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I've had this happen as well, with a heavily water-discounted soap. The recipe for that was 50% coconut, 50% soy wax, and the last time I ever made that particular formula. My unfounded assumption at the time was that the soy tore the structure apart as it set, and the coconut sure wasn't...

Oh, dear. I'd Hot Process Hero that batch and see if it still zaps. If it does, HP it again and add a bit of oil. You'll lose all the design, so maybe drop in a bit of whole-bar colorant to offset the floral? A nice yellow, maybe? It may not look like much when all is said and done, but...

Organize before the lye hits the oils. I set up my color(s) and scent(s), all ready to go at emulsion or trace and merely have to pour out of the small glass bowl into the soap. Temperature isn't that important--usually. Unless you're doing a swirl or a complex swirl, it doesn't really matter...

Stearic spots. I just got first-hand experience (again!) with air bubbles when a recipe of mine boiled itself in the mold. Darn me and my love of spices in soap...

Gorgeous! Cut a bit off and try it! I found some five year old soap a while back. It was absolutely amazing stuff, even if scentless at this point, and had no decay. But I also didn't use actual cucumber or any other vegetable in it, so... Still, the extremely high pH (comparatively...

Even Castile, tested too early, makes my hands feel tight and dry. It's not like exposure to raw soap, but it's still unpleasant. So as noted, don't readjust too early because you might end up with a softer, weaker soap than you really wanted in the end run (depending on the oils chosen)...

Well, I hadn't thought of it before, but thanks for the idea. I have purple colorant, lavender, and eucalyptus, plus one loaf mold that isn't currently being used. Excuse me.

It's not quite pure tallow, but Valu-Time Animal Shortening is about 94% tallow, 6% partially hydrogenated soybean oil, with some preservatives thrown in. You do have to poke a bit to find the ingredients list, and I've never been quite sure it's perfect, so I wouldn't imagine selling this soap...

Color and scent mistakes are not mistakes. Just tell everybody you meant to do that and come up with a clever name for it. Nobody else can see the vision in your head and trust me, they're impressed by what you made.

+Everybody Above. Don't give up on it too soon. Although I'd worry about DOS, a very, very long cure might work for that soap if it continues to be unacceptably slimy. If you have the rack space, extend the cure, and keep extending it. I just made a pure Castile because my mother and her...

The sky's the limit! I've made 100% lard (palm for a vegetarian substitute) bars that are absolutely lovely. The same with 100% tallow. Or you can add in some to a lot of olive oil for more conditioning, like a 60% lard/40% olive bar. It may take a bit longer to cure, but it'll be really...

How deep brown is deep brown? Pure palm may go a beige, which will lighten somewhat during cure. I haven't used beeswax so can't say what that'll do, but honey will turn a deep caramel color as the lye is added. It lightens during cure by a great deal.

Or Salad Shooter (vegetable peeler, whatever) the stuff and use it as the soap base for laundry soap. If it melts easily, it'll melt easily in the washing machine. Soy/olive is really much better for lightly soiled or delicate loads.

I tend to use a shampoo bar on my hair only when I've been out in the garden. Such as today, I had dirt, bits of plants, and I think there was a small beetle hanging out in there. I do find that I like a high SF in my shampoo bar, it seems to decrease the amount of frizz I get. But I also do...

At "normal" amounts of 1 tsp PPO give or take a fair bit, I've never noticed a difference between the TD soap and the basic recipe using other (or no) colorants. How high you'd have to go, I'm not sure. For me, if it's reasonably white, that's white enough, so I'm not likely to ever find out...

It kind of makes sense, although I couldn't cough up scientific proof of that to save my life. Titanium dioxide absorbs oils, just like zinc oxide sunscreen can dry your skin a bit if not offset with a nice oil (fortunately, in practice, the sunscreen has a good base that helps it adhere and...

You're going to disturb the turbulent flow around the blades, which is very specifically designed to optimize mixing. However, for soap, I doubt that's going to matter much--you might need a few extra seconds of blending to account for the chaotic stream you just introduced. With food you...

I just remade the recipe (a slight change, no castor oil this time, but it's really very minor). This time it got poured into a loaf mold and is currently overheating slightly on my countertop. I expected that, and it's no big deal. This time I'll shear it with the vegetable peeler and dry it...

Maybe try popping out the battery for about two minutes and replacing it? Sometimes the dear little computer in there just needs a reset. Or the battery itself could be weak. One of my digital thermometers acts really freaky when the power gets low, instead of just dimming out the way you'd...

Don't judge me. :-) My dryer seems to like to sample one sock out of a pair, although I recently matched up a loner that had been tossed back into the hamper for some months. I think the dryer finally ate one of a matching pair, with the two leftovers now forming one single remainder...