Handcrafted soap

Soap-making books come and go, many of them focused on saving money or getting back to basics. Washington-based entrepreneur and teacher Boone offers a third option: a high-quality and aesthetically pleasing product. In her introduction, she refutes the contention that soap making is a messy and boring process simply because of the outcome--that handmade cleansers are creamier, more luxurious, and produce a squeaky-clean surface. In fact, all her instructions are designed to encourage an artisan output: explicit data about the equipment and ingredients involved (lye, distilled water, and oils/fats); detailed information and step-by-step color photographs of methods; 28 recipes with design and process topics (e.g., don't add colorants to milk soaps); and others. Along the way, she refutes some long-held myths--for instance, that all castile soap is 100 percent olive oil and that handmade soaps won't work well for Fido. At the end are charts galore--oil properties, lye and water calculation, oil characteristics, essential oil blending characteristics, conversion chart, glossary, and resources. --Barbara Jacobs