One of those Internet Holidays that Stonekicking Okapi used to generate blog prompts was "Winter Skin Relief Day," actually scheduled for the eighth of January. "What's your favorite skin treatment?" A lot of those Internet Holidays seem to have been designed to "inspire" people to post free advertisements for commercial products.
Well...first let me emphasize that, living in a damp climate as I do, I'm not the expert on treatments for dry skin. Where I live, dry skin can seem like an unattainable ideal goal. We are naturally moisturized. Dry skin is usually caused by fighting grotty skin diseases caused by excessive moisture, and cured by resting in the battle.
But there is one effective treatment for dry skin that is limited to the hands (and sometimes the feet), that I can recommend as a real skin treat.
That is knitting with real wool. Or embroidery (crewel) or crocheting, for those who find those easier.
Photo from the Santa Fe Wool Company.
A lot of people think they are allergic to wool. Not exactly. They may be genuinely allergic to THIS:
Photo by Twisted Yarn Shop.
...or, by "allergic," they may merely mean that it feels abrasive on the skin. Which it certainly does, even to people who know the difference between abrasiveness and allergies.
Wool is the sort inner coat of a stupid but lovable, cuddly animal. It can be considered a cruelty-free product since sheep naturally shed masses of surplus wool in spring and, if anything, appreciate humans' help in getting this surplus wool off their backs. In practice humans usually try to streamline the process of gathering wool in ways sheep don't appreciate--like cleaning the wool by driving the sheep into deep cold water to pre-wash the wool--and they also do things that make the wool more abrasive than nature intended it to be.
It starts with the collection of the wool itself. In Elizabeth I's time sheep herders were supposed to have the first pick of the "wool which from our pretty lambs we pull," grooming their sheep for the sheep's own comfort, as we comb our shedding pet dogs and cats today. People not trusted with the responsible job of herding might wander about "wool gathering," picking bits of wool off bushes and fences. Either way, the wool broke off naturally, leaving soft, thin, worn ends. This also took place over a few weeks and did not leave sheep exposed to cold weather. With industrialization, sheep shearers started using metal clippers to cut off the surplus wool, leaving shorn sheep to whine and shiver if the weather turned cold, and herders to recycle worn-out wool into little blankets to tie over the shorn sheep. It also yielded wool fibres with sharp, thick, rough ends. This is a relatively small difference that few people really notice, but it's there.
Next comes the question of cleaning the wool. Wool that was brushed or combed off a sheep would still have had some dirt and straw stuck to it. Wool that is chopped off the sheep in great wads has great wads of dirt. Early efforts to reduce the amount of dirt in wool were limited to trying to shear the sheep in a water bath, usually a deep fast-moving stream. The process of cleaning wool was made faster by dipping the wool in strong acid solutions. Acid-washed wool contains a lot of acid, which adds a lot of its abrasiveness.
Then there's the question of color. Natural wool is usually almost white because white wool is easier to dye, and sheep have been selectively bred for white coats for a long time. Natural wool is not always white. Sheep come in a wide range of colors. On Shetland, where farmers bred for a full range of colors, sheep were traditionally divided into nine color categories: whitish, blackish, reddish brown, bluish gray, darker brown, lighter brown, darker gray, lighter gray, and grayish brown. To get wool in other colors, like bleached white or true coal black, the wool has to be dyed in another bath of chemicals, many of which are toxic to humans. Real allergies are often sensitivities to these chemicals.
Natural wool shrinks every time it gets wet and dries out again. Even on the sheep it forms dreadlocks. The sheep's outer hair is combed away from the shorter, softer inner hairs that are actually spun into wool yarn, but it's still easy to make into felt rather than cloth. To delay the process of wool fabric shrinking into felt, more chemicals are soaked into the wool. People can be allergic to those chemicals, too.
The incidence of true allergy-type reactions to wool, as distinct from simple skin irritation, is low and is more likely to show chemical sensitivities than a literal allergy to wool. It is possible to be allergic to the proteins found in wool, or in mutton, but it's rare. True allergies are more often produced by swallowing or inhaling a protein than by touching it.
When people wear or handle natural wool, as distinct from chemically processed wool, most of them do not have allergic reactions. One problem that persists is that we've forgotten how to wear wool. Most of our ancestors wore wool clothing over linen or cotton underclothing. Only to show that someone was unusually tough and reckless would an old poet say that "He wore no shirt upon his back, but wool unto his skin."
Natural wool also contains lanolin, from the Latin words for "sheep oil." Lanolin has a strong animal scent and is usually washed out of heavily processed wool fabric, whic often has more of a chemical scent.
Natural wool is a dead organic material that attracts a specific group of scavenger species whose most widespread members include clothes moths and carpet beetles. Clothes moths eat only a few kinds of fibre of animal origin. Carpet beetles eat a wider range of dead animal material including human hair and skin. Tiny, harmless, attracted to light and uninterested in the living tissues of the warm-blooded animals on which dead bodies it feeds, the carpet beetle can nevertheless make itself annnying by xploring humans, nibbling at a hair or bit of skin here and there, checking whther we've died yet. Carpet beetles just love reducing things made of dead animals' hair to a cloud of expensive dust.
Naturally humans aren't pleased by carpet beetles' diligence in recycling our wools, so processed wools are often soaked in insecticide on top of everything else, and that's the real cause of allergies and sensitivities. Chemicals that kill insects are not exactly health food for humans.
Wool is prickly. Our ancestors loved it for that reason. The prickly abrasive quality of a wool scarf or blanket against a limited amount of less sensitive skin, such as a hand, was noted for its warming properties. Wool was applied to promote blood circulation. A patient complaining of soreness or inflammation might be advised to tie a wool scarf around the sore place overnight; often the improved blood circulation would relieve the infection.Wool socks, scarves, and mittens can feel more warming than heavier cotton or acrylic ones, because stirring up the circulation warms the skin.
So handling natural wool first stimulats and wrms the hands, and then coats the hands in lanolin. It's like a spa day for the hands. If you had one of the few great-great-grandmothers who kept a detailed diary, you may note how, after scrubbing laundry on a board and hanging it outdoors to dry in midwinter, making lye soap and ink out of fearful-sounding chemicals at home, canning dozens of quarts of sauerkraut, sifting the soil through her fingers to make a raised bed for cucumbers, "curing" mrst by rubbing salt and nitre into it, and all such tender and delicate pastimes that ladies used to enjoy, she did not write "Then sat down to rest" or "Then sat down to read a frivolous novel" or "Then went to bed and reflected on why we are born," but "Then sat down and knitted two rows on a sock." Knitting with wool was the treatment, and the treat, for work-worn hands.
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