Last autumn I tried out some Soak Wash, leave-in detergent for lingerie, delicates and wools. Although I was using it at the time for feltmaking, I also tested it for its laundering abilities.
Recently I have been on a roll, making felt beads for necklaces and earrings. I’m really getting through the liquid soap! I’d mentioned the feltmaking on Twitter and in the course of things, Alison from p2tog and I got into a tweeted conversation about felting. She carries Soak Wash in her shop, which is a liquid soap wash made especially for textile makers: for wool, felting and washing delicate fabrics. Alison was kind enough to send me four samples of Soak to try out in felting, as she hadn’t tried them for that purpose herself.
Turns out that it was really good. Here’s what happened:
Each of the samples contained 6ml of soak which is enough for one wash of a some undies or soak of skein of yarn. I added one sample to about 700ml of hot water, found that it wasn’t quite soapy enough to felt my fibre, so added another sample into the mix to get it up to strength.
Alison sent four different frangrances of Soak, and my favourite was Floral (which also smelled lovely when mixed with Aquae). One of the best things that I found about using Soak is that it does not have to be rinsed out which made it brilliant for felting.
In the spirit of the review, I also tried the Soak Wash for soaking some newly spun yarn and a pocket hankie. Both the yarn and the hankie smelled really lovely afterwards, but apart from that I couldn’t really tell whether they were softer or not.
In any event, I would give Soak Wash five stars for felting and three and a half for soaking yarn and will definitely be using it again.
If I’ve given you ideas and you’d like to purchase some too, p2tog have lots to choose from here and if you’d like to see what I made the felt beads into, take a look here.