I always thought I should have been born in the Pioneer Days, when I was a little girl, my favorite books were the Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder... later on I read them to my children and then to my grandson.
One Memorial Day weekend camping trip to Stone Mountain, Georgia, a couple, in historical costumes were selling their own, homemade soap. They talked a little about the process and had a big pot of uncured soap being stirred as they spoke. The finished soaps were displayed, cut in rough rectangles, and lined up in wooden trays... and they smelled so good. I bought two bars, one delicious smelling peppermint/rosemary shampoo bar and a cinnamon shaving soap.
A few months later in our local electric co-op monthly magazine, there was an article on lye soap and a selection of recipes. Curious to see if I could actually make soap from lye and lard and water, I purchased some Red Devil Lye and made my first soap... it worked! I made a second batch that didn't work but the first one was soap!
The local public library didn't have many soapmaking books, but I checked every one of them out and read them cover to cover, using the knowledge to experiment with my own cold-process soapmaking skills. Research on the internet followed and in no time I had printed out hundreds of pages of soap recipes, oil saponification charts, and essential oil benefit lists and continued to study and research and experiment.
I was hooked!
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