Over on my Instagram pages recently, I created a photo gallery for an online sewing bee. It never fails to amaze me how talented and creative our makers are and of course, photos of wonderful creations came rolling in.

The one that stood out for me was Fran's homemade facial wipes. Fran had crocheted round cotton, washable wipes and packaged them in a small glass preserving jar.  Sometimes I think the thing that elevates a particular product is its packaging.  The preserving jar was a wise move because it presented the wipes in a recyclable container, you could clearly see the product and it looked sweet - something you'd love to have on your dressing table or in the bathroom.

I love making soap. It's another piece of the self-reliance puzzle and it makes sense to me to put time into this very old craft. Hanno and I both have dry, sensitive skin so we make sure we use soap that nourishes our skin. The soap I usually make has four ingredients, commercial soap contains many more than that. Shower gel is no better. The trouble with most commercial soaps is that they use man-made ingredients instead of natural ones and they remove most of the glycerin from the soap. Glycerin is the moisturising part of soap but it's removed in the commercial soap making process and then added back in much smaller amounts. Glycerin is more expensive than soap is so it's often sold as a separate product to make a greater profit. What's in your soap?  A list of soaps and their ingredients. This list is from the USA but it would be very similar in Australia and Europe.

I made some calendula salve to apply to some rashes we both have. Calendula is easy to grow in most gardens and gives you a beautiful sun coloured cream that will soothe and nourish damaged and inflamed skin. Calendula salve can be made in different ways, this is how I do it.

• A cup of fresh or dried calendula petals that haven't been sprayed with anything and have been organically grown.
• 1 cup olive oil
• ¼ cup melted beeswax
• Emu oil or vitamin E oil are optional.

• The next day add them to a jar that you can seal with a lid.
• Pour in a cup of olive oil.
• Put the jar out in the sunshine for about two weeks. This solarises the mix and gently extracts healing properties from the calendula as the oil gently heats up every day.

• When the oil has been sitting in the sun for two weeks, take the jar inside and strain the oil, removing the petals. You can use either cheesecloth or a fine wire strainer. 
• Press the petals with the back of a spoon to release all the oil. Stand the jar in a container of hot water to heat the oil slightly so it will mix well with the hot wax.

• In a double saucepan, melt the beeswax, allow it to cool down a little then add it to the oil. If you want to add vitamin E or emu oil, do it now. I add a small amount of emu oil because unlike most other oils, it helps the salve penetrate into the lower layers of skin.

• I like to emulsify my salve. It lightens the colour and completely mixes the oils with the wax. Use a stick blender to do this - just 5 seconds should do the job well.

• Pour into a sterilised jar and seal. I store this in the fridge. It will keep for at least a year.

Calendula salve is useful for rashes, nappy/diaper rash, inflamed skin, mild eczema, sunburn, burns, insect bites and probably many other things I haven't tried it on. I rub it into my hands when I've been using it elsewhere and my hands are lovely and soft at the moment. Making these simple salves helps provide good quality skin care that you can safely use on the family. You know exactly what's in them and they cost a tiny fraction of what you'd pay to buy something similar.

* If you don't have rain water, collect enough tap water the day before you make the soap and leave it on the bench to sit. That will allow the chlorine in the water to evaporate off.

If you don't operate in mls and grams, there is an online conversion calculator here.

First things first. It's Hanno's 70th birthday on Sunday! The whole family is coming, my sister arrives tomorrow, and all the kids will be here for a party we're having on Saturday. It promises to be a beautiful day, one we'll remember for a long time. Hanno does a lot for us as a family and we're all looking forward to being able to show and tell him how much he is loved and appreciated. I'm at my voluntary work today so from tomorrow it's full steam ahead with the preparations and cooking.

Another exciting thing happening here is that Penguin is interested in my book. I've been talking to a delightful woman named Jo and if she is anything to go by, I will enjoy my association with Penguin very much. But that also brings me to the not-so-good news. I need to take a break from my blog for a little while. I have to work on some material I need to send to Penguin, we have the party to prepare for, and enjoy, and with some other things happening behind the scenes that I can't tell you about yet, I'll have my hands too full to write here every day. I hope you'll read through my archives.


I haven't had a chance to work out the costing on the bar soap yet. I'll do it when I come back. The point with making soap, is not to follow my recipes, although I'm more than happy that you do that, but to see what oils are available to you locally at a good price. When you have your oils, run some amounts through a soap calculator to see how much lye and water you need. Then you'll have your recipe. For instance, if you want a mainly olive oil soap and you want to make about one litre/quart of it, you might put in your olive oil amount as 500mls/17 oz, then maybe 250mls/8.5 oz of coconut oil and 250mls/8.5 oz of macadamia oil or cocobutter. The choice is yours, dependent on what you can source easily and what is in your price range. Don't go overboard with expensive oils, lower grade oils make excellent soap. Make up small batches of new recipes to start with to make sure it's going to be something you like using. BTW, in reference to my precious post, lye is caustic soda which you can usually find at the supermarket or hardware store. And if you have no rain water, use distilled water, or, even cheaper, tap water that you allow to sit in an open container for 24 hours. That will allow the chlorine to evaporate off. I hope you enjoy your soap making. I want to hear many of your stories about making your first batch.


I won't be gone too long and when I can post a photo, or write, I'll be here with bells on. I still have so much to share with you, I feel ready to burst some mornings typing away, connecting with you. So bear with me, enjoy the archives, and I'll be back as soon as I can be.

Next Tuesday I'll be starting the first of two workshops on soap making at my local Neighbourhood Centre. The classes are booked out, twice. Last weekend, I decided to make a batch of soap so that those participants on the first day will have a bar of soap to take home with them. I also wanted to go through the procedure and focus on the important parts of the process. I decided to change my recipe. I have found that coconut oil has been harder to come by recently, and it's expensive, so I made this batch using 250 grams/one cup of Copha, which is the solidified coconut oil you can usually buy quite easily at the supermarket. To make up for the reduced amount coconut oil, I added more olive oil, so I got more of a castile-type soap that should be very good for the skin.

Another change was new moulds. I asked Hanno to keep his eyes open for some soap moulds, I rarely go to the shops now, and he came home with some excellent choices. I made four roses, 4 long bars, and 12 small rounds. I stamped all of the bars the following day before they became too hard to impress and I'm very happy with all of them. BTW, these moulds are silicon cake moulds.




Making soap and other general cleaners, will stop you buying all those expensive, harsh chemical cleaners you find in that long stinky aisle in the supermarket. Add that to the bread you bake at home which is cheaper than the expensive bakery-style breads, the yoghurts, ginger beer, jams, sauces, fresh cheese and all those meals cooked from scratch and you're beginning to see real savings at the supermarket whenever you shop. There is no doubt about it, putting the time in a home to make much of what you use will save you money, make you more self reliant, will reduce the number of harsh chemicals, preservatives and colourings you have to deal with, and will enrich your life in the learning and supporting of those old skills.

This is the new recipe I used. Please note, ALL the ingredients were weighed accurately:

• Lye 204 grams
• Rain water 540 mls
• Olive oil 750 mls
• Rice Bran Oil 500 mls
• Copha 250 mls Copha comes in a block that is melted when you heat the oils.

Here is a liquid conversion calculator to convert those metric amounts to fluid oz.

Here is my soap making tutorial. I used the same method to make my soap.

The various oils used in soap making are chosen for their specific qualities. For instance, olive oil and rice bran oil are used for the creamy soap they make as well as being very good on the skin. Coconut oil hardens the bars of soap as well as giving a good lather. I choose to make a simple soap. I don't like adding colours or fragrance, I like plain, plain, plain. I want soap that is good for my skin and cleans well, if it looks like the good French bars of soap, that's a bonus. However, it is certainly possible to add colour and fragrance to this soap, and you can find out how, here.

I'm looking forward to my soap making classes. They will bring more people closer to self reliance, they will help maintain and add to the knowledge base of traditional soap making and they will help build my community. I already know that some of those people who attend won't have met each other, but through these workshops, they may forge friendships that last a lifetime. Bringing like-minded souls together is a powerful thing. I hope you're making soap and your home supplies of bread, jams, sauces, laundry powder and all those other things that are easily done at home. If not, maybe this soap is a good way of starting.

ADDITION: Annie Jones in the US has sent in the information that is very helpful. Thanks Annie:
"Copha is not readily available here, but I have found a fairly inexpensive coconut oil at many Wal-Mart stores. It's LouAna brand, located in the cooking oil section, in a white plastic cannister with either a brown or a green lid.

It's not organic, but it only costs about $5 or $6 dollars for 31.5 ounces. It's about half the price of what I had been paying for coconut oil at the health food store. I use it for both soap making and for cooking."

I made a new batch of soap on the weekend.  It's the olive, rice bran, coconut oils mix I usually make but soap may be made with many different oil blends so be guided by a soap making book, if you have one, or any number of the excellent soap making sites on the web.  Once you find a blend that works well for you, stick with it; I am sure that soap will serve you well for many years.

One thing I always find when I write about soap is that while many people know how to make good soap, there are always a large number who want to, but hesitate, saying the danger or caustic soda is their stumbling block.  On Friday, Helen said that after googling caustic soda she found it is used as paint stripper so she doesn't want to use it.  Let me say this plainly: ALL soap, even the 'natural' soaps you might buy for five dollars a bar are made using lye or caustic soda.  You cannot make cold pressed soap without using lye or caustic soda.  Lye and caustic soda are the same thing and when they go through the process of saponification, they are neutralised and turn into soap.  I use Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to make bar soap and Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) to make liquid soap - both substances are caustic.  I will write more about the small danger associated with making soap tomorrow, but for now, let's concentrate on the process.  The recipe I used and the process are the same as that in my tutorial, which is here.

I have broken soap making down into a few different parts:

You need to prepare the area you'll work in.  Caustic soda can burn you, your bench tops or anything else it comes in contact with when it's wet.  The granules of caustic soda are fine until you add water, even a moist hand will start a burning reaction.  Please follow these steps:

After you reach trace, pour the mixture into a suitable mould.  It can be a plastic resin cake tin, such as the one I use, or small moulds for individual soaps, or a clean milk carton.  Don't use aluminium.  At this point, try to retain the heat in the soap by wrapping it up in towels.  It should be ready to unmould the following day and then you can cut the soap into the size bar you would like.

  

Soap making is a very useful skill that I encourage you all to develop.  Even though it has elements that might be dangerous, with care and concentration, you will be able to do it.  When you've made one batch, you'll understand the dangers and realise it's straight forward and easy, as long as you prepare well and follow the steps.  Tomorrow I'll be writing about how we have been removed from old homemaking skills and scared into believing we have to rely on commercial enterprises to 'save' us.  It's an important topic so I hope you'll come back to read it.

It will surprise few of you to know that I don't spend much money on moisturisers and skin care.  I don't see the need when I have more than I need in my kitchen cupboards.  My two mainstays are my home made soap and pure organic olive oil.

I use the soap for washing my hair, I don't need a conditioner because the soap conditions as it cleans. Commercial soap is robbed of its glycerine, which is the part of the soap that moistures and conditions skins and hair.  This glycerine is then sold separately for more that the soap and the leftover depleted soap is sold cheaply, after being hyped up with perfume and lathering chemicals.  Yuck.  My tutorial for soap making is here.  Despite what others may say you do not need a separate set of bowls, mixers and spoons to make soap.  A thorough washing after your soap making session will restore everything as clean as a whistle. I use my regular kitchen appliances and utensils and have never had a problem.  Soap making is a wonderful skill to have and it will supply you with excellent everyday soap and help you make beautiful gifts as well.

Below is a tiny glass bottle, formerly used for French vanilla extract, that now holds my cosmetic organic olive oil.  I use a few drops of that oil to remove eye makeup and a few more drops to moisturise my face.  It works perfectly.  I am happy that it's organic so I know there are no nasty chemicals hidden within.  Your skin is the largest organ you have, you must be careful what you put on it.

You do not need to spend a lot of money to keep your skin in good condition.  If organic olive oil can keep my wrinkled 62 year old skin in good condition, then it will do the same for much younger skin too. When you go into a store selling beauty products, have a look on the containers to see what they contain.  It's scary.  Simply your beauty routines as well as your life, you'll be healthier for that one little change.  If you need a skin boost half way through winter or summer, use your own homemade yoghurt as a face mask.  Just apply a layer of yoghurt to clean skin - washed thoroughly with your homemade soap, place two slices of cucumber from the garden over your eyes, and rest for 15 minutes.  You'll be surprised at the difference this makes.

And for those of you who are using those disgusting nail shops to have your nails done or for false nails, stop going.  Anything that smells so bad, any job that requires its operators to wear masks all day, just isn't right.  I first saw one of these stores at our local mall a few years ago and now they're in almost every shopping centre I go to.  Limited experience I know, but I wouldn't enter such a vile smelling place and I don't want you to either.  Develop a taste for simplicity in all things, including nails nicely manicured by yourself.  I'll get off my soap box now.  :- )

Have a lovely day and enjoy the weekend ahead.  I thank you all for your visits this week and for the wonderful comments you continue to leave.  They are beautiful, just like you.