Soapmaking After A Long Hiatus

I've been making soap since about 2002. I began making candles in 2001 and progressed to soap after a while. I used to make soap several times per month and participated in swaps with others who make candles and soap and body products on a monthly basis for years. But, since my surgery, I haven't made a whole lot of anything. Life has been much busier and I've been winding things down with my online soap supply business and taking the classes I needed in order to renew my teaching credentials...

A friend of mine contacted me recently and said that her psoriasis had been so awful lately that she stopped using the Touch of Mink products she'd been using and began using a bar of my soap that I'd sent her many moons ago but she'd never tried. After continuing to use my soap for a week or so, her skin was doing great and she decided to try it on her scalp as she has awful problems with the psoriasis there as well. Well, long story short (and sparing you the yucky details), her scalp is doing better too and she's gone from huge flaky hunks of dead skin to what seems more like normal dandruff. She's so happy with the outcome! But, it also meant that she needs more soap in order to continue to use it! SO, I've had to dust off (literally) my soap pot and utensils and dig up a recipe and get back to soaping!

Today, I've got a shampoo bar experiment going--already made and in the soap mold. Instead of a fragrance oil though, I used rosemary, spearmint, and lavender essential oils in that. Next, I'm going to make a batch that had been dubbed "ton o suds" in previous experiments so that she'll have a body bar as well. I have to decide what sort of fragrance I want in that one and get that soap pot going again!

Hubby called me while I was frantically searching for the stick blender I have for soap/body products and asked me what I was doing... "Making soap," I told him. He commented that I hadn't made soap in a LONG time and asked me what got me going again now... He was not surprised to hear that it was a request from a dear friend as he knew it would take some serious urging to get me started after such a long time away!