took a long time.  I thought there had to be a faster way.  It would be fine for a small
amount of fuzzies, but I had a sweater that needed a lot of work.

This is a super lint shaver.  It has little blades inside and the lint is collected.

Because the lint shaver has a series of rotating blades inside,  I figured a safety razor would also work.  I went in the bathroom cabinet and found a safety razor that needed a new blade.  We have a lot of them because all the major razor makers give away razors.  They hope that by giving away the razor, people will go out and buy the very expensive replacement blades.  I usually just request a new free razor.

Carefully you just shave the sweater going from top to bottom.  As long as you do it on a hard surface and keep the fabric smooth, you can't cut it.  If you don't keep it taut then you risk cutting the fabric.  The smooth part of the photo is where I removed the fuzzies.  It worked great and what do you have to lose.  You probably wouldn't want to wear a sweater that is all fuzzy anyway.