About Us

My first batch of soap was made as a Girl Scout a bazillion years ago! I remember rendering the tallow and making the most awful smelling soap and gifting it to my parents. I was so proud! That stuff sat in the bathroom cabinet for years and was forgotten. And then in 1999 I was itchy to make something new and different. So I found some books online and spent a day racing around the state, looking for ingredients. That first batch took me EIGHT HOURS to make - I was such a nervous nelly about working with lye and had no idea what to expect.

What I didn't expect was to still be fascinated with making soap, and turning my love for the process into a full-time business! Since 2013 I have been working to transform Hemlock Springs Cottage into Hemlock Springs Soaps and from a hobby into work. I am happy to have left the corporate world and create my own way by doing what I love. I had always wished for it, but I never thought I would make it happen.

Well, it is. And it's all good.

It's just my husband and me in our big house in New Hampshire. We're in the quiet woods, where living is clean but the winters can be a little long. We are committed vegetarians who rescue kitties that are considered "handicats." We have a handful of chickens who are pets more than anything, and a few invertebrates to make life a little more interesting and colorful.
By the way...that tallow soap I made for my parents all those years ago is long gone. But I still have a sliver or two of that first batch.

Karen
Owner/Soapmaker
Hemlock Springs Soaps, LLC

 

2020 Update: On Nov. 5, 2018 we purchased Tangled Roots Herbal in Nashua, NH. It's a quaint and quirky and incredibly fun herbal apothecary shop, metaphysical gifts, jewelry, candles and is the new retail home of our soap (and I'm making soap in the basement when I have a minute!)