January 20, 2009, 4:11 am
Soap savers are wonderful for destashing purposes. I'm still trying to perfect the pattern — or rather, the number of stitches needed, and whether I should knit or crochet them — but I think I'm getting closer!
This is a bag made by chaining 11 stitches, 10 sc, then — without turning — make 10 sc in the other side of those stitches. Join into a round. 10-12 rounds of sc, then sc-ch2-skip next 2 sc-sc in next sc, repeat around. Two rounds of sc on the top. Ch-40 for a drawstring.
It seems really small, but with as much as cotton stretches when it's wet, it seems to fit my handmade soap just fine. Crochet is scrubby and provides some nice structure, so I'm finding it much better than knitting right now. We'll see how these hold up; I'll report back in after a few days of usage.
This was also a destashing project — I was able to destash the last 39g of my kitchen cotton on this project. Considering that I've brought 2000g of yarn into the house this year, and haven't finished any projects (so I haven't been able to mark anything off the stash list), anything is good!
January 13, 2009, 12:34 am
The first project of the new year: a soap saver. It was a tiny project that I did during downtime in raid. :)
The pattern is the Rainbow Soap Sack from the 2009 Knitting-Project-A-Day (Or So) Calendar. I picked that up at a bookstore today; at 50% off it seemed like quite the bargain. So far there are two patterns I'm interested in trying; this was the first, and a pair of socks for Grant will be the second.
October 28, 2008, 2:29 pm
One of the soaps I've been using lately is a soap-made-of-many-tiny-inset-soaps, and as it got close to being used up, it sort of fell apart. Enter the crocheted soap saver, friend to frugal soap users everywhere!
So far I'm using the one on the left. It was a 20-minute off-the-cuff pattern, and it needs some refinement. It's honestly a bit too big! If I had it to do over again, I'd make it about 1/2 to 2/3rds that size (like the double-crochet version on the right), but I think the single crochet is the way to go. (We'll see how I like the double-crochet version.) Weirdly enough, I basically end up using the soap saver as if it were a bar of soap itself — it certainly lathers like one. But hopefully I won't end up losing soap shards down my drain with it!
I have quite a bit more cotton in my stash, so I'll probably keep making these. If I ever find The Perfect Soap Saver Pattern, I'll post it. :)
