Soap With Pippa

I’m a nervous Nellie when it comes to lye, having read all the horror stories newbies can read. I’ve seen awful pictures of what lye can do. Even though veteran soap makers say that if you’re careful, there’s nothing to worry about, I WORRY. So I enlisted the help of my good friend, Pippa. She’s crazy about this addicting and self-satisfying hobby, and she does house calls.

You can’t really learn how to make soap using lye from this blog post… it’s much more involved than what I can highlight here. So before you get started I recommend doing some of your own research.

It was fun to be led step-by-step. She gave me some history as well as a chemistry lesson before we got started. The protective gloves were donned and we prepared the work area with the supplies, including the dedicated SOAP spoon labeled with a Sharpie.

We measured the oils carefully with a scale, and later the lye separately. We went outside to mix the lye into the water (ALWAYS mix the lye INTO the cold liquids, never the other way around). Wow, does that jar get HOT! Once it cooled a bit, I used a stick blender to mix the lye solution into the oils. Once we got trace, the point where the soap leaves a little trail “lump” when you drip it back into the soap mixture, and had cooled a bit, it was time to pour the soap into molds.

Then the molds were covered with cardboard, and wrapped in a towel. They were placed up high, where curious little humans would hopefully not trespass…they were duly warned not to touch the soap while curing. Now it was time to wait. And wait. And wait.

The biggest thing I learned is that soapmaking is like culturing foods – unforeseen things just happen! I did everything right with my mentor, but my soap was not un-moldable at end of Day 2. I let it sit another 5 days and still it wouldn’t unmold. Pippa did some research and found out when using these types of molds, you often need sodium lactate in your recipe. Live and learn! Two weeks later I barely got the whole “loaf” out, and it was still soft. Pippa said, “TRUST ME…they’ll harden!” so I cut them apart to finish curing. I flipped them over every few days to dry evenly. At 4 weeks the soap was pretty much hardened. At 5 weeks they felt about the same, and Pippa checked her handy dandy phone app (yes, soap phone app) to see if enough time had passed. Yep, time to use it!

I stored in a plastic bag all but one bar of soap. That one bar is now in my shower… not only does it cleanse (in the words from Finding Nemo, “BUBBLES!”), but it reminds me that I created this. Not only that, but I created memories with my friend in making the soap come to life.

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