A shocking blocking

My dog decided to be an asshole and piss all over my laundry bag. This, naturally, led to me scooping up all the clothes in the vicinity and throwing them indiscriminately into the washer.

Imagine my surprise when, idiot me, took the clothes out of the washer, only to discover my Argyle Lace Hat lurking in between the clothes.

This hat, as you recall, was made of fingering-weight merino wool purchased at the state fair in 2009. It's a single-ply, handspun, so not unlike a lot of the felting gods of the knitting world, like Lamb's Pride or Paton's SWS.

In any case, here's what happened.Um...pretty much nothing. It's slightly less poufy, but barely felted at all. The thing is, it feels AMAZING. I never really thought this was of the highest quality merino, it was kind of just...regular wool feeling before. Now it seriously feels like Malabrigo lace merino, among the softest yarn anyone has ever felt. Awesome.
It's like the knitting goddess was like "Hey, I know that was totally an accident caused by an asshole basset, and not knitting disrespect so uh, don't worry. I got your back on this one."
As you can see from the original picture on my project page, I think the lace pattern is even more visible and better looking now. Nice. What have you been up to?