Making Lye Soap
By Nikki Peleezo / Dirt Roads
Ever since Charlie and I went to the Arts and Crafts festival at Beaver’s Bend State Park in Oklahoma, he has been after me to learn to make lye soap. Trust me when I say I’m not a lye soap making person. All I know about soap is that if it floats it’s Ivory if it sinks it’s Dial.
So, when my friend Pat told me about Blue Moon Gardens in Chandler/Edom, Texas offering soap making classes, I jumped at the chance to make goat’s milk lye soap. I knew I was in for some serious instructions when I walked into the classroom and found you had to wear plastic gloves up to our armpits, goggles and close-toed shoes, my world as I knew it would never be the same.
Last Saturday along with my friend Pat and a class full of soap makers we measured, dipped, weighed, melted, steamed, stirred, mixed, married, combined, brewed and blended. There were words being thrown out like ballast, tare, trace, baleen, caldrons, separators, extruders and something about “those deep lye burns.” It took me a good thirty minutes into the class before I figured out what “Hot, you aint’ seen HOT yet” meant.
Do you remember when the movie Titanic came to an end and you walked out of the theater unscathed? You’ll feel the same way when the goat’s milk lye soap making class comes to an end. No burns, no lung damage, no hideous disfigurements.
Check out the other classes Blue Moon Gardens have by going to their website: http://bluemoongardens.
I’m glad I took the class. Will I be making my very own batch of goat’s milk lye soap? Let’s put it this way, have you ever seen a pig fly? When you do is when I’ll cook up a batch.