Lenox Knits: happy goat's soap

4/07/2010

Spring Celebration -- Happy Goat's Soap!

The next feature as part of my Spring Celebration G iv eaway is one I've been looking forward to. Happy Goat's Soap is another of my long time blog buddies. The publicist, as Patty is known on her blog, The Maaaaa of Pricilla, is one generous and talented crafter. She not only writes her blog about goats (written in the very friendly voice of Pricilla the goat) and soap making but she also has a talent for making jewelry. Her other Etsy shop, where she sells gorgeous gemstone jewelry, is called Broken Teepee Designs and she blogs under the same name here.

Patty and Pricilla are giving away 3 handmade soaps, your choice of scents including Patchouli, Monkey Farts, Grapefruit, Cherry Cordial, First Snow, Lavender, Sandlewood, Cucumber Melon, and whatever else is happens to be available in their shop at the time. The prize includes free shipping which as you know can be very costly with handmade soaps. You can also choose one of her fun shapes which includes Hearts,Urchins, & Aspirins, the perfect gift for that person always asking you if you have a Tylenol in your purse, oh wait that's me!

When Patty offered her soap up for the Spring Celebration my first thought for the feature was to include a tutorial from her blog on how her soap is made. I am such a great lover of handmade bath/beauty products and part of the reason is because it is so nice to know that everything you are putting on your face is natural.

So here is a very amusing and informative tutorial taken from The Maaaaa of Pricilla, adapted slightly by me for space. If you want to read the whole post and see all the pictures click here.

Of course it all starts with my rich milk which was discussed in this post on How to Milk a Goat. The publicist freezes the milk she is going to use for soap. When she is ready to make the soap she pulls a bag out of the freezer and puts it in her pitcher to thaw. Using frozen, slushy milk helps to keep the lye from burning the milk.

After the milk has thawed a little the publicist says she "goes all psycho on it." As a goat I am not sure what this means but she said the readers would understand. After the milk is broken up and melts a bit more and turns slushy she adds the lye. This makes the milk turn a really weird yellow/green color. Ick.

Then she measures out her super secret recipe of fats and oils and puts them in her big soap pot and melts them on the stove.

Then she adds the milk/lye blob and mixes it with her stick blender until it gets nice and smooth. This is called "trace" at which point it is time to strain it and add the fragrance oil or essential oil and pour it into the molds.

The molds will rest overnight. Then the publicist will pop the soaps out of the molds and let them cure for a month. This is called the cold process of making soap. The publicist makes small batches so she can maintain quality.