What soapy mistake have you made today?

[traderbren]

I love this thread.

My latest soapy mistake was not today, but I have time to ponder it today.

I made a Castile a few weeks back and put it on a rack with my hubster's home brew ingredients (they are all wrapped in vacuum sealed bags, and MOST are in plastic bins with lids). They are in our basement (we have a dehumidifier down there). I knew we had a mouse, as it seemed to like my wooden soap mold and left evidence. I caught a mouse while on vacation last month. We still have sticky traps and a battery powered mouse trap down there.

I was awakened the other morning by the strangest sound which wound up being my cat with one of the sticky traps stuck to her foot, tearing through the house.

Mousey seems to have eaten through a sealed bag of two-row malt, and left nibble marks in my Castile. I moved it to my work table today, where I've had no incidents with other soaps yet (knock on wood), but I'm trying to figure out my next step.

 

[Viore]

Traderbren, at the summer camp I worked at we had a mouse problem too. One solution was to buy a stainless steel table and put all our food on that. The mice didn't scamper or jump onto that table!

 

[Littlewifey1]

Adding to this post to vent frustration. Forgot to add my castor oil to a lovely sandalwood vanilla pap today. Such a rookie mistake. Worse thing is I checked twice too and missed it both times.

 

[Mommy]

Today's involve stamping, I got my beautiful Omar stamps and lots of mistakes in getting it right, stamping is not as straightforward as *^^ Seven makes it seem I have the planer on standby to skim off layers and try again.

Mommy, there is probably a *very* good market for your salami soap I bet there is someone out there happily raking in the cash from naughty soapgoods ...

i mean real salami like deli meat, not a euphemism meanwhile I just read this and realized that is a BRILLIANT tip for stamping!! Peel the layer off and try again?! Where has this tip been all my life?

 

[not_ally]

Probably you have yet to run across someone who needs as much practice as me

 

[amd]

Unmolded from the new loaf mold the amazing bf made for me. It all looked good until this happened.

 

[Jstar]

Ohh noooo mica line separation

 

[MrsSpaceship]

Was making a small test batch today and had planned on a pink and white ITP to go with the peony FO. It was beautiful, everything came together perfectly, I could see a lovely pattern emerging. Then, as I was filling my second to last mold, I looked over on the counter an saw my FO sitting there. *Sigh* Back into the pot it all went, and my once pretty pink swirl is now reminiscent of Pepto Bismol. :cry:

 

[gigisiguenza]

My Soapy mistake today?

I went to make a pizza in my oven and realized that the silicone mold I had put the leftover green soap batter in had been sitting in the oven, forgotten, for days LOL. Thankfully the little daisy shaped soaps came out fine and the mold was no worse for wear. I kept staring at the tray laughing cuz I'm a dope and almost baked my little leftovers daisy soaps

<---- is well known for faux pas of this sort LOL

 

[gigisiguenza]

Unmolded from the new loaf mold the amazing bf made for me. It all looked good until this happened.

Ugh that stinks, sorry. This would have surely evoked what my adult kids call "mega mad drunken sailor swearing" if it were me. Can you salvage it somehow?

 

[amd]

I don't know... This is my first line - probably why it got so heavy. I was wondering if I could make a new line if soap between the two? I only cut one bar off the log.

 

[kumudini]

Nowadays I'm bringing my end cuts together by brushing some water on either surface and line them up properly then leave them together. After sometime, they are stuck together. May be you could try that with the one bar you cut and see how it goes. It might be different because there's that mica line, but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

[nsmar4211]

Okay, today's mistake: When using skewers individually in an individual mold for testing, don't put them in before pouring the soap into each spot. Otherwise you end up with batter covered skewers. Prepping ahead is good but THAT doesn't work!!

 

[TeresaT]

I made my first try at the inverted stamp August challenge today. The batter was too thin when I poured and when I stamped, so I didn't get a good impression. To make matters worse, I dropped the biscuit cutter into the batter when I was trying to take a photo of it. Madame butterfingers. (Or, my damn butterfingers.) Oh well, like Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."

 

[amd]

Nowadays I'm bringing my end cuts together by brushing some water on either surface and line them up properly then leave them together. After sometime, they are stuck together. May be you could try that with the one bar you cut and see how it goes. It might be different because there's that mica line, but it doesn't hurt to try.

I tried that with the alcohol tip. So far they are holding. Curious to see if they hold up after a good cure and into using them. Figured there was no harm in trying it!

 

[nsmar4211]

Could've been a bad mistake, but was ok....

Took off my gloves and then decided to poke the top of the soap with fingers in the mold to make a fancier top. Ummm you took off your gloves dummy! Oddly enough, no damage done to my fingers or the top of my foot I earlier dripped some raw batter on.... either it was further along than I thought or I have tough skin LOL. Note to self: No using fingers.......no.

 

[CTAnton]

Just wanted to share and alert you fellow soapers...
Several months ago in the local ethnic market they had what was labelled pomace oil for super cheap. I stocked up needless to say.It's clearly labelled pomace oil and the low cost I attributed to what a small chain of grocery stores can offer in terms of price.Well, as the old adage says, "If it's too good to be true, chances are it isn't".....try for 95% soybean oil with 5% extra virgin olive oil added...here I thought I was somehow protected by the proper labeling laws in this country. I guess it's another adage that applies here...buyer beware.
On another note, I'm sure I'm not unlike a lot of you with a plethora of soaps at my bathroom sink. Some are bars, some are scraps of ends of log molds.
So there's this quarter inch scrap at the top of the pile that I grabbed the other day.I think you know where this is going...it's fabulous!!! Great lather, leaves my skin feeling great. And I have no idea what soap batch it came from without probably an hour trying to match it up with hopefully the rest of the batch curing...I will say I probably checked that batch at the 6 to 8 week curing mark and wasn't as impressed as I am now...which only goes to show; some things do improve with age!!
Soap on!:wink:

 

[dibbles]

I've been wanting to make a rainbow swirled soap (like this http://www.modernsoapmaking.com/tutorial-rainbow-elemental-swirl-soap/). So I came up with a recipe and to test trace, made a one pound batch. It seemed to be slow enough, so decided to go ahead and try it. Recalculated the recipe for my log mold. I decided to weigh my soft oils and water, and mix the colors the night before so I'd be all ready to go in the morning. Okay, time to make soap. Weigh the lye and add to the water, and started weighing the hard oils. Hmmm, something is not right here - and then I noticed I had put the sheet for the 1 pound recipe on top of the other. Added more lye to the water and all was going well. I was so worried about the batter getting thick I poured it all too soon and the colors all kind of ran together, leaving very little white. I was expecting clown puke. Cut it today. It's kind of pastel clown puke. Bummer. It smells good though.

 

[Mommy]

lol pastel clown puke!
I thought I'd stop by with pictures of my salami soap from page 1- ignore the stamp and just appreciate the salami:

 

[shunt2011]

Made soap on a stick then tried to save it. Plopped into my mold and into the oven set at 170 turned it off after 10 minutes. Went to check it after 30 and it had overheated. Back into the pot and hp'd it. I now have 16 bars of really ugly soap. At least the other 4 turned out.