craftgrrl | Felting/Fulling Stickiness (Reply)

I've been wanting to try shrinking down old knits and turning them into something else for ages. Yesterday my local thrift store had a 50% sale and I bought a HUGE pink mohair sweater (very 80's, I tried it on for fun and it came down to a few inches above my kness). The label actually said it was 70% mohair, 30% wool.

So, I dumped it in a basin of really hot water and tried it by hand but it was very slow so I put it in the washing machine on hot. It did shrink down but it stuck together! ie. the front of the sweater stuck to the back and the sleeves stuck to themselves. Luckily I noticed before it was too far done and was able to pull it apart (actually I got my boyfriend to do it as it was really hard to pull). This happened while it was in the hot water, I didn't spin it or tumble dry it.

So, how can I prevent this in future? I'd like to put this same sweater through again as the stitches are still pretty visible but I'm worried it's going to stick together into one big blob of felty wool. Any ideas?