So I Have This Awesome Sister...

As previously mentioned, I'm a bit old timey in my ways, and I'm okay with that. While my skills lie with cooking and predicting the weather and throwing out old yarns, there are some things I'm not particularly good at. I'm not crafty. I tried crocheting and got frustrated that my stitches weren't perfect. I can sew okay enough to mend something. But the person I admire for her old timey skills really, is my sister. Wanna know why? That bitch makes her own soap and it is awesome.

And she has the pretties molds for her soap too!

She started making soap when my niece Rachel was younger and had developed eczema. Commercially-produced soaps have harsh detergents and foaming agents (sodium laureth sulfate is found in pretty much anything that foams, including toothpaste, and is considered an irritant. Also being someone who has eczema (and in a rather inconvenient place) I can attest that putting an irritant on already sensitive skin is not fun times. So Tracy, my sister, got the recipe for the soap from a friend or daycare parent and started making her own soaps. She makes probably a dozen different fragrances now and sells them in the winter for $3 a bar, which is a steal, because most people sell smaller bars for more. I've recently been having a vicious acne flare-up so I whipped out a bar of Turkish Mocha instead of the harsher acne cleansers because I need something different that won't make me look like a great peeling, pustule laden leper after I wash my face. The only side effect is that I smell delicious and want to eat my face.

Oh, another awesome thing my sister does that's totally old-timey and which I have no space or patience to do? She cans stuff. Which means I have homemade pickles and jelly in my kitchen which I hoard until the next batch. I can make pickles. I have an awesome pickle recipe that I developed, but it's a refrigerator pickle recipe, never intended for the high heat of canning, so my pickles are a little perishable. But my sister's... I could go pop a jar open now if I wanted to. Yum!

Back on the subject of soap now, as a little closer because I love my sister and think she should make a business out of it: if any local (read: Maine) people that I know would like to purchase her soaps, let me know. I can get you a list of fragrances. She usually doesn't have them ready until Novemberish because they can only be made in the cooler weather or they won't set up. And Tracy? You're welcome. I love you.