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Ha, I'm a cancerian and am just the same. I think it is known as having a "butterfly mind" . Too many interesting things and not enough time so I end up learning little bits about lots of (largely pointless) stuff. I really respect people who have focus to stay on one thing and know...

I just admit that I just used it once and put it away again. Perhaps if you use it a lot and it doesn't dry out if will go slimy. I' m using a 75%/25% olive oil and sweet almond oil one at the moment and it is really slimy with no bubbles at all. In fact it's hard to see that it's actually...

Hi Gardengeek, I have some real Aleppo soap which I have had in my curiosity box for several years. I've just looked at the label and it is past it's use by date (June 2020). I've just tried it and it is not slimy at all, quite good lather in fact, not super foamy but some bubbles and no...

You can put quite a lot of things straight into the lye. Paprika and madder root are two examples, but if you leave it in you'll get some scratchiness. I use a madder root tea seived out to avoid this. I've not tried paprika tea. I don't know if that would work. The calendula petals don't...

I also use calendula petals but straight in the lye mixture while it's hot and left in the final soap. I find this gives a very acceptable light yellow colour. I have never tried orange petals as I have a truly vast bag of yellow petals to get through. I was rather surprised at how much you...

Sudsmaster, in answer to your earlier questions - I use cold madder root tea in my lye for pink and calefular petals in the hot lye and left in the soap mixture for pale yellow, cocoa powder in the batter for brown and green tea wax heated in the oils for green. Otherwise, just using 5 fold...

I can't really help but I recently contacted them to ask if I could change my lye concentration in an approved recipe from 1:2 to 1:1.5. They said you can't make changes, I would have to resubmit and pay for a new certification. But they didn't say that a higher lye concentration would be a...

Tara, I have experienced something similar. I use single cell moulds.(8 cells to a mould). On some of my soaps I used to get white, bleached looking, crumbly corners on the bottom, the bit NOT exposed to the sir. Always the same soaps, and not all of the varieties despite the base recipe...

Baby shoes, no I haven't. I read a book about Bernard Spilsbury which was very interesting and also Keith Simpson. He was in on a number well known cases such as Acid Bath Haigh. Dad aslo had some delightful books called Murder What Dunnit (or something) and Murder Whereabouts focussing on...

Don't read on if you are of a delicate disposition. I knew under certain conditions human fat from buried corpses could turn to what is in effect soap. It's called adipocere and the chemical process that causes it is in effect, saponification. Some gruesome things I've come across include...

The petals don't dissolve, you can still see the petals in the soap but as the soap is yellow they don't show up enormously. I also use the lye method for colouring with madder root. In this case I make a madder tea first seiving out the bits and adding the lye afterwards. (When it has...

I put my calendula petals into the hot lye then mix with oils and blend as usual. This makes a nice, soft yellow colour (nicer if you don't gel). Calendula of course, is one of the few botanicals that keeps its colour and doesn't go brown in cold process soap. Putting the petals in the oils...

I never used to get ash until the day I certified my recipe for sale, then I got worse ash every time I made it! I always used to refrigerate my soaps to prevent gel as gelling messes up my natural colours. But the ash seemed to affect the inside and bottom corners of the soap as well as on...

I use natural colours, I was getting a lot of ash even at a 2:1 lye ratio but I've never particularly thought that was the reason. I eventually took it right down to 1.5:1 and my last batch had no ash. I haven't tried anything in between, maybe you don't have to go quite that low to eliminate...

I can't recall anyone recommending it to me, it was all cpop it or spray with alcohol or cover with cling film or a dozen other things. I never tried the alcohol but cpoping ruined my natural colours. All the advice seemed to indicate that 33% was the optimum ratio for perfect soap. That's what...

I've been using 33% for years and getting terrible soda ash. At last in a recent thread someone said they reduced their water and got rid of the soda ash. Eureka! I did the same and it has gone. No cpoping, no covering, no cling film or alcohol, just less water. So I now soap at 40%, ( 1:1.5...

Hi - recently I posted about castor oil and soda ash as I had made some soap without castor oil and it hadn't ashed for a change! Background - I always refrigerated my soap and never had problems with ash until I certified a recipe for sale and now have constant ash problems as well as crumbly...

I use an excell spreadsheet to store my recipes. The ones I sell I have an ingredients column online side with the cost per gram of each ingredient listed and a formula which works out the cost of each soap to make. Then you can also work out the average cost of all the bars and total cost...

I have a checklist for each soap recipe like Deana and tick off each ingredient which I weigh and set out before starting anything. In fact after weighing out all the ingredients I usually walk away and have a cup of tea before I actually start the making process. One interesting thing I...

I use madder root at a rate of 6g powdered root to 600g of oils. I make a tea with the water I am intending to use for the lye, literally pour on boiling water from the kettle, leave to cool, then sieve out the powder through a fine mesh (I use a jelly bag) then add the sodium hydroxide. I...