dual lye olive oil soap
weather: ☀️ i feel a hot wind on my shoulder
critters: wigeons
i've never made soap from lye, but i know enough about handmade soap to know that pure olive oil soap is gross. what little lather it produces has a weird slimy-stringy texture that reminds me of the flu. or, like, other stringy slimes i could think of.
but marseille soap has enjoyed a good reputation for centuries, and it's always claimed to be made with pure olive oil. i've seen this a few times in old books. i wondered for years how marseille soap could be so good when pure olive oil soap eats, and in the 90s sense of "eats," which means "fucking sucks ass." but marseille soap's adorable cube shape kept me going back to the idea that there must be a secret way to make good olive oil soap.
i poked around and found these posts getting into the weeds about olive oil soap: using only sodium lye makes it hard and difficult to lather, but adding a little bit of potassium lye solves both these problems. according to one poster, in the old days, the combination of potassium in coastal plants and sodium in seawater technically made this stuff dual lye soap.
i'm still afraid to use lye because i'm a klutz, but at least now i know where to get the math for it.