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This is the way I've made milk soaps the past 2 decades: Have your oils weighed & melted, ready to go. Use large chunks of frozen milk for your lye solution. Add about 1/3 of the lye to the frozen milk & stir to start melting the milk. Add half the remaining lye and stir a little more. Add...

That's awesome! I don't use an ice bath either. I also don't slowly combine the lye into the frozen milk cubes but dump it in thirds, mixing well after each dump of lye and using my stick blender (make sure it is immersed) after the last dump to break up the remaining frozen milk and combining...

When making milk soap, get your oils ready (weighed, melted, combined) before mixing the lye into the milk, then pour the lye/milk solution into your waiting oils immediately.

I use oxides and ultra marines. I use to use oil to disperse oxides & water to disperse ultra marines. Now I use glycerin to disperse both.

So much valuable information and research lost. I haven't visited that forum in over a decade, one too many beatings with the stick for me. As someone else said, there is a huge difference between constructive criticism and downright hostility and rudeness. Still, it's sad that The Dish is...

Sculptures are generally made using Needle Felting, this is a different technique than felting with soap, water & agitation. Superwash wool and other non-feltable items can be used in needle felting. Superwash wool has been chemically treated to remove the cuticles so felting (and fulling) do...

Yes and yes! I've been on Ravelry since beta (Oct, 2007) Same name as here. Dyer, spinner, weaver, crocheter, knitter ... (colorful, twisted, warped, hooker with sticks ... LOL!) Is there really such a thing as too many socks & shawls?

Although the paper handily addressed Shea Nut and Shea Nut Butter/Oil as it relates to Nut Allergies, it did not address any latex allergies. My daughter has a severe latex allergy and reacts to even refined Shea Butter in leave on products. At the time we discovered her reaction to Shea...

I've used chicken oil at 35% in recipes (combined with lard, olive oil, & palm kernel oil). It's a lovely soap! I wouldn't be afraid to use it at a higher % or substitute it completely in my recipes for the lard.

Welcome, Audrey!

My best soap recipe for this old skin contains a combined lauric/myristic around 20%, however it also has linoleic around 17% and oleic about 45%

Honey is water soluble. I've had the best results by thinning honey with equal part water and adding the thinned honey to the soap batch after incorporating the lye solution. Reduce the amount of water used in your lye solution and use to thin your honey.

Your HP soap still requires the 6 week cure time that a CP soap does. Combined with you wanting the fluidity in your soap batch, CP would be the way to go.

Late to the party here. I stick with detergents for washing my wools ... whether it is raw wool for prepping for spinning or washing finished garments (fiber artist for 16 years). The pH of bar soaps is too alkaline and can damage the wool. Borax is another additive that can damage wool. A...

Do you hold your hook like a pen/pencil? If so, then yes, it is awkward to adjust to needles. Knittinghelp.com has some wonderful short videos showing different techniques. I knit using the Combined Continental so my purl stitches sit differently on the needle. Mohair is hair from an angora...

Briarine, The knit stitch is like the slip stitch in crochet, except you are putting the needle over the yarn (scooping it with the needle) instead of the yarn over the hook before pulling it through the loop. Did you friend teach you holding the working yarn in your left hand like you do in...

I don't know what they use now. When I was a mother in the 80s and had to use disposables on occasion while traveling (I was cloth diapering), I cut one open and there were little bitty beads mixed with the filler. It was years later when I got my first pound of polymer crystals that I...

It's the polymer crystals in the diaper material. Love using polymer crystals in the soil of my potted plants on the front porch and deck YAY!! The extra bit of head space helps as does the re-tightening. We planted blueberries 2 years ago. I'm hoping we get a good harvest this year...

Relle, Have you tried incorporating polymer crystals down to the root zone in your soil? I use these in my potted plants so I don't have to water so often. My soil here on the homestead is predominately sand. After 16 years of intensive composting and "lasagna gardening", the soil in my...

My 'go to' tomato varieties in the garden are Pantano Romanesco, Howard German & Amish Paste. I always keep a couple yellow pear tomatoes in a pot on the back deck for my husband to snack on as he comes and goes. I grew the San Marzano the first year I grew the Pantano Romanesco and the...