Thank you all. Scouter, glad you are active with scouts. Great experiences for me through the years as an ASM. Lot's of stories. Would do it again.
What a wonderful day it has been! As said before, got a late start but it turned out to be a good thing. Before starting to make soap a trip to the cheese farm about 30-40 minutes away was necessary. What a yummy road trip. DD went with me. She's 15. We brought home 3 different cheeses, breakfast bread and a big block of cheese fudge. If you are ever in the Elberta, Alabama area, be sure and stop at the Sweet Home Farm. They're only open on Friday and Saturday from 10-5. They have their own dairy herd, make all of their cheese. No additives, labor intensive old school cheese making.
On the way home my dear daughter started asking me about soap. We talked for a few miles and she let me know that if I hadn't been getting up at 3 in the morning she might have been interested in helping. :shock: So much for the early riser.
Once at home more delays. It was necessary to visit a fav mexican restaurant for lunch and then buy up most of the milk in the area for the bottomless teenage son who will drink nothing but milk. Finally home, we talked about soap some more.
Dad - "Hey son, wanna help make soap?"
Son -
"noimbusymumblemumblebikeoutsiderainmumblemumblecomputerstuffstuffmumblemumble."
Dad - "The daughter?"
Daughter - "Suurrrre!"
This put a whole new light on the hobby. She even talked about making all kinds of different soap when we were riding home and now I'm getting excited at the possibility of spending this kind of time with my daughter. In the past, I felt a bit guilty because of all the time spent away with my son in boy scout activities. Our troop was so busy that most months were tied up every weekend during the school year. Lots of weekends gone from Friday night to Sunday afternoon and also went to summer camps.
ANYWAY, I started going over the process, showed her how soap calc worked and let her come up with color and fragrance. Oh boy. She liked the blue and white from last week and chose brick red and white with almond pastry FO.
Pardon my manners. I am happy to introduce darling daughter, future soaper to the stars! She's the one on the left.
You'll be happy to know that she already knew about gloves and safety glasses and yes she did have shoes on once started. She even brought out the vinegar just in case.
I let her weigh out everything and check it off except the lye. I weighed that out and poured it while she stirred.
She did quite well and showed remarkable patience for a 15 year old.
She was quite confident of her skills with the stick blender having made hundreds of milk shakes at her grandmother's house in the summer.
Both of us were so excited about this batch and waiting for trace that we completely forgot about the FO. Trace was evident when I remembered it.
Me - "ARGG, WE FORGOT THE FO, WHERE IS IT?"
She - "WHAT? HUH? I DUNNO! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? AAAHHHHHHHRRRRRRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!
It wasn't really that bad, but I had forgotten to take it out of the box and then I couldn't find it mixed in with all the others. Finally found it, grabbed it, opened it up and professionally measured it (dumped the whole bottle) into the batter. Ohh boy, quick trace. Time to pour. This was kinda funny because she had poured about half into another container for the red and I was mixing that by hand. Now we start to pour and believe it or not didn't spill a bit or dump it on each other. We were so proud!
She then grabbed a stick and did her swirl thingy which went pretty good. She was happy and liked what she saw.
Right now it's in the oven. We might get it out before sleepy time tonight or just leave it until tomorrow morning.
By the way, many of you witnessed my liner snit last week. I am happy to announce that I took some wonderful advice given by Bubbles Galore (Thanks Jenny!) and USED THE SAME ONE OVER AGAIN. If you look closely at the picture of the mold you can see some blue left on the liner from last week.
You can teach an old dog new tricks.
More to come.
