Soap Safety

Everytime I don my gloves and goggles to whip up a batch of soap, I feel like the biggest goober.  (Sorry, no goggle pics in this post;)

But, today, as I splashed my milk/lye mixture onto the lens of my goggles, I was thankful that I'd chosen to follow protocol.  My soap-making book advises covering every possible inch of skin, with long pants and long-sleeves tucked into gloves. 

The last time I made soap, I took my gloves off mid-process for a minute to do something out of the kitchen.  When I returned, I grabbed the spoon to continue stirring, forgetting to don my gloves first.  Ahhhh!  Yes, lye will burn you!  And, like a moron, I was wearing shorts (what can I say?  I'd made soap so many times without incident that I was starting to get comfortable) and proceeded to splash a little bit of the mixture out of the pot and onto my leg.  Chemical burns are no joke!

Anyway, I was very thankful that I was wearing my goggles today.  (For those who know me best, the splash was on the left lens of my goggles, but still ;)

So, if soap-making is in your future, don't play around with the safety guidelines.  All the warnings on the bottle of lye are there for a reason!