Marilyn Chambers with her Ivory Snow box
I don’t follow the news much, so I missed the fact that Marilyn Chambers, star of Behind the Green Door, one of the first “main-stream” porn films, died earlier this month. I only found out when it was briefly mentioned in People magazine.
What I found interesting was the note that before Marilyn made her move into sexually explicit films, she was on the Ivory Soap Box.
In 1952, soap made it into the hit song parade! Johnny Standly had a mega hit song called “It’s In The Book”. The first part of it is a parody of Little Bo Peep in the form of a Southern Revival sermon, the second part is a song, called “Grandma’s Lye Soap”
I’ve edited out the first part (since this is, after all, a blog about soap trivia).
Listen to Grandma’s Lye Soap (mp3 file - most computers should be able to play it).
Enjoy!
Here are some more EO blends from The Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite.
The amounts given in the book are for scenting a soap batch using 50 kilos of oil; I’ve adjusted them down so the amounts shown below are for a soap batch containing 5 kilos (11 pounds) of oil. The names of the soaps are as given in the book.
11 gr. ginger-grass oil
21 gr citronella oil
7 gr lemongrass oil
7 gr cassia oil
Poster - www.washup.org
As we all know, washing with soap and water is one of the very best ways to prevent the spread of disease, including colds, flu, and other illnesses. The CDC has long been promoting the benefits of washing with soap and water. But a study by the The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA) and the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) showed that:
So, the SDA and ASM have teamed up to produce hand hygiene educational brochures to help inform both adults and children of the benefits of hand-washing with soap and water. It’s another way to promote the benefits of soap.
Fulling a Wool Scarf from CuriousWeaver curiousweaver.id.au/
I found a reference in The Art of Soap-Making by Alexander Watt (1918) which describes “fulling soaps”. Being unsure of what, exactly, “fulling” really was, I wasn’t sure if the soap described would be suitable for washing woolens as well.
Turns out not, but I did make some interesting discoveries along the way. And I learned how to wash and care for my wool sweaters and shirts … it wasn’t anything like what I had been told!
Back around the turn of the (last) century, synthetic fragrances were just making their debuts. Soapmaking manuals and books for the time still gave recipes for scent blending based on essential oils.
My Manual of Toilet Soap-Making by Dr. C. Deite lists a number of scent blends for what were “traditional” toilet soaps at the time.
Imagine New York City and the island of Manhattan in the 1840’s. The city was rapidly expanding with an influx of immigrants from all over the world. Industry was expanding with the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The northern part of the island, was still providing the city with dairy products and meat. Sewage disposal was non-existent and garbage was tossed into the street or river. Horses provided all the transportation, and there were over 15,000 horse carcasses to dispose of per year. And then there were the remains from the slaughterhouses.
What in the world, you ask, does this have to do with soap? The answer is … tallow.
Also residing and working mostly on the north end of the island were the soap boilers. Those people who took the animal remains and rendered them into fats and oils to make soap. Not a pretty job, but necessary and important to the city.
Then, in 1849, it started to change.
It seems that what goes around, comes around - even with soap. What was once a distasteful chore of country housewives or the task of garbage entrepreneurs has now become the new eco-friendly activity of chefs. According to a recent article at Food and Wine there’s a new line of soaps made from the byproducts of turning restaurant kitchen grease into biofuel.
Winter Spruce Soap - www.thesoapsmith.biz
Making cold process soap is a combination of art and science.
Making swirled soap is particularly tricky. It’s quite a skill to get the colors to swirl in together and still keep them distinct. Every swirled bar is different - not only different from soapmaker to soapmaker, but different from batch to batch and every bar within a batch will be unique.
Aphid infestation on hybrid tea rose
Anne W. Gideon, Bugwood.org
We think of soap as being used for cleaning purposes, but soap has also been used for centuries as an all-purpose pesticide against a number of different common garden pests, including aphids, spider mites, bugs of all sorts, Japanese Beetles, cockroaches, moles, deer and rabbits.
A study carried out in Turkey in 2000 which tested the effects of using natural pesticides on the yield and quality of cucumbers grown under greenhouse conditions showed that there were no significant differences between the yield and fruit properties when natural (soap-based) pesticides or conventional pesticides were used.
The recipes are simple, can be made at home and adapted for for specific uses.
