SpiderFarmer

I’ve been doing a series of posts on cosmetic ingredients over at Soapy Hollow. I’m consolidating the posts on one monster page o’ ingredients as well.
Also, I’ve started doing tech writing related blogging over at The Art of Documentation.  I’m still adding content to the “services” section of the site, but I think the [...]

Everybody loves bath bombs. It’s like taking a bath in champagne, only without the show tunes and chorus boys. They are fairly simple to make, keeping in mind that the strangest things can make a batch go weird; humidity, room temperature, oil viscosity, the moon rising in the seventh house of Aquarius…they are [...]

For years, handmade and artisan bath and cosmetics people have been making organic and cruelty-free products, providing an alternative for consumers who want to avoid petrochemicals and animal testing.  Well, it didn’t take long before the large chemical companies caught on to the fact that they were leaving a market untapped, and suddenly, we see [...]

What’s the history?
The earliest known evidence of soap use are Babylonian clay cylinders dating from 2800 BC containing a soap-like substance. A formula for soap consisting of water, alkali and cassia oil was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC.
The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates that ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined [...]

Once upon a time rainwater was filtered through hardwood ashes to make a Potassium Hydroxide solution. It’s actually a pretty cool process. The ladies who taught me how to make soap would let rainwater collect in an old tree stump, and add ashes to it periodically. They knew the water was alkali “enough” [...]