Mentioning soap in the last post reminded me that I’ve been wanting to tell y’all about Beehouse Soap, my friend Mithila Jegathesan‘s new venture — I’ve just bought some soap from her store, and I’m super excited. About soap!
Now, I know you might be thinking, “Mary Anne, don’t you *make* soap? Why are you buying someone else’s soap?”
Well, of course I want to support my friend’s new business (shop small!) but aside from that, what Mithila is doing is a kind of soap-making I haven’t learned yet, cold process, which allows for tremendous artistry in design, in a way that isn’t possible with the simpler process I know how to do. (I might try learning cold process at some point, but right now, my crafting is leaning hard in the sewing and resin directions, so we’ll see….)
I’m picking up some of her new Parapluie soap right now: “This goat milk soap has scents of bay leaf, fir needle, cedarwood, bergamot, and tobacco. Raindrops were created by injecting lines of soap colored with charcoal throughout the loaf and a delicate umbrella swirling pattern was created on top.” Soap with raindrops! I mean, c’mon! How gorgeous is that? I also got a batch of her oatmeal soap, made with base sheep’s milk soap from a local farm.
These are made in small batches, so they go quickly, but if you scroll back through Beehouse Soap’s Facebook page, you can get a sense of their array of gorgeous products, and if you wanted to do something like gift soaps for all your kids’ teachers (it’s getting to be that time of year), you could special order a batch of soap in one of the earlier designs.
https://www.beehousesoap.com/shop/p/parapluie
I’m excited to try my new soaps! 