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This is a common FAQ that plagues soap -makers like me. Over the years at farmer’s market and soap-making classes I have been asked to explain myself many times.  People wonder why I would bother to make natural organic soap with caustic lye as an ingredient.    
For example:
Customer: “Hello!  I just bought your soap and now I see on the label there’s lye in the ingredient list and lye is bad so does that mean I can’t use it now?!” 
 Me: “Uhm…(wondering why we didn’t notice ingredient list on the webpage but also understanding that unless we are a chemistry nerd we probably don’t know about saponification). "Of course you can still use it!  I love to make caustic products that will simultaneously burn your skin off and coat you with coconut oil!” (Pounding head on table.)
Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic and perhaps a bit crass, but the question does pop up a lot. "Why are you making soap with lye?!" 
 If I was more like my sister who is not afraid to tell people where the bear came through the buckwheat I might spice up the conversation a bit.  Sadly, I am not her.  I do try to be patient because I love what I do and it would be a bummer to get sued for sarcasm. ( Seriously though, ya never know these days.)  ​

I think the best way to answer why I use lye in soapmaking is to go back to the basics, and explain what soap is.  
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But wait, you say, " I am 100% sure I saw soap at Walmart the other day and IT didn’t have lye in it.”  There are many types of soap that boast a label free of sodium hydroxide lye, but it is important to understand that these imposters are one of two things:

1. A derivative of the soap making process (i.e. glycerin melt-and-pour) and therefore a byproduct of the saponification of...lye and oil.  I distinctly remember a fellow crafter who was 3 times my age at a bazaar one year bragging about how her melt and pour soap was better “cuz mine isn’t made with lye.”

​  Just like that, I could feel the camaraderie for a fellow vendor building between us. Maybe it was the adverse reaction of being chilled to the bone on a rainy Washington November day with 0 sales to show for it, but my head wanted to explode.  DUDE.  You literally just took a bar of my soap and melted it, mixed in flowers and stuck it in a mold.  Tell me how that's better.

But me, being me, actually said: “WOOOW THAT IS SO COOL!  GOOD FOR YOU HON! 😉
My point is, you won’t see lye on the label of glycerin-based products, because the process of saponification has already been completed for you.  Melt-and-pour is a fantastic option if you prefer not to mess with lye or want to make soap with kids!  But understand that your finished product is much the same chemically as an old-fashioned cold process bar of soap.
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2. A Syndet bar (synthetic detergent) of pressed chemicals.
​  These are produced by combining a variety of surfactants and detergents.  Dove, for instance, boasts a super low pH, which might be good in some instances and for some people.  It is a good example of why chemicals can be natural and not necessarily toxic or harmful.  But truthfully, it is not really soap. ​

Now that we have that cleared up, lets talk about lye.  Lye was traditionally made by your great great great great grandmother by soaking hardwood ashes in water, and straining to use in tallow soap making.  Today, commercially produced lye is safer and purer, and simplifies soaping by producing consistent results.  Lye is commonly used in the food industry as well.  Commercially produced lye has a pH of 14, whilst homemade concoctions can vary.  Unless you have a faulty recipe or scale, your fully saponified soap should have a pH of around 7-10, which is not only safe, but far superior to any skin “surfacant bars” on the market. Lye is also on the USDA’s list of approved organic materials, just FYI.

​​It may surprise you, but making soap is nothing like baking a cake.  When lye is mixed with oils, a chemical transformation known as "saponification" is taking place. If your recipe is correct, every last bead or flake of lye will be “eaten up” by the oils, leaving no trace of it's former identity.  However, if  your recipe is incorrect, there could be a biiiggg problem, I.e. undissolved lye.  (Yes, this is totally the reason you regret buying that burning block of lavender hell from the lady who crochets coasters and makes soy candles out of baby food jars at the Santa bazaar.) If you don't want to risk a bad experience, buy soap from people who know what they're doing. Be sure to test the pH of your soap and know the signs of a lye-heavy batch if you are a maker yourself.

​Most recipes include what is called “superfat”, a buffer of extra oils that will remain as oil in the bar of soap.  This makes the bar extra conditioning and also works as a safety buffer.  For instance, most recipes have a 5% superfat, which means 5% of the oils in the batch are not converted to soap by the lye.

 I like to use high superfat for my Shampoo Bar, for a good balance of conditioning and cleansing.   I wanted to have at least one Vegan bar soap option for my customers as well, so I make this one with herbal tea instead of sheep milk.  Using a high fat liquid like milk or cream will also raise your superfat, since milk has fat in it. I remember how some of my very first soap making recipes were incredibly disappointing, because I was using sheep milk in recipes that called for water or goat milk and that already had a decent superfat percentage.  Sheep milk is incredibly high in fat and solids, (more so than goat or cow) so my soap was sticky and never took shape.  I probably cried, since I was like 12 and bought all the supplies with my lawnmowing money.   Soap can only handle so much superfat before it becomes a block of oily goop. Yum.

It can be helpful to lower the superfat if you are in the same boat as 12 year old me, using a recipe was too high as well as a high fat liquid.  It's great if you want your soap to harden quickly and to to be a powerful cleanser, like in the case of our coconut oil Laundry Soap Recipe. 

Take care when tweaking superfat percentages though, this really is an "advanced" course and isn't usually necessary with all the good recipes available out there.  It can screw up your entire batch and make soap too soft and slow to harden, or adversely, accelerate and explode into a soap volcano faster than you can say "crud muffins!" 

Hopefully this answered all of the questions you never knew you had about lye and why I use it, and also gave you a laugh or two.  We all need one these days! 

Have you ever wondered if felted soap is hygienic and safe to use?  If so, I have words for you.  Today we are going to talk a little bit about felted soap and why you absolutely need it in your life. ​

If you are like I was, you are probably thinking…wool-covered soap?  That sounds a little…no…VERY weird.  The fact is, there are a lot of people who have never tried and thus never discovered the sensory pleasure of washing one’s hands with a felted bar of luxurious soap.  Here are just a few reasons why felted soap has become our 1# seller in the last year.

1. Unlike the soggy bacteria-breeding luffa and sponge currently sitting on too many bathroom sinks and showers, wool is naturally antimicrobial.  This means that wool naturally prohibits the growth of bacteria, mold, mildew, mushrooms…you get it, microorganisms. Mushrooms are flippin fantastic.  (Just watch me disappear into the forest around Chanterelle season.) But a big fat NO THANK YOU growing on my bar of soap.
2. When good, natural, skin nourishing soap is incased in wool and agitated by your lovely hands, fluffy creamy lather emerges and makes you both the squeaky cleanest and the happiest hand washer on earth. 
3. Not all felted soap is created equal.  Obviously, I am biased since my business is basically built around the felties we produce here at Harmony Heritage Farm.  But the fact is, most…ahem…all…felted soap I see out there right now with a quick google search is one of two things, SQARE or made with commercial detergent bars like Dove or Irish spring (not REAL soap) No offence, other people but…yeah.  Bummer. 
4. Felted soap makes people happy.  Round soft squishy things, seriously. Have you ever noticed that stress balls are round?  Bean bags?  Mochi?  Smiley faces?  Pizza? Sheep?  Grandma and Grandpa?  All the happy lovable things are round and squishy.   It is a secret of sensory comfort that you probably did not even know about until you read this!  Cool.  Go check “learned something new” off your list of goals for the day, dude!

 
Here’s a bonus…did you know that humans have a natural love for round things?
 
Studies apparently show that we are inherently attracted to curvilinear shapes over things with edges, some even stating that people associate happiness with round shapes.  I totally didn’t know this when I started making my little felties for the kiddos in my life and farmer’s market.  But it was remarkably interesting to see how much more popular they became than anything I felted with corners.  Farmer's market taught me so much.
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So there you have it.  The data and science behind our feltie slogan “Soap To Make Them Smile.”  If you're a millennial like me it all makes perfect sense.  Beanbags and pizza, man! 

  Its kind of crazy how long it took for something so simple to become so popular (again!)  The concept of lye bar soap is ancient, with the earliest bar soap recipe dating back to the Babylonians in 2800 B.C.  Liquid Shampoo, on the other hand, was only recently invented in 1927 by German inventor Hans Schwarzkopf.  I am not sure when modern society decided that liquid was the way to go, but I find it fascinating that sometimes so-called progress or innovation can ultimately set us back.  Speaking from an environmental standpoint, liquid soap certainly set us back.  Liquid soap demands lots of plastic bottles and packaging.  And said packaging may take 70-400 YEARS to decompose in a landfill.  Seems like such a WASTE to me!!!  I like to envision that everything I throw away will be buried on my own beautiful farm here in Mossyrock.  Gross.  It is kinda funny the things I refuse to buy for that reason.  Liquid soap bottles and laundry detergent bottles are at the top of that list!
This mindful attitude is what brought me to shampoo bars.  Not the chemically engineered pressed detergent bars that we see on Facebook ads, but true, natural, saponified bar shampoo.  I set out to create a bar shampoo that would condition and cleanse without stripping natural oils or creating ph imbalance, that would leave my hair frizz-free and nourished.  It also had to fit my budget, which is why it is made with simple ingredients.  The fact is, expensive oils like jojoba and almond do not belong in a shampoo bar, where they will sit for only seconds and then wash down the drain.  Again, seems like a big waste!  These oils belong in products that will permeate skin and hair cells to soften and condition.  A moisturizer or leave-in conditioner perhaps.
Our family has been using this shampoo bar for years now, and I could not be happier with the results.  My hair is healthier than ever, and no conditioner is necessary.  An apple cider vinegar rinse is recommended, to keep your scalp ph in balance.  Bar soap is slightly Alkaline, and an ACV rinse, being acidic, is a refreshing way to prevent residue over time.  You may use as bold as 50/50 water and vinegar, or just a couple tablespoons to 8 oz water.  I like to keep mine in a squirt bottle (like a restaurant ketchup/mustard bottle) to squirt directly on the roots. 
Even the guys love this bar! Your hair is has never seen better, and your heart will be satisfied knowing that only natural ingredients are going on your body and down your drains. Shampoo soap is highly moisturizing, bubbly, and less cleansing than liquid detergent shampoo, and works well with both oily and dry hair types to cleanse without stripping hair of essential vitamins, nutrients, and moisture. Trust me, you will never go back to bottled shampoo!
If you like what you're hearing, check out our
  All Natural Vegan Waste-Free Herbs and Citrus Bar Shampoo 
   

It has been a bit of a challenge to keep up with dryer ball orders lately.  But I'm very thankful for the business!  And thankful for great help from Sven.  He's always there with a giant smile and a good attitude. :-)    

I've been making this soap recipe and scent for years, but this has to be my favorite design ever with the light layers and sparkly mica outlines. So stinking pretty and now my bathroom and house smell like fall.  Creamy, bubbly, spicy, sweet!  I only made 100 of these, so better grab them while you can!
​ Cranberry Fir and Citrus 

 Here on the farm, and in a home with a toddler and a husband who works with greasy things, we know all about stains.  Back when I was young and had time to worry about such things, I used a stain stick.  Eventually, I got lazy and busy and old and just let stains happen.  Nice shirts turned to work shirts really fast.   Which was ok, because in 2020, we don't go places where other people are, right?  Even before Corona...only the sheep see me most days. 

But then...I happened upon a pin (thanks, Pinterest) for a home made stain stick recipe, and decided to give it a go.  I wanted to use the materials I already had available for soap making, so decided to create my own recipe using soapcalc.com.  LOVE THAT SITE.  And they don't pay me to say so.  But they should, because you'll hear about it in every soap making class I teach and probably lots of blog posts.  Superfat and chemical properties that lay the groundwork for a "cleansing" bar (as opposed to a conditioning one) is a topic for another day, but soap calc explains this nicely for you if you can't wait for me to get my act together and write about it.  Plug this recipe into the site, and you'll se what I mean.  This bar is beyond cleansing, not something you want to be using on your hands  regularly like a bar soap.

Anyway...
I am going to give you this creation of mine...a magical recipe for economical and eco-friendly stain removal wonderfulness.  And if you decide you'd rather just buy it from me, good on you.  It'll save you some time.  And I have plenty to share ;-) 
But first, a few tips on usage:

Step one: Wet your stain with hot water
Step two: scrub stain with bar, let set until next wash cycle.
Step three: Wash as usual. 

Wow.  Super complicated.

You'll be happy to know, this stain stick is THE BOMB for removing makeup from cloth masks.  You can make a pre-soak solution by shaving off a bit of the bar and dissolving in hot water, but I like to use this directly on the makeup smudges and then hand wash. 

Just so you know, this recipe uses lye.  And no, this stain stick does not contain lye per say because of the chemical change it undergoes when combined with coconut oil.  Again, topic for another day.)  All this to say, this concoction will be very alkaline when first created, and will need to sit and cure for a bit to let the pH come down.   So, get going on this sooner than later my friend, and try not to spill anything on yourself for a few weeks. :-)

80 oz coconut oil
27.5 oz water
13.9 oz lye

Treat this recipe just as you would a bar soap recipe and prepare yourself with all of the necessary protective gear and proper supplies such as rubber gloves, eye protection, long sleeves, vinegar in a spray bottle (to neutralize any spills) a stainless steel pot for mixing, stick blender, silicone spatula, molds, etc. 

Very carefully add the lye to your water, stir, and let cool until between 120-130 degrees.  Warm up coconut oil to between 120-130 degrees, and combine with lye mixture,  Stick blend until soap comes to a trace, pour into molds, and watch carefully for gelling/overheating.  It's not bad for this to happen, as long as it doesn't become a soap volcano and overflow your molds.  Do not insulate molds for this reason!   Once hardened, cut into sticks (use gloves while doing this)  and let cure for 3-4 weeks.  If you have questions, feel free to contact me!

I have been so excited to share this, I can hardly stand it!  We've jumped on one of the latest bar-soap fads...yep...DISH SOAP.  Bar dish soap.  I know it sounds weird, but hear me out.  Bar soap is more environmentally friendly than liquid, both for the way it is made, what it is made with, and how it is packaged.  Bar soap boasts no harmful preservatives or expensive plastic bottle packaging.  Also, you have to figure that much of your bottled dish soap is actually water.  That means, you are wasting $$ paying for water to wash your dishes, and you will struggle to use a limited amount because it squeezes quickly and easily from a bottle.  Yep, that's clever marketing right there. 

Bar dish soap is sounding much better already, isn't it?!

But wait, there's more!  Ours isn't any 'ol bar dish soap...it's FELTED with naturally antimicrobial wool..  You are now free to toss the yucky bacteria-growing sponge sitting on your sink because THIS soap comes with a built-in washcloth that will never allow bacterial growth and can even continue to be used as a scrubby once the bar soap has been completely used up.  

This, folks, is FELTED BAR DISH SOAP with Orange Essential Oil and it's da bomb.
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But wait, there's...just kidding, I'll stop lol

 Now you have sparkly dishes, softer hands, saved money, promoted a family business, and saved the world all with less than an Andrew Jackson.