The class was one offered at one of the lovely local stores that makes my neighbourhood a charming place to live, Nathalie-Roze. Entry to the back room was enough of a treat, because viewing the secret stashes of craftpersons is one of my guilty pleasures.
I've often looked longingly at the classes offered, and they're all appealing - but I'd spent some time chatting with Amanda at one of Nathalie-Roze's Crafternoon Teas, and her warm and sparkly personality was definitely incentive to sign up for this one. As well, the soap I bought then included a donation to benefit the South Riverdale Child-Parent Centre, a place dear to my heart.
The other enticement was the promise of a tea break...
And it did not disappoint. WARM cranberry scones, clotted cream, and some kind of delicious tea I need to remember to ask Nathalie-Roze about.
But, what was surprising, was how much knowledge came away with me about soap and soap making. The handouts were really well written, and I took notes! Everyone did!
Most of my notes were about how scary lye is, such as "The steam is caustic too!" and "lye corrodes!" and I also got to use soapmaking words, like "trace", as in "...because it's still a volatile chemical reaction - have your ingredients ready to go for when you reach trace".
But what has stuck in my head is not so much the importance of the soap's organic qualities - it was the fascinating business about remembering the importance of fair-trade practices as part of making these better choices. An example is that the purchase of organic beauty products is great - but if the shea nuts used in it, likely harvested by some impoverished woman with her child strapped on her back aren't from a decent source, you could be doing better. So, learning about how science and art combines to make something like soap, and it has a worldwide impact that reaches right to where six of us sat on Saturday - like whoah. Rarely is it explained so well - Amanda's got a way of imparting the "whys" so that they settle on you like one complete and satisfying slowly dawning realization rather than a series of bitch slaps that wake you up.
Amanda, to my great relief, also took care of the scary lye part in her studio at home, though there was still plenty to "Ooh!" over - like when we fondled coconut butter:
She also did the important steps leading to that mystery point that had been revealed to us: trace
And we got to do the fun part, like huffing essential oils and adding stuff to give our soap superstar qualities. Jen chose to do an "tea tree oil-ylang ylang combination with a light green tint and a bit of colloidal oatmeal". It seemed just like what she would choose - cool, elegant, tasteful and attractive.
Me? Mine? As usual, mine stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. I chose to do one with ground coffee and cinnamon, colloidal oatmeal, apricot oil, orange essential oil, and with just a soupçon of fennel. It was the brownest and grittiest of everyone's, by far. It's not going to be a pretty soap. But based on its ingredients, it should exfoliate, moisturize and envelop me in its warm, homey but stimulating scents.
I think I'll love it - though it'll take a few weeks to cure, it's a pleasurable sort of anticipation. In the meantime I'll enjoy one of the many hundreds of bars Amanda made originally to help her little boy's sensitive skin and eczema - it was nice to have a gift like that to take home too.
I really, really enjoyed the class. I'm writing about it not just because I think it was a wonderful three hours, totally worth my $45, and not just because I learned a lot and wanted to share my excitement in a "Hey! This was a Very Good thing to do for myself, my neighbourhood, the world, and shea nut harvesters everywhere will forevermore know my purchases shall be ethical and I am Happy that I did it!" - but I'm saying this about it:
Somehow it came out that I made soap like the me I want to be: weird, gritty and aspiring toward greatness.
*Here it is! It smells like some kind of wonderful cake, and looks like some kind of fudge mistake (please note that the author of this post aspires to the former, not the latter)
