In the fall of ’05 I went on a fiber expedition with Grace and some friends from the Island Pond Spinners. One of the ladies talked about making soap and gave us each a bar at the end of the day. It was definitely some of the nicest soap I’ve ever used. Grace and I talked about getting together with Nancy for a soap making lesson but it never did pan out. Last year at one of the fiber festivals, I picked up some mint-scented soap and over the winter noticed how very helpful it was for winter itch and I again resolved to give soap making a go.

When Grace moved away to the West coast last fall she left me with some books and tools for soapmaking (thanks Grace!).  Bonnie and I arranged to get together and make soap at her farm. This week we managed a bit of experimentation. Based on notes from her previous trials we formulated a new recipe to try and concocted our first batch. We used beeswax from her own hives, olive oil and coconut oil. Sodium hydroxide (commonly known as lye) proved a challenge to find in the dry form needed for soap making but we did locate the right stuff at the hardware store.

Our first batch set up very quickly and seemed a bit lumpier than might be desirable. Armed with books and websites we learned quite a bit and I reformulated a second recipe to try today based upon what we’d learned. It seemed to go quite well and appears to be much smoother than the first go. It’s really not fair that you must wait weeks for it to cure before you can try it out. These two soaps are plain unscented as the initial soapmaking would destroy essential oils. In a day or two I’ll try "rebatching" a portion of the soap in a re-melting process where I can attempt to blend in small amounts of additive to enhance aroma and skin-softening qualities.