If you want to join the sudsy trend of making soap like your grandma used to, all you need to know is right here on the World Wide Web. You can read the history of soap making, find recipes, learn where to buy supplies, and join discussion groups.

(Note: Some people have profitable home businesses making and selling soap that they whip up in their kitchens.)

This site is a good place to start your soap making career. It gives detailed, step-by-step instructions, including suggestions for inexpensive molds, equipment needed, and safety measures.

Of course, you'll find soap recipes here (how about an all vegetable soap?), as well as sources of soap making supplies. A chart that you can print out lists various oils and helps you calculate the amount of lye to use with each.

You'll find much information at this soap making site, including how to mix water, lye, fat and oils, and which combinations produce fluffy bubbles or fine, silky bubbles.

Also, there's a lye-to-fat ratio table, an understandable explanation of saponification, and tips on how to color your soap using clays, mineral pigment, and spices.

In addition, it includes info on where to buy supplies, and dandy tricks of the trade (like making soap in a blender), plus old time recipes make this a must-see site for soap makers.

Prompted by a need in Burma -- where caustic soda is hard to come by -- Paul Norman came up with a way to make soap with white wood, rain water grease, plant oils and salt.

This process will appeal to purists who think that using lye is too harsh a formula. Learn Norman's technique at his webpage.

Or, according to a Roman legend, soap was first discovered by women along the Tiber River. They noticed clothes got cleaner, easier, at a location where the ashes and grease of animals flowed down from the sacrificial fires of temples.

Although soap was made by the Romans, they didn't use it on their bodies, but rather doused their bodies with sand and olive oil and then scraped it off. Read about these and other clean facts as you trace soap bubbles through time.

OTHER RESOURCES

If you want to pursue soapmaking as a business, you'll find some additional resources at this site. You can order "The Soap Makers Guide," "The Advanced Soap Makers Kit," and a quarterly newsletter.

If you're the type who watches TV cooking shows to inspire you into whipping up a feast, perhaps you'd enjoy this instructional video on soap making. Visit this site and follow instructions on how to order the video.

Learn and share with others! Send an email to majordomo@xmission.com with message: subscribe soap-digest. You'll receive email messages from other soap making hobbyists in what has to be the cleanest discussion group on the Net.