God's Own County

Making homemade soap is a growing craft or hobby business that you can easily do from home. Have fun making your own soap at home and sell it at craft fairs, give it away as presents or use your own soap to replace your current brand.
Your Yorkshire grannie could tell you how to make soap from caustic soda and various fats but the method here is so simple that your work and time can be saved and your life made easy.

Easy Melt and Pour Method for Soap Craft

Can you bake? Then you can make your own soap!
The base for your homemade soap will be made from Melt and Pour soap. To this you can add essential oils and colourants (we said it would be easy).
Step by Step Guide
1. Lightly grease a mould such as a margarine carton.
2. Melt small pieces of the soap base over gentle heat. Keep at 50-60 degrees centigrade no higher. Use a bowl inside another like a bain-marie and keep a lid on to keep the moisture in. No need to stir.
3. When the soap is fully melted and a liquid mix in any colourant a little at a time. Then add your choice of essential oils. (10 ml of oils to 1 kg of soap base). Stir gently trying to avoid bubbles.
4. Gently pour the soap into the mould and leave to set for several hours or overnight. Do not freeze as this damages the texture.
5. When set remove from the mould, slice off any damage with a sharp knife or veg peeler and wipe with a damp cloth.
6. Cut into pieces, store in cling film and wrap.

Professional Touches for Your Soap Craft

Presentation can be very important. Consider how you will wrap or display your soap so it looks ‘the business’ even though you know it is homemade.
You may have chosen to use several smaller moulds rather that the large margarine tub that needs cutting. Slicing chunks is easier with a cheese cutter.
You can pattern the top of the soap as it sets with a stamp or by float herbs.
If there are bubbles on the surface of the soap as you pour the warm liquid into the mould you can ‘spritz’ the surface with alcohol to get a smooth finish.

For more help and recipes there are several books on the craft of homemade soap.

How to Make Melt & Pour Soap Base from Scratch edited by Mrs Kayla Fioravanti, Lesley Anne Craig and Dana Brown

Yorkshire Soap Suppliers

Supplies from craft shops or Amazon who also sell a ‘Soap Base Colour Kit. Five Water based Colours for Melt & Pour Soaps’

every one of http://www.austonleysoap.co.uk/ products, is proudly handmade from scratch, by ourselves, to our own carefully developed recipes. We believe the best produce is created from natural, ethically sourced ingredients. That’s why we use only the finest, natural plant oils and butters to create our skin loving soaps, bath and skincare products. We don’t believe in using unnecessary preservatives, synthetic colourants or harsh synthetic foaming agents such as SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate).

Each soap is handmade with love and includes lots of natural ingredients that will leave your skin feeling replenished and soft.  https://yorkshiresoap.co.uk/soaps

Gorgeous natural soap and bath products, handmade in the Yorkshire Dales  http://www.oakwood-aromatics.com/

Photo Credits
Soap Wrapping! by savor_soaps CC BY-NC 2.0
“Peace soap by burgundavia CC BY-SA 2.0

2013 saw Yorkshire county cricket club celebrate 150 years as a club and team which has given so much pleasure to the folk of God’s Own County at home or abroad. We forgive them the occasional lapse in performance knowing they will come back strongly. We also tolerate the politics and egos, that sometimes seem to stray on to the field of play, knowing there will be someone stronger or more vocal waiting in the wings. In the meantime Colin Graves the current executive chairman has done the job of funding and motivating the club to this seasons performance.

The clubs website has the unenviable and unnecessary task of listing some ‘true legends’ from the last 150 years …‘the Club has seen some true legends of world cricket pass through its playing squad. From Lord Hawke, Herbert Sutcliffe, Wilfred Rhodes, Hedley Verity, Sir Len Hutton, Bob Appleyard, Brian Close, Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth, David Bairstow and Geoffrey Boycott to the modern era which has seen Michael Vaughan, Darren Gough, Craig White, Matthew Hoggard, Darren Lehmann and Tim Bresnan represent the White Rose County…..’ and more history

Well done the lads and all I can say, like the crowd at Headingley or Scarborough, is ‘Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire’.

1785311166

‘Yorkshire darts (no triples) at the Arncliffe Arms in Glaisdale… they do a good burger.’

Interesting and Unusual Facts About Yorkshire Dart Boards

Early London dart boards were divided into 12 segments with each segment worth 5,10,15 or 20 with doubles and trebles.
Between 1910 and 1920 along came a Dewsbury dominoes and darts enthusiast Thomas William Buckle who built Yorkshire dart boards which he sold to pubs around the county. Tom’s boards had an outer ring for doubles but no trebles ring and no central ring around the bull for twenty five.
The numbering pattern 20,1,18,4,13 etc that we are familiar with today was created by Tom for the Yorkshire board and subsequently copied on the London boards that also incorporated the trebles and 25 rings.
Yorkshire dart boards flourished until the 1970’s but then fell from popularity when the British Darts Organisation BDO made the London board the dart board of choice for all major darts competitions.

Tom Buckle was a wire worker by trade and the numbers were originally make out of twisted wire. I think that was so that bad arrows could bounce off and you could claim it was the rim of the double.

There is another claim to be the inventor of the numbering system from a Lancastrian Brian Gamlin, a carpenter from Bury but there is no proof of this claim.

Other special dart boards like London Fives, Narrow Fives and regional boards like the Kent Doubles, Burton board and the Tonbridge Boards are now very hard to find.

Winmau Yorkshire Specialist Bristle Dartboards can still be bought from amazon for around £42.

A ‘Darts Miscellany: History, Trivia, Facts & Stats from the World of Darts’ by Matt Bozeat should cover the Yorkshire board in more detail.
Patrick Chaplin is an expert on all matters connected to The Yorkshire Dartboard and his new book 180! Fascinating Darts Facts is about to be released

The bull of your Yorkshire Dartboard should be 5ft 6ins off the ground.
The normal ‘Oche’ should be 7ft 2ins from the board and 9 ft to the bull (thanks to pythagoras). Some Yorkshire rules allow a throw from 7ft – 8ft 6inches from the board.
Since the 1920s the throwing line was called the ‘Hockey’ and not ‘Oche’. Oche is a modern version that fits with TV coverage.
The name outer bull or half bull is bullxxxx when you only have one inner bullseye scoring 50.
Photo Credits
Day 13 by Kloeffon, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Dart board by cbcastro, CC BY-NC 2.0