We love learning new crafts and skills. In addition to learning to spin yarn at home, I have been working on perfecting old fashioned soap making! I have so much fun trying to simplify our lives and do more things on our own rather than just buying goods at the store. I have this beautiful vision in my mind of a family farm where we grow our own food and make a lot of our own goods at home. It is so satisfying being able to make the things you need to take care of yourself. I feel so much more connected to the earth, God, and mother nature.
We have just started our journey in soap making, but we are loving it so far. Already we have learned so much about what works and what doesn't. A few months ago we made a batch with lavender and vanilla essential oils. It also had whole oatmeal and lavender pieces mixed in to act as an exfoliator. That soap smells SO good! The recipe was "superfatted" which just means that it has more oils than the sodium hydroxide (lye). It is supposed to be extra moisturizing (and it is), but it also gets really soft in the shower and doesn't lather very well. We made another batch a few weeks later and that time we made the recipe much more balanced. It lathers beautifully and holds together well in the shower. It was perfect except the smell was a little underwhelming.
That is all to say that last week we made a new batch and we used the best soap recipe with more essential oils and we think we have created the perfect bar of soap! We won't know for sure for at least a month. This stuff is amazing, but it also takes FOREVER to cure. The curing process is called saponification, and basically it is just the long chemical process of combining the oils and sodium hydroxide in order to make the final product: soap. We are so excited to be able to share our soap with you soon! Once we know it is perfect and ready to share with our friends we will add it to our growing list of products in the shop!