Felted Sheep Soap on a Rope

The Sheep Soap on a Rope is my latest craft product. It's a bit more of a faff to make than the original version, but as before, it was inspired by a misfortune which befell my dear companion.

I didn't see Elinor coming into the kitchen. I didn't hear her tapping her hoof. I didn't sense her mounting irritation. Happily oblivious, I was standing at the sink, massaging merino wool round a bar of soap, staring out the window thinking of nothing in particular. I started when she jogged my elbow.
"Gone OCD have you, Beaut? Developed a personal hygiene fetish?"
It took me a minute to catch on.
"Felted soaps on ropes are in demand down the craft shop, Elinor. I ought to thank you for giving me the idea."
"Glad you like them." 
Elinor leaned against the taps watching me, til I felt obliged to converse.
"I enjoy felting them even more now I'm using organic Welsh soap - it's got beeswax and honey and herbs in it. Go on, have a sniff of this."
"Mmm, rosemary. No wonder you're acting like a tranquillised elephant." Elinor jabbed my hand with her hoof. "Wake up, Nelly. I'm sorry I ever mentioned felting soap now. This is so dull and unimaginative."
"Oh, do let me be." I elbowed her out of the way to plunge my felting into cold water. It was absolutely not my fault that Elinor fell in too and came up clinging to the rope on the soap. It was a selfless act of inspiration, she is my muse, my singing, dancing, tragically sodden Melpomene. 

If you too would like to make a slightly more imaginative felted soap on a rope and you can spin your own yarn, here are the things you will need. If you don't spin, you can substitute thick wool yarn in green and black for the green and black wool tops. It has to be real wool yarn, in order to felt into the white merino covering. 

If you are a spinner, spin about 10m of a single with Z twist, about the right thickness for two ply double knitting yarn. Navajo S ply the single with lots of extra twist, then Navajo Z ply the resulting yarn back to the balance, so that you end up with about one metre of densely braided yarn in both green and black.

Choose a nice lathery soap. Scrape the edges of the bar to round them off, using a knife or a potato peeler. Sharp corners are liable to be rubbed bare of wool during the felting process. 

Cut a groove into the edges of the bar of soap in the middle of all four sides and on the long sides, also at one quarter and three quarters of the way along.

Tie the black yarn around the long axis of the soap, knotting it within the groove at one end with a loop, which can be cut leaving three ends to plait into a tail.

Make a knot at the end of the remaining black yarn, wrap it round the short axis of the soap and tie inside a groove, leaving a short length loose at either end to form two legs with knots for hooves. Repeat to make the other pair of legs.

Make a double overhand knot to create a loop of the green yarn at the length you would like the rope to suspend the soap. Pull the loop knot firmly against the groove at the top centre while you tie the green yarn with a knot lying in the groove at the bottom of the soap. 

Divide the white merino tops into two long strips and draft them out slightly. Wrap the first piece round the soap longways and wrap the second piece with the fibres running at right angles to the first, making small gaps to pull through the legs, tail and loop.

Hold the wool tops in position while you stretch the toe of a pair of nylon tights around the soap. Wet it under the hot tap and press the wool down against the soap, then start to massage the wool flat. After a couple of minutes, peel off the tights. 

The white merino will only have made a loose jacket round the soap, but the legs and tail are liable to get felted into it. Now is the time to rinse off the lather, free them up and continue rubbing the soap between your hands, making sure the yarn doesn't get bound back into the white body.

Plunging the soap from under the hot tap into a bowl of cold water helps to tighten up the felt. It takes about ten minutes rubbing and plunging to create a solid wool covering, at which point, you can squeeze off most of the water into a towel.

I've discovered that if you needlefelt the decorations straight away, while the soap is still damp, it's much easier to poke wool fibres into the soft surface and the needle is much less likely to snap. A 38 gauge star needle works better than the finer triangular needles.

Leave your finished sheep soap on a rope on the radiator to dry.

Hang it up in the shower and you can lather yourself clean against the gently exfoliating felted surface then hang it back up to drip dry.

Stop when the fun stops.

Felting Wool and Silk and a Rope onto Soap

"It's been chaos in here for weeks, Beaut." My companion, Elinor Gotland, picked her way between heaps of boxes, only to trip over the flex of the hoover.
"I am checking over my stash, changing the moth papers and clearing out the attic." Determined not to be interrupted again, I thought fortune had smiled on us both when Elinor noseplanted unharmed into a pile of batts of wool. I never imagined that her fall would plunge me down yet another crafting rabbithole. 

Getting back up, Elinor opened her mouth to complain, changed her mind and repeated her spectacular bounce onto one of the batts.
"Ooo, this pink is squooshy. Must be merino wool, can't be one of your native sheep breeds all covered in mouldy beige plant dyes."
"No, that batt is not my own work, as you so tactfully point out. Don't know where I bought it, didn't even know I had it. Which is exactly the point of having a sort out."
"Don't ram it back in the bag, let's do something with it. Something romantic for Valentine's Day."
I took no more notice of her romping about making skittish pink merino suggestions, just carried on digging out forgotten bags of raw fleece which I really ought to wash and process. It's a terrible thing when such a prospect becomes disheartening. At least there was no sign of moths. A large bar of lavender soap had been perfuming the air with its own natural moth deterrent ever since the unspeakable moth affliction of last May. It still had a faint lavender scent, though its surface looked a bit dried out. 
"Dust it off and put it by the sink, Beaut, it'll be fine. Better still, why don't you felt some of this merino round it?" 

My stern resolve and my deep reservations about wet felting all dissolved in the froth of Elinor's enthusiasm for this video tutorial. The edges of our soap bar were rounded off with a vegetable peeler and the whole thing was swaddled in a section of the pink merino batt.

I put it into the toe of some nylon tights before wetting it, as the wool was inclined to unwrap itself. Once wetted and squeezed to flatten the fibres against the soap, the covering seemed to be holding together after just a few minutes brisk rubbing between my hands. Couldn't resist taking it out to see.

Amazing. My past experience of wet felting has been hours of struggle for dodgy results. Though the lady on the video says it takes half an hour, another ten minutes of soapy massage, interspersed with plunges from the hot tap into a bowl of cold water, felted the merino firmly and tightly onto the soap. Great fun, I wanted to make another one straight away. Unfortunately, our shower contained only a bottle of shower gel and our sinks have those pump dispensers for handwash.

"Well, Beaut, I was going to give you this nice little tin of lavender soap, planning for your future moth protection."
"Ooo, great tin, just right for keeping stitch markers in. Give us the soap."
I had it wrapped up in a section from another batt, tucked into the nylon tights and under the tap before Elinor could ask to have a go at felting. The fresh soap lathered up richly.

Although the wool fibres in this batt seemed like merino, they initially formed a looser jacket which wrinkled around the soap. It didn't take much more than ten minutes to felt tightly, yet by the time I was satisfied, the bar of soap had diminished considerably in size. Both felted soaps dried out after a couple of hours on the radiator.

The lady in the video tutorial warns you to take care when needlefelting wool designs onto the soap as the needles snap easily and she is not wrong. I probably should have sat up to the table and concentrated, rather than stabbing at soap on my lap while watching telly and chatting.
"These woolly bars feel so nice. Why ever did I stop using soap?"
"Convenience, Beaut. Bars of soap are much cheaper as well as more ecofriendly, but you and the rest of the Western world would rather buy endless plastic bottles of gel than scrub out a slimey soap dish."

Next day, I toured half a dozen supermarkets and pound shops and everywhere I found half a dozen shelves of bottles of gel to every one displaying soap bars. All the retail outlets carried much the same big brands, most 100g bars cost less than 50p each. I found one organic soap made in the UK for £3.30 and the fancy shop in town with all the scented candles had Mother Earth chamomile soap at £2.95.  Even the man himself got involved and very sweetly bought me three 200g bars of luxury jasmine soap in Sainsburys. That evening, I spun singles from the two merino batts and also some lovely merino/silk roving, then I Navajo three plied them into chunky yarn.

"You can't knit anything worth having out of those little lengths of wool."
"I've had a fresh idea, Elinor, all sparkling and hygienic. Abolish the slimey dish issue by hanging up the soap on a rope."
"It's been done before, you know, Beaut. Hate to piss on your firework, but the soap always slides off the rope long before it gets used up. Anyway, your drill bits aren't nearly long enough to go through a bar of soap from end to end." 
"No drilling needed, my sceptical friend. I'll show you what I mean tomorrow."

"Not really rope, though, is it? I'll admit the wool yarn you've tied round the soap ought to felt into the covering, but it's too skinny to be strong as rope."
"Ok, I shall just add a bit more twist by running the yarn back through the spinning wheel onto a bobbin, then navajo three ply it again."
I loved the look of my heavy, twice plied yarn, but Elinor wasn't convinced.
"Thick yarn will stick up and make big ridges under the felt cover."
"Oh, fuss, fuss, fuss. If I make a loop in the middle and tie a knot, I can unply the two loose ends of yarn back into four thin parts and tie the soap up in those. I'm going to felt the special organic soap in merino and silk roving."
"Silk won't felt. This will all go horribly wrong, Beaut."

It didn't go wrong, it went brilliantly right - the silk incorporated itself into the felted merino in textured lumps and ridges. Here are my organic British soap and the Mother Earth chamomile soap. I've been using a merino/silk felted Pears soap in the shower this week and the surface is lovely - gently exfoliating. I chose Pears because it is a hard soap and I thought I'd lose less of it during the felting. However, it does take a bit of rubbing to work up much of a lather when you actually want to wash. I think in future, I will choose softer, nicer  soaps and take them out of the packet to dry their surface off for a day or so before felting.

Though I'd rather have a gentler and softer soap in the shower, it is still quite handy to be able to hang the bar of Pears off the tap by the sink. No slimey soap dish there, either.

Spread the love in time for Valentine's day. I mind our local co-operative shop, Crafts by the Sea, on Fridays between 10.30am and 2pm. If you would like to make your own felted soap on a rope, leave a message here to let us know when you are coming and you can drop in and join me for an hour's informal workshop any Friday,  Cost £5, bring your own soap or better still, buy one of Julie's lovely organic honey soaps from the village shop.

Upcycling Felted Jumpers to Make a Sleeveless Jacket

"Mmm, Jaeger.  Since when did you ever invest in any quality wardrobe pieces?"
My companion, Elinor Gotland, was helping me sort through my felt collection.
"Oh, I got that purple top in a sale, years ago.  I used to wear it and then just hang it up to air.  Pure wool, dry clean only.  When I finally tried running it through the wool wash cycle, it felted."

"You Slack Alice.  What happened to the green M&S jumper? An accidental boil?"
"Himself got oil stains on it, so I felted that on purpose.  Before you ask, the yellow is proper felted wool, left over from an offcut I bought to make a banner."
"Fair play.  And with what will you require my assistance today, madam - making more bunting, is it?"
"Jerkin."
"How rude.  You're on your own with that, Beaut."
"No, making a jerkin, a sleeveless jacket a bit longer than a waistcoat."
"Oh, a gilet. Nice idea, shame the dog is more use with a sewing machine than you."
                

"Actually, I have a cunning plan, pinched from my Mum.  She used her weaving to make a lovely gilet, hardly any sewing involved, just using woven fabric 25cm wide.  Like the selvedges of her weaving, this felt won't fray, all I need to do is cut it into strips 25cm wide."
The longest single strip I could get out of the green jumper was 56cm, so that was the length of the back decided.  Leaving the

lowest 24cm open as a vent, the 56cm green strip and a 56cm yellow strip were sewn together along the midline using saddle stitch.  The purple piece was far longer.  Finding the midpoint by folding it in half and laying it centrally, overlapping the top of the green and yellow back by 1cm, one more seam joined all three pieces together.  The purple strip forms a wide collar, then

comes down each side to make the front panels of the jacket.  If you had a long enough top strip, all you would need to do is pin it to the outside edges of the back, try it on to work out how much armhole space should be left open at the top, then sew up the sides.  Since I was going to have to sew on spare strips of yellow and green felt to make the front long enough, I thought I might as well make a virtue of it

and fold the extra pieces up into pockets.  Unfortunately, the weight of the doubled pockets strained the purple felt and made the front hang badly, so I needed to cut a band of reinforcement felt to sew all around the front edge.  More sewing than planned, still, no regrets, I finished it in the car on the way to Spinning Camp, where it was much admired.

The good sized pockets easily held my phone, 
fags, 
scissors, wool, spare tent peg and so forth and the felt was warm, ideal for early autumn.

My companion was too busy to come camping this time.  Probably auditioning for The Great British Celebrity Sewing Bee.  Next Spinning Camp will be 9 - 18 June 2017.  Come and join us, details on Ravelry, Happy Campers UK forum.

Spinning and Felting Coreless Corespun Single Yarn

"Look, Elinor, I would never have blended the lime green with blue green in this batt, but don't you love the yarn it spins up to be?"
"I could fancy some of this to complement my new Spring season wardrobe.  Not your usual dull and overcast plant dye colours at all, Beaut.  Easy to tell you didn't put these lovely fibres together, never mind your lack of flair and colour expertise."
"The whole batt is one of Wrigglefingers' amazing creations.  She's off to the Maryland Show in America soon, to demonstrate using Classic Carders.  I did spin it though."
"Yes, I can tell, there's too much twist.  Fair play though, it is chic - compared to your other lumpy 'art yarn' efforts. "

"Wriggly's a good teacher, as well as a very kind woman.  I was watching her spinning coreless corespun late on our last night at camp and she just gave me the batt and showed me how.  Good job I didn't realise that was what it was, because the name sounds terribly technical."
"How ever did you manage?"
"Wriggly got me started and it seemed quite easy."
Set the spinning wheel on the  

lowest ratio, 5 to 1, pedal slowly and pull up some fibres from the flat of the batt.  Make a big, wide drafting triangle, let the twist run down its left side while holding the fibres on the right out to the side, so they can wrap round as you go.  No need to fret if you spin an ordinary plain twist intermittently, doesn't matter if the single gets thin, Wriggly said keep throwing the batt into the orifice with the tension high enough to keep the single drawing in.  Once the bobbin is full, skein the single off onto a niddy noddy, tie with cotton in four places and felt the lot by plunging from hot to cold water.  Standing there by the sink in the Youth Hostel, I was amazed how all the mad unbalanced twist relaxed while the single soaked in hot

water, then I could really feel the wool firm up immediately it hit the cold.  Wriggly's generosity did not end there.  She gave me a huge bag of leftover fibres from her carding demonstrations.  As luck would have it, soon after, I was visiting a friend whose home is an absolute spinners' paradise and joined the queue taking liberties with her marvellous electric drum carder.

No pretense at any considered colour blending choices, with help from yet another friend fluffing up the bits, I carded the whole bagful into two huge mad batts and spun it straight up in the same way.  With less skilled preparation and unsupervised spinning, it has come out not so much coreless corespun as careless mayhem.  Look away if you prefer a sensitive colour palette and a beautifully even, well balanced yarn.  This was fast and furious fun.