Wool care question

I buy lanolin at my local yarn store, but it's pretty easy to get online.
Treating your clothes with lanolin also helps them "shed" dirt, but socks get a different kind of dirt…

To lanolize wool, take a pea to marble-sized piece of lanolin and add to a 10-12 oz plastic bottle with a tiny splash of woolite or other wool cleaner to help emulsify the lanolin. Fill bottle with hot water (as hot as you can get it from the tap) and shake until the lanolin is completely emulsified. It will look milky white.

After washing your wools, place them in a sink full of tepid water and add the lanolin solution gradually, mixing continuously with your hand. Let soak for 15 minutes, then wring out excess water and hang dry overnight.

Most of my casual shirts these days are wool, and I lanolize them every couple washes. I like how they smell and feel afterward. I can't provide any objective data on whether it actually makes a functional difference, but I will relate the following story that occurred not long after I started treating my wools with lanolin:

I had just completed a backpacking trip in northern Michigan and was heading home. I stopped at a particularly greasy burger joint, The White House, a classic diner in mid-Michigan. They only have 6 tables, but it is well worth the wait. And the people watching is fantastic. Anyway, I was starving so I ordered a double bacon-cheeseburger with fries. It was really good; like grease running down your chin good. So good, that I failed to realize I had dribbled a big splash of grease down the front of my beloved ibex indie. This green hoodie has accompanied me on almost every backpacking trip I've taken in the last 3 years, so I was a little saddened by the discovery. You see, I've had these sorts of accidents before and it is amazingly hard to get the grease out. This time though, the shirt came out of the wash perfectly clean. It was a miracle.

Did the recent treatment with lanolin prevent the fabric from taking up the burger grease? It seems conceivable that treatment with a natural oil could help prevent staining, but I honestly have no idea. Still, like I said, I like how it feels, so I'm going to keep up with it.

What kind of lanolin should be used? All I can find locally Is some Western Star 4oz that is anhydrous.

Sort of off-topic but related to the lanolin discussion. I wonder if lanolin is involved in some of the odor control properties of wool, could treating synthetics with some lanolin improve their odor control? I did some googling of this earlier, and all I could find was a patent for lanolin treated polyester to make it aesthetically more like wool.

Brett,
I use Now brand, available at organic-type supermarkets (whole paycheck, foods for living). I don't imagine it matters though as long as you are getting 100% lanolin.

Hi Ben,

I think i remember reading somewhere that lanolin does have some innate antimicrobial properties which would help to reduce odor, but with wool it seems to be a lot more than just that.

Any absorbent, natural or semi-natural (tencel, etc) has better odor managing properties than any non treated synthetics. But i've found that wool and linen particularly excel (hemp and ramie are similar to linen in some ways and are pretty good too).