Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Soap Making

A friend of mine recently decided to venture into making his own soap.  He is working on a degree in Herbal Medicine, and he thought that making soaps would be a nice detour down a side road of fun things to do.



He's made several batches, and I have been the very happy recipient of several bars of soap.  They smell so good, and they are so very easy on my skin.  I used a bar of his Lavender Soap this morning.  You can't see me, but I'm smiling because it smelled so good and was so much better than using a bar of a commercial brand of soap.

However, his very first batch of soap did not go so well.

The recipe that he was using called for 2 tsp. of oil, and 1/4 cup of cocoa butter.  he thought that had to be wrong, so he upped the oil to 1/4 cup, and the cocoa butter to a full cup.  The soap was beautiful!  It had Lavender, and it turned a beautiful purple color.  He used it in the shower the next morning to test it out.

You know how I said that he had increased the oil and the cocoa butter?  He had NOT increased any of the other ingredients.

He lathered up, and the soap smelled wonderful.

He rubbed it all over, and the soap smelled wonderful.

He went to wash it off, and the soap would not wash off.

It left an oily sheen, and no matter how much he tried to scrub, the sheen would not come off.

Disgusted, he hollered for his wife who came into the bathroom.  When she heard his tale of woe, she couldn't stop laughing.  He had long since run out of hot water and had turned the water off.  He begged her to run downstairs and see if she could find something to help him get cleaned off.  Once she finally caught her breath, she went to the kitchen and saw the bottle of Dawn sitting on the sink.

"Why not?"  she thought.  "It gets oil off of wildlife when they get stuck in an oil spill, it should help him get the oil off."

In the end, he used most of the bottle.  It wasn't terribly gentle with his skin, but the oil slick was finally gone.

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