woad ratio -not enough?

[kpduty51]

Hello Folks,

I am on my sixth batch---here is my question:
The soap we made this a.m. is a goats milk soap with palm, coconut, olive, macadamia and castor. We added lavender, chamomile and frankencense EO. We tried to color it with woad (first time with woad) following the ratio recommended on Soap Making Resource, which was 1/8-1/2 t per 5lb batch. I think I ended up putting in about 1/3 t in my 4 lb batch. It is cooling now, I did not gel it. It has been about 2 hours and is warm, but doesn't seem to be heating up. I have it covered lightly so it will cool slowly. Did not need to resort to snow bank. Anyway, it has no color that I can see, other than the natural soap color. Should I have put in much more woad than recommended? I was going for a pale blue.
Soap looks good otherwise.

My last milk and rose clay soap did start to heat up and gel and so I went for it and got a full gel, and I love how it turned out. Was willing to have this one gel, too, but seems like it is not going to happen. I don't want to CPOP yet, not ready to add that step and my mold is too long for the oven anyway.
I think I like gelling.
Thanks people!
Kp

 

[kpduty51]

I just unmolded the woad soap from yesterday. It did gel after all.
Happened about 7 hours after making. I was so excited when it started.
I think it is right that I let it cool down very slowly, keeping it covered until about midnight last night, then leaving the cover off, but the plastic wrap in place. It was cool and hard this a.m.
I am still wondering about the color. It morphed from the creamy beige color to a sage mint greenish. Can anyone tell me about the woad? I was originally wondering if I put in too little, but now that it is greenish I am wondering if is this one of the colors that can result? Or is it because some of the oils were greenish or yellow tinged? I think the proportions were probably right after all as it does seem colored. Will it continue to change like I have seen with my espresso soap? I want to experiment with alkanet and indigo. I want to wait until tonight to cut it and then will post a picture of the color.
I see there are some threads with similar contents right below this and will look through them. I didn't have those results when I tried searching before, but will try to get better at the forum searches.
Thanks for your thoughts. Kathy

 

[new12soap]

I'm sorry, I don't know anything about woad, but if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page you will find links to similar threads. Try those, you may find some helpful information.