Wednesday, July 22, 2009

My latest interests

I've decided to make homemade soap again. I have some lye, and I've borrowed a book from the library. I also have some recipes on a paper that use beef fat. The book uses mostly oils of various sorts - olive, jojoba, coconut, etc. I will be making a couple of small batches of soap to try it out.

There is the cold process, which involves stirring the stuff together, and letting it saponify, or the hot process. I can use one of my slow cookers for the hot process.

At the same time, I am looking to buy some citric acid. So far, the only place I can buy it is online, but I have not yet looked at A.C. Moore. I want to make bath bombs. These will be used by me initially, but I also want to make some for gifts.

While searching online, I found out about soap nuts. Soap nuts are a natural soap that actually grows on trees. You can use them as laundry soap, and for other things. I am interested in the laundry soap because it is more natural than the commercial kinds, and you don't need fabric softeners. I have been using vinegar in my rinse water instead of fabric softener sheets, anyway, because it's not full of undesirable chemicals.