In the eternal search for Christmas gifts, some friends and I joined forces to make batches of soap throughout November. We cheated somewhat, in that we didn't make our soap from scratch with lye or other chemicals. Instead, we used the remilling method, as described here. We bought blocks of plain soap base (handmade locally- if you're in NZ you can buy it here) and grated it up, added water and melted it in a double boiler. The fun part was choosing the additions - in most batches, we used essential oils (lavender, lemongrass, mandarin) but i made a batch with just vanilla beans scraped from their pods (that one is the least scented.) It was fun to do it with friends and drink a glass of wine or two and have a good chat. Although perhaps it's just as well we didn't make it with the dangerous chemicals- I can be clumsy with wine in hand.
My idea was to wrap the soaps in waxed paper with string, and add a handknitted washcloth to each parcel of soap. Just like the ones in the photo above. Aren't they beautiful? They were a gift from Suse in Australia. Thank you, Suse. Maybe next year I'll start my gift-making a little earlier so that I can include a bit of knitting too. But I say that every year...
