Granny Soap

When you want to use your handmade soap for laundry and cleaning, or you have allergies and want to keep the ingredients simple, you could make soap like grandma did.  You only need three ingredients; water, lye. and fat.  I added lavender essential oil for a little fragrance.  No coloring, glitter, herbs. or additives were added.   Since I was making grandma's type of lye soap, I used a cardboard box as my mold.  This is the what I used when I started making soap, but I lined the boxes with wet flour sack tea towels back then.  I used rendered tallow from cows as my fat.

I was inspired to make a small leaf face cloth with green cotton yarn.  There are free patterns to use for making leaves on the web, see below.
http://www.tricksyknitter.com/pages/posts/new-free-washcloth-knitting-pattern-coming-soon-159.php?g=6
or
http://wibbo.typepad.com/wibbos_words/free-patterns/

I hate to follow directions, but the leaf is made with three knit stitches on the left and the right sides of the leaf and a stockinette stitch is in the center.  Increase the stitches or decrease the stitches right before or after the three beginning or ending stitches.  Make the leaf the shape you wish to have.  I don't think both sides should be the same, especially when leaves come in all shapes and sizes.

The old fashioned grandma type soap is very bright white.  Isn't it beautiful!  May God Bless You and Yours!  Dawnie