Each year on the opening days of my markets the question I get asked most is "what's new?”
The development of a new soap begins with the scent. Recently I've been like a mad chemist, mixing drop after drop of different essential oils into tiny jars in hopes of finding just the right scent blends for my new soaps. Sometimes the first blend test is perfect but more often it's not quite right and I'll add a little more of this or a little less of that. I'll come back and sniff it the next day and keep adjusting until i'm satisfied. Once I've settled on a scent that I love the next step is to choose the colors and additives I want to use to enhance the soap.
Then comes the only part of soap making I don't enjoy… math. Lots and lots of math. Math to compute parts and ratios of oils and butters. Math to check percentages of essential oils. Math to change pounds to ounces and ounces to grams. Math and more math. So much math it makes my head spin.
After all the math is checked and double checked, the scent blends prepared, the oils melted, the lye solution weighed, the additives measured, the molds prepared, then I get to make the soap. Pour, stir, mix, and when everything is just the right consistency into the mold it goes. Tuck it away for a day while the chemical reaction called saponification happens. Wait 24 hours, feeling like a child waiting for Christmas morning. The next day, Finally un-mold and cut the new soap.
If the planets are aligned in just the right way and I face the East, I'll have a bar that looks exactly as I envisioned. Or I'll have a soap that's different than I imagined it would be but kind of cool in it's own right. Either way, with a tried and true recipe that I've perfected for years I know that I'll have an earth-friendly soap with rich luxurious lather that'll I'll be proud to call label with my name.
