What soapy thing have you done today?

[Servant4Christ]

We are homeschooling 8 going on 9 children in an 1,800 square foot house. There's no place to go with anything! At night sometimes, I dream about a big-enough house with an honest-to-goodness pantry and an extra kitchen for soaping and canning. Ahhhh, those are sweet dreams!

I'm with you. We've been homeschooling for 9 years now but this is the first year with all of them being school age, so it's been an adjustment. This is why my soapmaking is somewhat sporadic and has to be planned and efficiently executed. There just are not enough hours in a day.

This afternoon, I decided to make a small (125g oils) batch of liquid soap paste using lard (traditional, no glycerin method). It's now zap free and ready to dilute. I'm really enjoying this cold process technique.

 

[Nonnie]

Soapy messes must be in the air lol.

I attempted the heat transfer method for the first time. Not bad results, yet kinda nerve wracking watching it, seeing it cool and chunks still floating. Everything finally melted tho. My big mess was after. I poured into a column mold, turned to grab a towel to cover it, and batter was going everywhere! The bottom corner popped apart and was leaking likecrazy. Luckily, for some reason I had placed my 4" pvc on the desk too. I politely screamed at my DIL for help, and got everything transferred into the pvc. Cleaned my desk, thankfully I put down butcher or parchment paper, and floor, and piled up my dishes. One good thing from it is my room smells of glazed candy apple

 

[melinda48]

I tested, no zap. It firmed up somewhat after cutting too, though I think it will need a long cure before becoming properly hard. Maybe I used too much water (I did a 2:1 ratio but I couldn’t get the salt and sugar to dissolve in my lye solution so I added some more water to finish dissolving it all). Possibly I can add the salt/sugar to my water before dissolving the lye?

The colors are pretty muddy but I can probably blame my technique for that. It’s a tricky swirl

I add sugar to my oils; salt to my distilled water.