There is a little gift that is always nice to give and receive. It is one of these useful givings that is made right here in your community. It supports your soap maker, it supports your shepherd, it supports the flocks of fiber sheep, and the flocks of milking goats or sheep in your area.
Presenting felted bars of soap!
The first part of the adventure is to select the perfect bar of soap. It can be round, oval, rectangular or square. Ideally it is sourced right here in my community. Right now the soaps I use are made on some of my friends’ homestead, out of their goat’s milk. They are perfumed with lavender, rosemary or mint. It is a family recipe they have been making for years.
The next step is in selecting the roving I will use to cover the bar of soap. I use roving from our Gotland sheep. It ranges in color from light grey to pewter grey, sometimes it is even black.
And then I start wrapping the soap with the wool whilst dipping it in some warm water. When the soap is fully covered with wool, I can needle felt little designs on the bar of soap. Like everything I do, I like it simple, and often a simple heart, a leaf, or a shape will do the trick!
Of course these bars of soap are great to wash with, the wool gives them an exfoliating function, they are beautiful (sometimes they even look like smooth rocks) and fun to make. Here is the extra totally awesome perk: “Saving the world one bar of soap at a time”. If we replaced all the plastic bottles of soap we use daily to wash hands by a simple bar of soap, think about all the plastic we’d be keeping out of the trash!