lesson learned, or, if you keep this up you'll get your eye washed out with soap

well last night I splashed raw soap into my right eye, necessitating a trip to emergency last night and a follow-up appointment this morning. To my relief, there doesn't appear to be permanent damage and it is healing.

For those unfamiliar with soapmaking, it is a simple but artistic process of adding NaOH (lye, or, caustic soda, aka sodium hydroxide) to water (or whatever liquid one chooses), then adding that to oil, stirring like a madwoman, then pouring the liquid into moulds of some type. The countless variations vary from peculiar (breast milk soap can be made, for example, although I can't begin to imagine the market for that. Or the marketing) to the most complicated and gorgeous concoctions marrying delicious scents with rainbow colours.

For me, though, soapmaking is primarily to keep unnecessary ingredients/potions off my skin--which has proven to be my best skin-care tip ever--and when I control every aspect of my soap's production I avoid a lot of troubled skin. Bonus! So if I pass on soap to you--don't expect bright colours (those are dyes, and can be a lot of fun for creative purposes but my skin doesn't like them). And when you lift a block, bar, or cake to your nose (very first reaction of EVERYBODY when looking at soap) it will be unusual if you smell strong, flowery or perfumey scents, because I use essential oils and not artificial fragrances. And for essential oils to survive the reaction that creates mild, pure soap, you'd have to use an enormous quantity, with a few exceptions (peppermint, patchouli, lemongrass etc.) And essential oils are very expensive to use, for very faint final results. Nonetheless, I like them.

I also love the nostalgia factor of soapmaking. That's probably why I prefer big rustic blocks in the style of Savon de Marseille, with its "72% Olive" stamp on it. I also love how they warp as they cure.