Making Soap

We decided another good use of our own produce would be to use the lavender that we grew to make soap.
This was actually pretty easy. All we needed basically was drain cleaner and chip fat. The internet was really helpful. We used a site (in Dutch) to check the quantities of each. We combined 1000g vegetable oil, 400g olive oil and 80g coconut oil. With these quantities we needed 185g of sodium hydroxide (drain cleaner) and some water to create the mix. The drain cleaner when mixed with water creates heat. The fat needs to be heated and when the two are at the correct temperature they need to be combined. after much stirring the consitency of the mix changes from a thick liquid to a solidifying mix. This is the process of saponification. After that the combined ingredients need to be poured into a flexible container and left to cool. As it sets we found that it changed colour quite dramatically, starting off a but ending up an innoffensive creamy hue. We made the mistake of adding the scented oils and lavender before the reaction. Apparently the drain cleaner kills the essential oil effects rather dramatically so it's better to add these later on. After 36 hours we cut it into blocks with an improvised cheese type cutter. Then we wiated four weeks and it's now useable.