Rayon

I have decided that rayon is the weirdest material ever.  I have a sweater that I bought without looking at the tag that is 100% rayon.  Has to be hand washed.  I really dislike handwashing things.  And apparently rayon is becoming more and more popular.  As in, I went shopping this weekend and the majority of shirts I tried on were rayon.  Here's the weird thing though.  One shirt I tried on that I was trying to decide if I really liked turned out to be 100% rayon and hand wash only.  It went in the "don't want it" pile.  The other shirt I liked was 100% rayon and machine wash and machine dry.  How can that be?  I was a little skeptical, but decided to take the tag at face value.  So, I wore the shirt today and washed it.  As I was transferring it to the dryer, I was convinced that the shirt had been ruined.  Rayon is a very thin material, but as I transferred it, the shirt felt thicker than a regular t-shirt and was almost unrecognizable.  But after it came out of the dryer...back to thin material and not ruined at all.  Strange.