As the dead heat of summer approaches, the verdant fields and lawns of Eugene wither under the watch of an ever hotter sun.  Ready to cut through the grime of dusty outdoor adventures of a summer break well spent is Jenny Coyne, a 47-year-old Eugene nurse and soapmaker, who has been handcrafting soap in Eugene for the last two decades.

Soap and its makers generally reside in the obscurity of the internet and neighborhood Waldorf schools, but for Coyne, the art and science of soap was just the latest extension of her creative background which involved less successful forays into sewing and knitting. “I can’t really cut straight lines and I’m too wound up for knitting,” Coyne said. But with lots of creative energy left in the tank, it was only a matter of time before she found her medium.“I like making things,” said Coyne. “I’ve tried a lot of different things because I always want to be creating something.” 

For Coyne, the journey to artisanal soap began as a bi-annual ritual with her sister. “We’d get together twice a year, make huge batches, divide it up and then in six months, we’d come back together and make a huge batch,” Coyne said. “We made it for years and years and years, but just for our people.”

When co-workers began approaching her for help with last-minute Christmas gifts, Coyne found that soap could be more than a leisurely pastime for her. “I started digging deeper into fancy soap making,” Coyne said. “I realized, there’s a whole world out there of this amazing craft. So I thought ‘I’m gonna give it a go.’”

While the nuances of crafts and folk arts have historically been passed down through generations, when Coyne was getting started, YouTube and some of her peers in the soap industry provided her with a baseline for developing her craft. But, translating digital knowledge to real world products can yield strange results. Especially when she began experimenting with proprietary recipes, “There were some blends I made that were really gross,” Coyne said. “I made one that smelled so bad my husband couldn’t even come in the house.” But, having grown up with a passion for creation, it only took about a year to produce results consistent enough to begin selling her products on Etsy. 

While she’s since moved the operation to her basement, the project began in the kitchen with coconut milk, lye solution, essential oils and an immersion blender. Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Coyne can create flavors like “Patchouli Lime Black Pepper, Lemon Litsua and Lavender, and Chai Spice.” While the last of which is a revised recipe of a peer, Muddy Mint Soap Co, who has since closed creation operations, the remainder of Coyne’s recipes are made from scratch. 

The journey to Blue Root’s current ingredient profile has not been without hiccups, the largest of which was the navigation of a new debate in soapmaking, “essential oils vs. fragrance oils.” Essential oils are natural oils made with the steam distillation of the ingredient, obtaining its essence. For example, 4000 kilograms of rose petals need to be distilled to make 1 kilogram of rose absolute essential oil.

Fragrance oils are more cost-effective, materially efficient and offer a longer-lasting fragrance, but they are synthetic. While many conflicting answers have appeared in response to the question of which is “better” both ethically and materially, Coyne, ever the scientist, creates soap offerings suitable for essential oil purists and fragrance oil enthusiasts alike. She even concocts mixtures of the two.“ You can amplify fragrance oils with essential oils,” Coyne said, “which is really cool, because some of the customer favorites are essential oil blends, which then have the fragrance oil added in.”

In recent years, Coyne even adds in botanicals from her garden and nearby forests, “I try to grow most of my things, like calendula and chamomile, but for the cottonwood buds I collect in about February or March before they bloom,” Coyne said. “ I’ll go out and get them from downed branches around town, but I never pick the live ones.”

At its current state, running Blue Root is no small task, with Coyne creating and packaging over 400 bars of soap monthly, while maintaining a full-time position as a nurse and a mother. But Coyne couldn’t have it any other way. “Soap is a huge fulfillment for me, so I always come back to it,” she said. 

While Coyne has thought of scaling up, for the moment, she’s just enjoying Blue Root’s current state, “I feel like if I went bigger, I would have to give away pieces of my process,” Coyne said. “I’m excited to see how it evolves down the road, but I’m not pushing for anything more.”

For Coyne, the Blue Root journey has brought lessons worth remembering in all areas of creative endeavor. 

“The awesome thing about soap is you can have an idea in your head of what you want it to look like. But you never know until you cut it what it’s actually gonna look like,” Coyne said. “Sometimes total failures are just gorgeous.”

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