What soapy thing have you done today?

[not_ally]

June, you are amazing. Your DH, hip replacement, moving, remodeling and you *still* have time to soap, garden and have friends over? You seem like one of those people that make the best out of everything, I wish I was more like you. I so wish you the best right now, no matter how amazing you are, it is tough when the person you love the most is really ill.

 

[jules92207]

Thanks Irish, with a husband under hospice care and at home with me his only caretaker now, there is no lounging in bed. Fortunately, at 75, I'm in pretty good shape and was before my hip replacement, so I healed quickly enough to be back to doing all my normal chores, gardening, etc five weeks after surgery. The key was to be religious about my exercises before and after surgery. Fortunately I've always been very active.

I was going to try to make soap today and managed to dig out all the ingredients and measure several molds and figure out how much oil I'll need; but a friend and old neighbor called and came over and stayed a couple of hours and by then it was too late to start because I still have to run those oil amount through soap calc to come up with a larger batch to fill those molds. So I'll do that now and try to start on the soap tomorrow after breakfast.

After dinner is not an option these days because by the time dinner is done, garbage taken out, dishes done, dog walked, etc. it's already after 8pm and I'm ready to to just do some email and work on paperwork. These days it's lights out before 10pm.

So off to soap calc I go to do a 59.5 oil recipe and make sure I have enough of the oils to do the recipe and fill the 3 molds I want to use tomorrow.

It feels good to have some time to read these boards again!

June

June you are truly an inspiration! Sending some healing energy your way for both of you. Can't wait to see your soaps too.

 

[DeeAnna]

Can someone 'splain what "cybilla" is all about on some of BB's scent names? Is it a defunct company that BB acquired some of its scent formulas? Or??? Been wondering for awhile.....

 

[amd]

I had to check it out last weekend too! Its the name of a perfumer who mixes some of their fragrances.

 

[JuneP]

Finallly!

Finally got soap made today in between all my other chores and the visit of the hospice lady who helps bathe my honey.

My 59.5 oz oil oil batch that I figured out for a large 4 oval mold, a 9 oval guest soap mold, and a 6 wave mold wound up with enough leftover to fill a one lb square mold. I can't figure out how I managed to overestimate it so much using my regular formula; but I did. I suspect it was the oval shapes that threw off my calculations.

There's a problem with the batch though and again, I don't know the cause. I posted the problem on the "Question about cream" thread. I'll post photos when I unmold them later tomorrow if they're ready. I used a 48 hard oils formula. Because I used some cream, I didn't wrap them in big towels as usual and put them in cardboard boxes instead. At least they smell good from the Nag Champa which we love. I love it so much, I put one of the empty bottles in my undies drawer. Normally my used up perfume bottles go in there. LOL

June

 

[DeeAnna]

Thank you, AMD!

 

[IrishLass]

I made a 2.7 lb. batch of Peak's Winter Wonderland, and a sample batch of Rustic Escentual's Salty Sea Air. The former soaped splendidly, while the latter was an ornery little bugger. Thankfully, I was able to get it into my mold before it turned into cement. lol

IrishLass

 

[gigisiguenza]

I cut the soap I made last night. Yet again I failed on creating the beautiful butterfly swirl I planned for, but at least this time the colors are fairly true except for the alkanet... can't seem to get it to show as purple or even lavender... am I doing something wrong here?... frustrated... sigh...

 

[dillsandwitch]

does going into my soap room and asking my soap why its not going brown count?

 

[gigisiguenza]

does going into my soap room and asking my soap why its not going brown count?

LOL did it answer?

 

[dillsandwitch]

LOL did it answer?

hahaha. No I think maybe I would be worried if it did?

 

[rparrny]

My Tussah silk bar...
I lost the yellow when I added TD white to lighten it up, not what I expected but I like it anyway..

 

[DeeAnna]

I rendered about 8 pounds of beef fat into tallow yesterday -- my second time for rendering tallow. I used my big crock pot set on the low temp setting.

The first half I did during the day and removed the liquid fat as it gradually rendered out. The resulting tallow is a pale ivory and has very little odor. Very happy how that half turned out. I added 0.5% ROE (rosemary oleoresin) as an antioxidant and let it harden up.

The second half I put into the crock pot in the evening and let it render overnight undisturbed on the low heat setting. This batch had a slight bit more odor and a slightly darker yellow color. NOT what I wanted -- that's what I get for being lazy! :/

I decided to melt this batch of tallow with some distilled water to see if I could reduce the odor and color. I used a big pot on the stove set to medium low heat. When the mixture came to a gentle simmer, I blended the oil and water with my stick blender so the water could remove some of the impurities from the fat. I then turned off the heat and let the pot sit undisturbed to see if the water would separate from the fat layer. I wasn't too surprised to see that the mixture was going to take awhile to separate -- the SB mechanically emulsifies the fat and water layers, just as when making soap, and the resulting emulsion can take a while to break back down. I reheated the mixture back to a gentle simmer and added plain salt to increase the density of the water phase, all to encourage the emulsion to break. After letting the pot sit quietly for awhile off heat, I could see the layers were finally starting to separate. I left the covered pot outside (it got down to 50 F last night here in Iowa) so the fat would harden up, and cleaned up the tallow this morning. It has about the same color and odor now as the first batch.

So I know how to fix rendered fat if need be -- but I have to say it's far better to avoid the problem in the first place! Lesson(s) learned.

 

[Saponista]

Made 3 batches of soap. Two with discolouring fragrance oil and one without. Hope at least one of them is a success!

 

[handavaka]

I unmolded a Nudie Bar, and another Pumpkin Oatmeal Spice

 

[Consuela]

Okay okay, I didn't do this today, but I did it last night.

Chopped up some Avocado Soap - (for some reason I couldn't bring myself to try pureed avocado and now I kind of kick myself in the *** for it). Should have just tried it...

Dishes.
& Cleaned.
& Organized.
& Scrubbed.
& Tidied... the soap room because I was tired of not being able to find anything in the cluster**** mess that had taken over, was tired of stepping on random bits of soap and tracking them through the house, but mostly, I can't be creative in a messy environment. It's like my brain just won't work because it's too busy trying to think around all the bull**** mess...

Funny though that this only pertains to the soap room and not the rest of my house. Because currently the living room is doubling as a playroom & dining room. So there are toys from one stretch of the TV to where the actual dining room table is (which is pretty much just where we store things because it's so large and convenient: Right now this is our office so the desktop is set up, where we store the car-seat, a stack of soap books, a couple of coffee mugs, 9000lb printer, and a collection of dust bunnies that the baby has found).

So it felt awesome to get all the cleaning and organizing done. I needed that. Now I can go back to playing in there...

But today, I have to actually get my order together. So I'm going to shop today... No soaping until I place the order.

 

[Consuela]

I love it so much, I put one of the empty bottles in my undies drawer. Normally my used up perfume bottles go in there. LOL

June

I never thought of that! I have a few bars of soap in my drawers (this lavender soap from like ten years ago...no joke...those bars have been in there for TEN years).

But I am absolutely going to switch them out for empty bottles!!!
(Of oils...not vodka.)

 

[amymisha]

Got (mostly) everything together for a batch of pumpkin soap tomorrow. Realized my coconut oil is still packed somewhere and that my digital scale was one of the (thankfully) few casualties of the move. Glad I checked!

Off to Target when I get done with work, I guess.

I made the pumpkin purée myself yesterday from a pumpkin we got in our CSA share on Tuesday. First time with this recipe, we shall see...

 

[Sonya-m]

Finally soaped after 3.5 long weeks of no soaping due to revision taking over my life!! Exam is done so normal soaping can resume!!!

 

[handavaka]

Getting ready to ring in the Fall Season...I have been considering doing a soap party at my house and after tossing the idea around with a few friends, it has turned out to be a list of 7 people thus far who want to come. So, I've been picking up a few Seasonal items here and there, including this ridiculous, zany scarecrow from walmart. $6!