Why is my Lavender Rosemary soap soft?

[NewAtThis]

Hello! This is my first post. Thank you for reading it!

I've been making CP soap for 6 months using the same recipe: coconut oil, olive oil, shea butter, and a little castor oil. The only differences among my batches are the essential oils I add: peppermint, cedar, coffee, lemon, lime, lavender and rosemary (all around 0.7 oz/lb).

All my batches had gone well until I did lavender-rosemary. After 24 hours, it was soft, so I gave it another 24 hours, and it was still soft. I cut it anyway, soft and sticky. Then after 6 weeks, it was still soft enough to easily push a thumb into or tear in half. Yesterday, I made another lavender-rosemary batch with less essential oils, and after 24 hours, it's soft and sticky like the first batch was. Yet, I also made a lemon-lime batch yesterday, and it's really hard and nice just like all my others.

Is there something about lavender or rosemary that might cause a soap to be soft?

Thank you!
Steven.

 

[snappyllama]

Hi Steven and welcome to the forum! I haven't seen lavender by itself cause a noticeably softer soap, but I haven't tried a blend with anything other than orange. Are you sure your measurements stayed the same? Was it the last of your lye container - maybe humidity had gotten to it?

 

[NewAtThis]

Hello, Snappyllama! Thank you so much for your reply, and I'm so sorry it took me so long to reply to your post! Since I've made several successful batches of various flavors with the same oils, lye, scale, and techniques, I really do think that my two failed lavender rosemary batches were indeed because of the lavender or the rosemary. I think I'll try this recipe again with lavender and rosemary oils from a different supplier.

Thanks again.

Steven.