It’s a perfect time of year to go through and give your favourite knitwear some love, maybe a refresh before you are wearing it again in the winter. So with this blog post I will take you through how I like to use the Twig & Horn Liquid Lanolin Wool Soap.

The Twig & Horn Liquid Lanolin Wool Soap is a Lanolin rich soap that is perfect for invigorating and maintaining the long life of your knitted items. Scented with with essential oils which will leave your knitwear smelling beautiful, you can choose to rinse lightly or not at all making it a great choice for easily caring for your knits. Lanolin is the natural waxy substance secreted by sheep which helps with hygiene and waterproofing their wool. It also helps fortify your knitwear and give it back some of the wools natural properties.

You will need:

• Twig & Horn Liquid Lanolin Wool Soap.
• A basin, sink, bucket or bath (depending on the size of the project) filled with warm water.
• A towel (here I have used a flannel for this small swatch).
• Something flat to lay your project out to dry on. That could be a rug, a table top with a towel on, a bed or foam interlocking child’s play mats like I’ve used above.

Start by filling your container with warm water. You don’t want it to be too hot because that might damage or felt together natural fibres. I like to use water straight from the hot tap, it usually isn’t too hot that it will scold my hands and I can always add a bit of cold water to adjust the temperature. I would be wary about using water from a kettle as it would be far to hot for your knitting and you may risk scolding yourself.

Today I’m using the Lemongrass scent from Twig & Horn. It has a fresh, clean, slightly citrus summery smell. This is a concentrated soap so a little goes a long way and you only want to use one or two capfuls. Each bottle contains enough soap for thirty plus washes.

Start by giving your bottle a good shake. Twig & Horn do not use emulsifiers in their wool soap so this ensures an even distribution of essential oils. Empty one or two capfuls into your warm water. Mix it up so it’s distributed evenly around the water. Don’t worry if it feels like it is not enough you can always add some more later.

Gently lower your knitting in to your soap solution. Here I am using a little swatch as demonstration. The key here is not to agitate or move it around too much. The more vigorously you move it the more likely the fibres are to felt together.

Gently push it below the surface making sure that it’s fully submersed and let it sit for a while. If the water becomes clear you may want to add another capful as it might be a sign that your knitting may benefit from a bit more lanolin. You can leave it to soak for 15mins.

You can choose to rinse your knitting If you feel like you have added too much soap for example, but it is not usually necessary. Just remember if you are rinsing to rinse with the same temperature water as your knitting has been soaking in so as to avoid shocking and felting the fibres.

Now we are at the drying phase. Lift out your knitting being careful to support it so that it doesn’t pull out of shape. At this stage I lightly squeeze out as much of the excess water as I can being careful not to wring it or stretch it.

Lay your knitting out flat on your towel and roll it up like a Swiss roll keeping pressure on it as you do. This will help get as much water out of your knitting as you can. At this stage if you have a bigger project wrapped in a towel you can place your towel on the floor and using your foot to help squeeze out more water into the towel.

Finally unroll your towel and carefully lay your knitting on a flat surface. It should be slightly damp but most of the water should have been squeezed out. If it still feels really damp you can do the above process again with a dry towel. Depending on your project now is the time you can choose to pin out your knitting to the desired shape. If you are pinning your project then foam mats like these are handy or I have even just pinned it onto a carpet before and that has worked.

The Twig & Horn Liquid Lanolin Wool Soap is easy to use and makes washing your knitwear really simple. We also have a solid bar soap from Hey Mama wolf that you can ready about in this earlier blog post.