Adventures In Soapy Knitting
As my favorite sister-in-law’s birthday approaches, I had set aside a few things to send her that I thought she might enjoy. Amongst the pile of items to be mailed to her were a couple bars of my favorite soap “Shea’s All That,” made by a lady who runs an online business called Goodies Unlimited. While I’m on the subject of Goodies Unlimited, in addition to her soap, I can also recommend her “Everything Balm,” (which I use in place of antibiotic ointment on cuts, among other things) and her “Etomic Balm,” which is by far the best muscle balm I’ve ever used. And not only does it work better than things like Icy Hot and other such muscle rubs, it also smells much better. Smells delicious, actually.
Ahem. Back to the small pile of birthday presents. As I was looking at the two bars of soap I planned to send, I remembered that I was a knitter and I thought about using some cotton yarn to knit a little coat for each bar of soap. That way, you could get the whole thing wet, and then the knitted cotton fabric would work sort of like an exfoliating wash cloth, and would be all sudsy because of the soap encased inside. Genius, right? I’m certain I’m not the first person to think of this, but I didn’t have any pattern or plans to work from. So…I winged it.
First, I raided the stash for some Tahki cotton yarn in the colorway “Titanium” left over from another project and then I went to YouTube to review how to do Judy’s Magic Cast On. It really is a genius cast on…super easy to do and when you’ve finished, you knit from both edges of your cast on and it all looks like seamless knitting. Sort of like a Kitchener stitch in reverse…instead of ending your knitting with a seamless closure, you are starting your knitting the same way. I wasn’t sure how many stitches to cast on, so I sort of spread them out on the needle and held the bar of soap up next to it for an educated guess.
Then I just knit round and round and round, occasionally dropping the bar of soap into the little pouch I was making to see how much more I still needed to knit. I’d taken the outer label off the soap by this time, but left the inner tissue cover on to allow it to slide easily in and out. When I’d gotten the pouch long enough that my knitting needles almost met over the top of the soap, it was time to Kitchener the whole thing closed with the soap inside.
At this point, I have a little confession to make. I had done about three repetitions of the Kitchener sequence before I realized that I was closing the pouch with the tissue paper still on the soap! I still had enough space that I could squeeze the bar out, remove the tissue paper, and coax it back inside. I wish I could say I did not make this mistake again when I was working on the second pouch/bar of soap, but that would be a fib. I did the exact same thing again. I like to think I learn from my mistakes, but clearly, I don’t necessarily learn the first time. Ah well, it all came right in the end.
After the top was closed (Invisibly! Even I cannot now tell the top from the bottom…the cast on and the Kitchener closure look identical. Knitting magic!), I cut three pieces of yarn, each about a yard long, tied them together on one end, taped the end down to my work surface, and then braided the yarn. When it was long enough, I used a tapestry needle to pull it through the top edge of my little soap coat, and then I tied the ends together. And now I had soap on a rope!
I knit the second pouch the same way (tissue error and all), and then took the label bands that had been on the soap and closed them around the outside of my little soap coats. I should like my sister-in-law to know that I didn’t buy her some cheap Irish Spring bar of soap. No, this is very nice stuff that smells delicious. Oh by the way, if anyone decides to do this for some man in their life, I can absolutely recommend the Goodies Unlimited “Bay Rummy” soap. It has a lovely masculine scent.
