Mugwort, horse oil, and neem

[Anstarx]

So mugwort is a staple item for the dragon boat festival (Early May by lunar calender, which is mid June this year). People use mugwort tea for bathing, its juice to make food, and hang fried mugwort bouquets at the door to protect from bugs and sickness.
Even though my family never had the tradition, I decided to embracing it this year with a mugwort soap! It's definitely most for the label appeal, but it was fun to work with.

Fresh mugwort was juiced and frozen to dissolve lye. Leftover fiber was dried and broken into powder, mixed with green clay and activated charcoal to give the color and texture. The soap is also scented with mugwort EO and menthol crystal.

I had some horse oil and neem oil left over from previous batches so I combined them to make this a bubbly facial bar. The mugwort EO balanced out the neem so you can't smell the garlic. And finally, stamped with the Chinese character for mugwort, which is also the name of a friend, so I will be gifting her one of the bars

The video of the making process is also up on youtube.

 

[AliOop]

Nice bars! What is horse oil?

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Well done! Thanks for sharing the video.
I could mind-smell the fragance and drooled at the amount of lather! Awesome soap!

 

[earlene]

Nice bars! What is horse oil?

I am not Anstaarx, but I wondered the same thing, so looked for it online. I found this oil made from the fat of horses:
https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Sonbah...t=&hvlocphy=9021914&hvtargid=pla-412346302318
At first I thought it might be Camelina Oil, which is sold as a supplement for horses (and other purposes).

So I do still wonder what Anstaarx used.

 

[Anstarx]

Nice bars! What is horse oil?

Just like @earlene said and as the name suggests, horse oil is oil extracted from horses, think of it like lard or tallow but from horses instead of pig or cow. I've read that it's mostly extracted from the neck part, not sure how much of it is true tho.

The only kind I can get was in refined form. In comparison to lard, it's lighter and abosrbs faster, but does still have some slight odor in its raw form typical of animal fat. However, once made into soap, there's no odor (at least I can't smell any). It's quite gentle but very bubbly.

Basically a lighter and more bubble lard

 

[Ford]

oh darn, I thought this was a thread on spells and potions......... (nice soap and video!)

 

[Cat&Oak]

That is gorgeous! As for horse oil it is quite common in European and Asian countries to eat horse much to American horror as we see our horses as companions. Lovely soap