I wish I had a more attractive shot of my soap but a) the lurgy, b) a two year old and an 8 week old in the house and c) the murky day means that this is all I have if I am to have any chance of posting this before FB wakes from his nap.

The important point to take away is I MADE SOAP!

I have been wanting to do this for ages and ages. But frankly I was very nervous about it, because I’d read lots of things that said ‘omg it’s dangerous and scary’ which what they really mean is ‘lye should be taken seriously so you need to know what you’re doing before you do it, and then be careful.’

And so I was, and thus I finally made soap!

I have to give a huge amount of thanks to Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth for her posts on soap making, which really demistified the process and made me feel it was very much something I could do.

The recipe I used is from here, and is specifically ‘Camille’s Sure-Fire, No Way You Can Lose, Castile Soap Recipe‘ (Scroll down) which did what it said it would.

I got my ingredients from The Soap Kitchen, but I’ve since realised that I can get caustic soda from my local hardware shop, and obviously olive oil from the supermarket (so I’m going to keep an eye out for decent offers.)

Then it was just a case of getting FB out of the house for a couple of hours (he went to the allotment with his dad) and I was away. (This was back in september, before LR was born.)

It took about six weeks for the soap to be ready to use, but since then I’ve been using it as my shampoo and general soap, and it’s really really wonderful stuff. SO much better that shop bought and fraction of the price of handmade artisan soap. I few of these bars are going to be christmas presents for very special people but the rest I’m clutching to my chest, since it’s going to be a few more months before things are calm enough here to make some more.