A Weekend of Spinning and Washing the Results.

October 27, 2008 by Terrye

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.

Have you read?

Learn a Flower Bobble Technique to Knit a Fun Shawl

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]