Felted Soap
Felted Soap, a photo by halogencat on Flickr.
Back in October, Ellen and I had the misguided idea that we could learn to spin (Oh la tee da, the foolish dreams of youth.), and we purchased a bunch of wool roving at SAFF. After a few rather awful spinning attempts, we gave up on the idea of making our own yarn and decided to use the remainder of the roving for felting soap.
Hooray for projects I can actually do! The learning curve on felting soap is much smaller than that of spinning. After only two false starts, I've got a bunch of soap that I'm happy with.
It is really easy. You basically just wrap soap in roving, wet the roving, and rub the bar until the roving turns to felt. Then, rinse it off and set the soap out to air dry.
It's so pretty and good for exfoliating!
Quick felting tips:
1. After wrapping the soap in roving, be sure to tuck the roving ends under. Loose ends do not felt down well.
2. Gently squeeze the bar to start the felting process. Rubbing too early will make the roving slide off.
3. Put the soap inside an old stocking. This will help hold the roving in place during the felting process.
4. Don't use the same old stocking too long. It'll start to wear out and the roving will stick to it after a while.