Rebatching soap - Haste doesn't always make waste!

A while back I made a batch of my Lavender Chamomile soap and it didn't come out very pretty.  I was a bit short on time and I added my lye solution to my oils when it was too hot...I knew at the time that something like this might happen, but I just went ahead and poured it in and swirled.  You can see in the picture below the effect this gives on the soap.  The edges are a bit lighter than the main body of the bar.  It is a perfectly fine soap...I used a bar and it had a nice stable lather and it smelled amazing, but it was ugly.  So I decided to try and re-batch it.  I got out my cheese grater and grated away all 12 bars and added the shavings to my crock-pot.  

I let this cook on the lowest setting for about an hour.  I added 1/4 cup water to help soften it a bit and mixed.  This continued to cook while I added a bit of water every 30  minutes of so.  I had to resort to using my potato masher to really mix the soap.  In the end it cooked for a few hours and I added about 1 cup of water. I did add a bit more Lavender Essential Oil too.  It looked like really lumpy mashed potatoes.  You might want to add less water, but I wanted to make sure it didn't stick and burn to the bottom of my crock-pot.  (I re-batched a different batch of soap and hardly added any water...I really didn't see any difference in cooking, etc - maybe this is personal preference and trial and error depending on your initial batch).  Once you are done cooking, you have to act quickly to get it in your mold.

Here is the before and after soap - both excellent qualities, but a bit of an enhancement in look.

And here is the other batch of soap.  It is all the shavings I've been saving when I trim the edges on my bars with a veggie peeler.  In the crock-pot they went...cooked and mixed with a potato masher for a few hours.  I added hardly any water and scraped into my mold.

What I did yesterday

Another four batch soap session!

from top to bottom I made:

Nettle & Red Moroccan Clay

Green Tea with Lemon Balm (from my garden)

Tomato & Sea Kelp

Chocolate Spearmint (also from my garden)

Can't wait to cut into these and see those colors!!  Totally natural, no dyes.

Then a bit of an error.  Lesson learned do your research before you turn on the heat.  So, I made a batch of black bean soup from scratch (meaning I soaked the beans overnight).  In the AM I looked at the water and thought what a cool color, I want to do something with that.  I thought about making soap with it, but figured it would turn nasty grey with the lye so I decided to dye some yarn.  I got everything ready and put it on the stove to simmer and THEN started reading about black beans and the natural dye process online.  There is a ton of info on it, just google it.  OOPS....everything states NOT TO HEAT IT!  Mine was simmering away by the time I read that bit of important info.  I guess if it gets hot, you get a murky grey/brownish color (see mine!).  If you let it be in a sealed glass jar for a few days you get BLUE!!  Seriously blue.  I can't wait to try it again.  I decided to let mine sit around for a few days longer and actually dumped in a strong brew of Chamomile tea to help with some sort of better color.  I think it will be fine in the long run and I'll still use it.

The makings of some SoAp

I was having such a blast last night making some new soap I thought I'd write up a blog post about it AND I actually remembered to grab my camera.  I thought I'd try something a bit different and do a master batch of oils with each batch having their own lye solution made.  I have four wooden molds.  Three of my molds I like to use a 44oz oil recipe and the other I use a 40oz oil recipe, but I was going to superfat that one soap with some Calendula (from my garden) infused oil so I only calculated 35oz for that one.  I had a huge pot of oils all mixed and ready to go and then I separately measured out on the scale enough for each batch.  I thought it would save me some time and happy to report it did!  I just had to spend a bit of time figuring out each batch beforehand and prepping the other additions.  I grabbed my camera to document my evening adventure.  The four batches I made are...Calendula, Chocolate Mint & Cinnamon, Almond Milk & Oatmeal, and a scented batch of Ombre Charcoal.  Here are some pics.... 

The molds all wrapped and ready to go

Chocolate Mint herb from my garden which I dried and then put in my spice grinder 

Here it is ground to a fine powder

The Sunflower Calendula infused oil which was infusing for weeks in the Mason jar

The lovely orange color of the infused oil

Some dried flowers to decorate the top of the batch

I tend to use my washer and dryer as additional space while soaping.  Here are the other additions I needed.... to make the Ombre Charcoal I used Bamboo Activated Charcoal Powder & Lavender & Tea Tree Essential Oils.  The Almond Milk & Oatmeal ready for soaping ( I always use the 50/50 lye/milk method for my milk soaps) and some cinnamon and cocoa powder for the Mint & Cinnamon soap.  I ended up not using any cocoa powder.

And an in process shot of the Ombre Charcoal.  If you look closely you can see the tape I used as my 'precise' measurement for the gradient layers.  I started with the darkest layer of soap on the bottom, used half of the container, filled it with uncolored plain soap to lightened it a bit, filled half of this into the mold then repeated the process for the additional layers with each getting slightly lighter in color until I ran out of soap.  I think I got 5 or 6 layers.  It was a SLOW tracing mix so it was a bit time consuming since each layer had to harden slightly so I wouldn't lose the effect.  I ended up shaving other soaps and doing lots of clean up while waiting between each layer.  This one took a while!

That is it!  I'll post soon with some snaps of the cut bars.   Happy soaping!!

Oh shame on me...

I have neglected you blog!  I'm sorry please don't take it personally, I've been super busy!!!

I recently had TWO patterns on Ravelry's 'HOT RIGHT NOW' tab...yep, two!  I was freakin out with excitement....(perhaps you have to be a knitter to totally understand the joy).  I attached a snap of the screen shot just to prove it...not that I was thinking you had any doubts.

I was #5 and #8...out of 250,564!!!  

AND...I've been making SOAP!

I had two orders for Baby Showers and have been putting the finishing touches on the batches, labels, etc and making a bunch of other batches.....pictures always tell a better story than me trying to describe them...plus who doesn't like pictures of soap???

 Rose Clay & Charcoal (updated version)

Green Tea & Nettle (on left) Alkanet Root infused oil & Rose Clay (on right)

 Green Tea & Nettle 

Close up of Alkanet Root infused soap embedded in Nettle before the last pour

And the finished soap.... used alkanet root infused oil embeds in Nettle..yellow is turmeric infused oil

 

Soap patiently curing.....4-6 weeks 

I love all of the colors...all natural, nothing artificial, synthetic, dyes or otherwise harmful in anyway.  I think most of the colorants I used you could probably eat!  Most..not all, but please don't munch on the soap. 

Natural Colorants in Soap -- and a CONTEST!

It was a bit hectic and I'm not sure I'd recommend it or even attempt it again, but I made four batches of soap at once.  My husband was kind enough to watch the kids while I worked in the kitchen.  I thought it would be about the same amount of time as one batch, but no ...much longer! (duh, of course it was...what was I thinking?)  It was worth it since I was doing embeds and not exactly sure how much soap mixture I needed per mold (because of the size of embeds) so I was able to use the extra mixture from three batches to make a fourth.  I simply swirled the left over paprika infused soap, indigo infused soap and sea kelp together.

 Here are the four bars waiting patiently to be cut.  

And here they are cut.......

Red Wine & Chocolate at Sunset

(the brown balls are made with red wine, I coated them in cocoa powder and embedded 

these balls in a paprika infused soap base)

Tomato & Sea Kelp --

Misbehaving Stripes

(made with tomato soap embedded in naturally colored  Indigo soap base)

'The yet to be named soap'

(a mixture of Sea Kelp, Paprika infused & Indigo Soap -- swirled)

As a matter of fact, I think I may do a little contest.  Leave a comment under this blog post for your chance to win a small gift from me.  Please tell me what you think I should name the above soap ('The yet to be named soap')....do this by February 24, 2013.  I will use a random number generator to chose the lucky winner for the small gift and will then read all of the comments and pick my favorite for the name of the soap.   Also please include your contact information so I can email the lucky winner.  Thanks and GOOD LUCK!!!

(one entry per person please!)

Shaken not Stirred...

I've been thinking and experimenting with the hopes of getting a reddish color naturally in soap.  It has been my quest for a few days and wahwahwah....not a chance with what I've tried or how I tried it.

First was just a total jump right in approach with boiling some red wine to remove the alcohol and then freezing it to eliminate the volcano effect.  I mixed the red wine ice cubes with the lye with no extra water.  It smelled horrible and turned a dark maroon brown color....looked kind of yuck.  I swirled this raw soap mixture in the mold with another batch colored with Rose Clay...calling it Wine & Roses Soap.  The red wine soap turned brown after a gel.  Days after being cut it still looks the same...no color change.  Still a brown.  It isn't an ugly brown color, just brown.  No smell remains...purely unscented.

Wine & Roses Soap

After this batch, achieving a red color was still on my mind.  I wanted to try two more approaches.  The second was still red wine, but I was going to add it to the batch by the 50/50 method.  And my third attempt was to use tomato paste.  I added the paste after a light trace directly to the batch.  

Here is a picture of the soap in the mold...the large one is the tomato paste and the smaller one being red wine.

And here they are after a gel and unmolded 24 hours later.  The red wine is still brown but not as dark as attempt number one (with it being ice cubes) and the tomato paste is a nice pale orange color.

I decided to make soap balls with the red wine 50/50 soap (second attempt) and have some soybean oil infusing with paprika for a bright orange base to toss the light brown balls into.  I'll shake the soybean oil everyday for about a week to get a nice dark color.

Here is the making of the red wine soap balls....totally reminds me of peanut butter balls at Christmas time.  As a matter of fact the 50/50 red wine soap looks about the same in color to a batch of peanut butter balls.

First Soaps for 2013

So I thought I'd try red wine in soap to see what type of results I'd get.  I expected red or mauve but I got brown.  That is okay since I swirled  it with some rose clay for what I'm calling Wine & Roses Soap.  Looks pretty cool.  I took some leftover spiced wine from Christmas (it was kind of gross...so no worries on the waste and not actually drinking it) boiled it for a few minutes to remove the alcohol then put it in the freezer.  I really didn't want to experience a volcano with the sugar/alcohol and lye.  I think next time I'll try the 50/50 wine/water method to see if I can keep the red color. 

Wine & Roses Soap

I then decided to do something with all of my leftover soap shavings I had sitting in a bowl...... that I'm so surprised my cat never knocked over.  I grabbed some Eucalyptus infused oil for the base and dumped in all of the shavings....gave it a good mix and then tossed in the remaining orange balls I had.  I think it looks pretty awesome....maybe one of my favorites.  It smells sooooo good too!  I just love all of the colors and the fact that I used scrapes that otherwise I'd have no clue what to do with.

Here it is in the mold

Bits & Bobs Soap

Soaping the Night Away....

Rose Clay & Bamboo Activated Charcoal Soap

Almond Milk and Oatmeal

Kitchen Coffee Lemon Balm Soap

Kelp Soap

Rhassoul Clay Soap

Double Mint Soap

A Busy buzzy BEE

I'm so excited!!  I'm going to be a vendor in the Indie Knit and Spin....November 17th 10-4pm in Regent Square...Wilkins Community Center....Charleston St.

This is my first show and I'm super busy making, cutting, labeling, etc and then my digital scale broke....just when I got my new soap molds too!  Things have been put on hold as I await a new one in the USPS.  At least it was under warranty so it will be replaced for free, but what a bummer.  I tried making a batch with my regular kitchen scale, but I don't like the old fashion display...I'm used to the super accuracy of the digital.


 I've been busy knitting (sort of) I usually am able to knock out a hat in like two days, but seriously two weeks later I finished one.  I think it was the pattern and yarn combo.  Excellent pattern, great results but poor yarn choice.  Don't get me wrong...it looks wonderful and is an amazing hat, but it was not fun to knit.  The yarn is awesome...super lofty and dreamy...love it!  It was from stash...left over from my days of living in LA...SUSS Yarn, Alpaca Tweed and the pattern is Spin Me Round...those decreases of K4tog...killed me!  Urgh, but like it said it is a great result.  Hopefully Maria will think so too since I'll be packing it up and shipping it across country to Portland.  She made my logo, the least I could do is knit her a hat....oh, and maybe some fingerless mitts too!  

Ok, off to check the status of that digital scale...I've got soap to make!!!  Before Oct 17th so it can cure!!!

Soap, SOap and more SOAp

Lemon Poppy Seed



Slippery Elm & Comfrey Root...this smells divine!!!

Beer Wheatgerm Soap!  Ha...had to try it and it smells awesome too! Used Duquesne Beer...brewed locally in Latrobe, PA 

Farmer's Market....made with carrot, banana and cucumber

 

I'm in love with Orange Balls