Different ways to De-Pill a Sweater

Now that it's Fall I've started making soups, and lighting candles, and pulling out my sweaters. I basically lived in one cardigan that I made last year and I didn't realize how rough it looked when I put it away. I used a yarn that was a little bit delicate so it pills fairly easily and I guess I must have got used to it or something cause I really didn't realize that it was totally covered in little fuzz balls when I put it away.

Now that I'm actually seeing how bad it really is I wanted to de-pill the sweater before I started wearing it. I brought out a little machine that says "Dritz" on it that my Mom gave me and, even though I only used it once last year, it was totally dead when I tried to turn it on. I was a little hesitant to shell out and buy two new C batteries to bring it back to life and ended up finding a little pumice stone that was advertised to remove pills from sweaters which I thought would be nice because then it wouldn't take batteries and it couldn't die at inopportune times.

I must say I was a little disappointed because the pumice stone really grabbed and pulled the whole sweater, not just the little pills. I ended up holding the sweater with one hand while gently swiping the stone just above the sweater to catch the pills, which seemed to work okay, but I wasn't as impressed as I guess I was hoping to be.

I gave in and paid the $5 for the batteries (not as bad as I thought it would be) and tried using the little de-fuzzing machine. Just wow, I think when my Mom gave me the little machine it must have had mostly dead batteries because it was for sure working better than it did before. I was just gliding it over the sweater, kind of like a tiny iron, and it would quickly whisk away the little fuzz balls collecting them in a tiny lint trap like a dryer (which the pumice stone also had no way of doing). So, while I wanted to like the natural one-time-expense option, I guess I'm going to be using the little "Dritz" machine from now on, and I'll pretty happily buy batteries for it.

Anyway, that was just my experience with a couple different ways to de-pill sweaters that I just wanted to share. Hopefully it was somewhat interesting or a tiny bit helpful for someone who might be considering picking up something to de-fuzz their own sweaters for Fall.