Soap Pot Weekend June 28 & 29

[Soapmaker Man]

Greg, I took some dried Rosemary and crushed it in my mortar and pestle, then added a teaspoon of the herb and the crushed Rosemary to about 2 ounces of OO. I heated it slowly in my Presto pot for about 30 minutes stirring every few minutes. Had the heat on a low setting, just enough to see the oil move a bit.

I tried a bar of Birdie's Rosemary~Lavender soap a month ago and loved it. A lot of people use Rosemary with Mint, so I did double-mint. Took a picture of it 1 hour after pour, and it is just starting to go into gel. Smells nice!

 

[Guest]

Hey Paul, what's the rosemary for? I'm interested because I've got a huge rosemary bush and I haven't needed to buy rosemary in years. I could probably harvest a couple pounds of fresh rosemary and hardly even notice.

I'm still trying to make up my mind for today's project(s). :roll:

Rosemary is good for Shampoo and Conditioner for people with dry hair and scalp, it also is good for dry skin I make a rosemary soap bar..

working on a rosemary shampoo bar

I might make soap today, I dont feel like cleaning the kitchen. I am being lazy

 

[anhoki]

I'm about to make a new complexion bar and another round of shampoo bars.

 

[ydpubs]

I just got home with the hubby. We bought a 50 lb cube of beef tallow.

Now I'm doing more research and formulating some recipes I am going to try with the tallow. I've really loved using lard, I can't wait to see how the tallow turns out.

 

[Soapmaker Man]

OK, 2-1/2 hours after pour, coming out of full gel, time to "chill" out.

 

[digit]

[quote="LovehoundBTW I made the Hempster's Haven hemp soap recipe and I like it and recommend it. Ask me if you are interested and can't find the recipe.[/quote]

That is the one I do with added calendula petals. This time I tried with goat milk, but that was not the problem. Do not know where I went wrong on this batch. :roll:

Digit

 

[Lucy]

Herbs are best infused over long period. I do gallons at a time and leave them alone for 3 months sometime more.

 

[Soapmaker Man]

Herbs are best infused over long period. I do gallons at a time and leave them alone for 3 months sometime more.

Thanks Lucy, I'll make up a larger batch ald let it sit in a window, shaking it every several days, I think I've read.

 

[anhoki]

While listening to oooooooold skewl Violent Femmes and KMFDM I made my complexion soap. This is a modified version of the one I made in '04 with one I've been using for about 2 yrs. It's got coconut, safflower, palm, canola, sweet almond, avocado, neem and jojoba oils....I used aloe juice for all of the liquid and then added french green, bentonite, moroccan red, rhassoul clays with apricot kernel meal, orange peel powder, activated charcoal, dead sea mud and ground oatmeal. I used clove, lavender and tea tree eos. Pheeew....

 

[Tabitha]

Lane/Marr,

That looks like the best ligt box I have seen. I have been looking at the other tutorial sonline & wasn't feelin' it. I may just try this one or ask the hubby real swe :wink: et....

 

[Lucy]

Herbs are best infused over long period. I do gallons at a time and leave them alone for 3 months sometime more.

Thanks Lucy, I'll make up a larger batch ald let it sit in a window, shaking it every several days, I think I've read.

no window. cool dark space in closet or barn or garage.

 

[Soapmaker Man]

OK, thanks for the info. :wink: Fresh or dried?

 

[Luna]

I'm making a big batch of rosemary mint scrubs.
This time of year it flies out of here like crazy.

 

[Galaxy Girl]

made what looks like spam coloured shaving soap, with silk in yesterday, and about to make another batch now.

Also want to make a green clay one this afternoon.

Interesting about the foam, I might try that, I don't like the texture I get on the outside of mine sometimes.

 

[digit]

I just finished making 4 pounds of patchouli with cocoa coloring, swirling with natural soap color, 3 pounds of hawaiian ginger and 2 pounds of bamboo somthing (can't remember the name) with a green swirl. I also make a bunch of lavender whipped shea butter.

....then I am going by Joanne's house to sniff her soaps.........

While listening to oooooooold skewl Violent Femmes and KMFDM I made my complexion soap.

.............pass by Anhoki's place (with ear plugs ) to test her complextion bar for her, tee hee hee..........................

------------swing by Paul's place to "borrow" one of his Rosemary bars............

I may be too busy to actually make any myself.

Digit

 

[Guest]

Well... Yesterday's batch turned into a multi-fold disaster. I was making shaving soap from Dr. Robert McDaniel's "Essentially Soap." I had just added the lye to the fats when the phone rang and it was a good friend I hadn't heard from in a long time. As I talked and stirred I started to realize that my plans for a swirl weren't going to work out, and then I realized that it was nearing trace so I got off the phone to focus on the soap. As I was adding the clay I realized that I should have taken a glop of soap out, added the clay to that (like powder colorant) and put it back, so I strained the whole mess and did that with the clay. I started to do the same with the stearic acid when I thought, "Wait a minute, you have to melt the stearic because the flakes will never mix in." So I threw out that glop and got the 5# bag of stearic from my junk room and measured out more, started nuking it. Nuking didn't do anything so I decided to put in a little OO which I hoped would heat up and melt the stearic, and it did. I stirred the stearic/OO into the soap and the temperature drop solidified the drops of stearic and I was right back where I started with little bits of stearic not blended in. I'm really wondering about the advisability of that stearic now.

So anyway I poured the whole yucky looking green glop into a 3" pipe and figured if nothing else I'll see if the recipe is any good. The clay turned the lime blossom green into the worst avocado I've ever seen, like that horrible green color some of my apartments carpets had. I grew to hate green carpets when I lived in apartments. So anyway I'm carrying the mold into my junk room when all of the sudden...

Glop!!!

The plug had fallen off the bottom of the pipe and now all my shaving soap was on the carpet, not in the pipe. I grabbed my mini-mold and managed to get about half of the mess that was on top into the mold, and started cleaning up the rest when...

Sneeze!!! (sounded like)

I was wondering, was that my dog? Funny sounding sneeze... I continued cleaning up the mess off the carpet and then went in to start cleaning up the kitchen, and there was my 5# bag of stearic acid upside down on the floor! (the sneeze noise) I carefully picked up the bag and guess there was about a pound on the floor, so I decided to just vacuum it up and throw it away. Well I got out the vacuum cleaner but instead of picking it up it just blew it around, so now I had stearic acid all over the kitchen floor. It's flakes, not sticky enough to be sticky and not powdery enough to be powdery--somewhere in between. And now it's all over my kitchen and stuck to the wheels of the vacuum cleaner too.

So I got out the mop and pail and started damp moping the kitchen floor. It got up most of the stearic acid but there are little bits of stearic stuck all over the kitchen floor and they won't come up. I'll probably end up having to get down on my hands and knees with paper towels and alcohol to clean it up.

This morning I cut up the soap into bars, tongue tested it and found no zap no lye, so I decided to try shaving with it. I've seen pure Castile with better lather than this shaving soap. It didn't work very well shaving so I grabbed the nearest bar of soap and lathered that and it shaved better than the shaving soap. Looks better too.

Yesterday was so bad that I decided to just forget about soapmaking for the rest of the weekend. I think I'm going to clean house today and throw a bunch of stuff away... starting with the shaving soap!

 

[Galaxy Girl]

Oh you poor thing.

 

[Laurie]

Man, I feel for you. You could make a movie about that day. I'm sorry, but I laughed.

With soapmaking, we're always planning and preparing and those kind of things are just not planned in and it makes ya crazy.

Laurie

 

[Guest]

My sense of humor is my defense against adversity in life. I can kind of laugh about it now but for the time being I hope this will remain as my worst soaping day. I'm still putting off finishing cleaning up, typing on the Internet instead.

The thing was that each thing that happened seemed to accelerate the urgency, and the faster I tried to handle things the more likely I was to make a mistake complicating matters even worse. Ordinarily I would have never left that bag of stearic on the kitchen counter, unsealed, but you know what happens when the FO hits the batter, and stearic acid is far worse. That's why you add it at trace, because if you added it earlier it would quickly react with the lye and you'd have a disaster.

I don't think I'll try stearic in CP soap again, although I got it mainly for my attempt at transparent soap. Some of Catherine Failor's transparent soap recipes use stearic. Dr. McDaniel's shaving soap recipe used it and I had it on hand so I thought, why not? Well, now I know why not.

I'm getting even with Dr. McDaniel. I'm taking his damned book back to the library tomorrow!

 

[Harlow]

I find so much inspiration on this forum!

Thank you all!