After spinning a whole lot this past weekend, I tried a new method of washing and setting the yarn. Before, I would have used a just a generic baby shampoo, but I had some Soak on hand so I decided to try that.
It was easier on my hands, but I worried that because of that, it wasn’t removing all of the dirt and grease from the fibers. And while, I did have to run it through 2 times ( I suspect my extremely hard well water), it did a nice job of preparing the skeins to be hung, weighted and dried. On their website, they recommend cool water. I’ve always used blistering hot, so that’s what I used; and just soaked the yarn until it was room temperature, I was surprised at how little bubbles it produced (again, the hard water, although they do tout this as a low suds formula), and what the water looked like when I removed the yarn. Yuck! (Another reason I ran it through twice). It is also formulated for machine use, but again, I’ve always washed my yarns, and wools, by hand, so I didn’t try the machine.
I used the unscented, as I’ve found some scents to be too overpowering. Again, I worried that the finished objects would still have that “wet wool” smell, but they didn’t. Have any odor at all. I liked that. I didn’t have to rinse, I liked that also.
Soak isn’t organic or all natural. I didn’t like that, but Soak is environmentally friendly. It is biodegradable and packaged in recyclable bottles which are printed with water-based inks.
Soak comes in 3 size options- Full (425mL), Bullet (130mL) and Mini (6mL).
I have a few other brands to try too, but I definitely will purchase more of this. You can find retail locations on their site, http://www.soakwash.com/Stores.asp. You can also order directly from them online.
