In the latest installment of 'why you should never eat anything in Sally's kitchen without checking whether it will kill you first' aren't these pretty! These are crystallising out of my current experiment. Probably potassium (bi??)carbonate, but I'm not quite sure yet!

Even straight after adding water to ashes the solution is undisputably strongly alkaline. This is because as well as carbon, wood ash contains lots of potassium oxides & hydroxides. Their alkalinity is what makes it a degreaser & when strong enough, an ingredient for soapmaking.

Things are afoot! I've just started off a new batch of woodash lye ready for a major new experiment that will explore one of the possibilities for the earliest discovery of soap. Watch this space for more details over the next few days.