Pine soap bar for Mare

[Ron Evers]

Smitty, lye is as natural as pouring water into hardwood ashes.

[bluebird]

I wish my screen had "scratch and sniff" option..your soap looks very intriguing!

A dear friend (you know who you are!) gave me some homemade soap as a goodbye prezzie, and it is
wundervoll !

Diane, I know exactly what you mean about the creative burn out. I went through that with my cloth doll making craft but I am feeling the energy and interest finally returning after several years hiatus.

[Trailblaze1]

Smitty: soap cannot be made without lye. Lye is the key ingredient which turns oils into soap. Otherwise, you've just got oil, water(which don't mix) and a bunch of additives. I suppose you could cover yourself in oil and scrape it and the dirt off with an abrasive of some sort....as supposedly Cleopatra did in days of old.

The wood ash turned into lye is transformed during the soapmaking process so that there isn't any lye, nor any wood ash left in the finished product. A chemical change has taken place.

How soap works: its molecular configuration has one end which is hydrophobic (water-fearing) and the other end which loves water, so as a string of molecules, one end digs itself into the water, the other sticks out of the water, breaking the water's surface tension. Then when you swirl the garments in said soapy water, the oils (and dirt: dirt is mostly oily) float to the surface and can be rinsed and drained off.

Without soap, the oils and grime and dirt stay in the garment. (or in your hair, on the body....)

I know WAY too much about soap, and need to get a life!

[Smitty]

see...never fails I log onto the forums and learn something new everytime gotta luv that.
now I'm going to check out your link