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Monthly Archives: April 2009
Colored and Swirled Soap
Making cold process soap is a combination of art and science. Making swirled soap is particularly tricky. It’s quite a skill to get the colors to swirl in together and still keep them distinct. Every swirled bar is different – … Continue reading
Posted in Soapmaking
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Grandma’s Lye Soap (1952)
In 1952, soap made it into the hit song parade! Johnny Standly had a mega hit song called “It’s In The Book”. The first part of it is a parody of Little Bo Peep in the form of a Southern … Continue reading
Posted in Soap Bits
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Adult Film Star and Ivory Soap
I don’t follow the news much, so I missed the fact that Marilyn Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, one of the first “main-stream” porn films, died earlier this month. I only found out when it was briefly mentioned … Continue reading
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More Baby Ducks
Yesterday I got a call from the owner of our local Feed Store (capitalized because that’s actually the name of the store). Since it was 7:00pm on a Sunday evening, I knew something was up. Turns out that a woman … Continue reading
Posted in Ranch Life
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More EO blends from 1904
Here are some more EO blends from The Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite. The amounts given in the book are for scenting a soap batch using 50 kilos of oil; I’ve adjusted them down so the amounts … Continue reading
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Promote the Benefits of Soap and Water
As we all know, washing with soap and water is one of the very best ways to prevent the spread of disease, including colds, flu, and other illnesses. The CDC has long been promoting the benefits of washing with soap … Continue reading
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EO Blends for Soap from 1904
Back around the turn of the (last) century, synthetic fragrances were just making their debuts. Soapmaking manuals and books for the time still gave recipes for scent blending based on essential oils. My Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. … Continue reading
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Wool and Soap
I found a reference in The Art of Soap-Making by Alexander Watt (1918) which describes “fulling soaps”. Being unsure of what, exactly, “fulling” really was, I wasn’t sure if the soap described would be suitable for washing woolens as well. … Continue reading
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Manhattan Garbage & Soap
Imagine New York City and the island of Manhattan in the 1840′s. The city was rapidly expanding with an influx of immigrants from all over the world. Industry was expanding with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The northern part … Continue reading
Kitchen Grease Into Hand Soap
It seems that what goes around, comes around – even with soap. What was once a distasteful chore of country housewives or the task of garbage entrepreneurs has now become the new eco-friendly activity of chefs. According to a recent … Continue reading
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