Sweater Soap

by Ashley Weeks Cart

Last December we fell in love with Biggs & Featherbelle after test-driving some of their amazing all-natural soaps and bath products. This year. they sent us three bars of their specialty holiday edition soaps, and, not surprisingly we adored the festive, seasonal scents coupled with the all-natural ingredients. The perfect stocking stuffer? We say YES! You can find the holiday soaps here.

To jazz up these delicious bars, I wanted to swaddle them in felt much like last year’s Coal Soap Tutorial. Unfortunately, due to the square shape of the bars, I could not master even felt-coverage of the soap. Discouraged, but still intent on giving the bars a snuggly cover, I turned to my knitting needles. Using 100% wool yarn, I knit these little sweater covers. A washcloth and yummy holiday soap all in one! Be sure to use 100% wool fibers as the wool will shrink and felt around the soap much like it does in the wet-felting process. Also, wool is naturally anti-bacterial, so these soaps won’t get funky hanging out in your bathroom.

Pattern:
* Cast on as many stitches as needed to accommodate the width of your soap (even number of stitches). I used 20 stitches, using two strands of yarn and US 9 needles.

* Knit 1 row

* Knit the length of the soap as follows: Knit 1, *Yarn In Front, Slip 1, Yarn in Back, Knit 1,* repeat until last stitch, Knit 1 (that means there will be two knit stitches at the end of each row). Repeat row until the project is long enough for your soap.

* Once the yarn is long enough to accommodate the soap, use two other needles and transfer the stitches over onto the two needles – opening the hole that has been created in the middle of the pattern, like so:

* Slide the soap inside and transfer the stitches back to one needle. Cast off the final row.

Now get to gifting and scrubbing.

I couldn’t resist keeping a bar for our household, so Sunny enjoyed giving it a test-drive during last night’s bath time. She selected the Bay Rum & Lime scent. She must know how much Mommy and Daddy love a dash of Gosling’s Black Seal Rum in our egg nog (or cider or ginger beer).