Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More Good Clean Fun

Today my friend Kate let me borrow all her soap-making stuff and my friend Leanne came over and we made soap. I missed not having Kate here, and not just because I didn’t know what I was doing and made a few mistakes along the way. :o) But it would have been better had she been here!

Our first batch went great, except for the fact that we kind of forgot about watching it and it sort of “boiled over” in the crock pot and got EVERYWHERE! But we got it all cleaned up and it turned out great! Well, I tattooed it a bit in the mold. I was being so green and decided to line the molds with old bread sacks. They were the perfect size and everything! I didn’t think about the fact that they are covered in dye and should have turned them inside out before laying them in the molds. Now we have stamped soaps…

castille soap 04

The second batch wasn’t as smooth. I’m not sure which “oh, it will be ok” messed it up, but it just didn’t ever seem right. But boy does it smell yummy! We didn’t have quite enough castor oil and just added a bit of extra olive oil to make up for it. Then we added the orange peel, and essential oils before the soap was totally done (it was still zinging on my tongue). And we may have added a bit too much essential oil. And I made some mint tea to replace the water using mint from our garden and non-distilled water. But eventually we just stuck it in the molds and hoped it would turn out ok. We’ll see in a month when I see if it still zings…

castille soap 05

The third batch was a new recipe that didn’t use castor oil at all and we were short 1/4 of an ounce of lye. But we figured that Laura Ingalls didn’t have a digital scale and she made soap, so how exact could it need to be. I guess it has to be pretty darn exact. This one wasn’t quite right either, so we made it into three different kinds of soap. One was cornmeal, for washing after gardening and exfoliating. The other was lemon and oatmeal. It sounds like a strange combination, but it smells so nice and should be very soothing for dry itchy skin.

castille soap 02castille soap 03

I love the rough, homemade look of our bars! Now we just have to wait a month for it to cure a bit before we use it.

castille soap 01

I’m sure it will go better next time…

1 comment:

Leanne said...

Hey! I just discovered that if I click on the sidebars on your blog that it would lead me other places!!

So here I am! I found your other blog!!

I smiled when I saw "my friend Leanne", cause boy howdy, that's me!!!

The soap looks spectacular, and it gives me such a thrill when I open up our medicine closet and see it up on the shelf! I can't wait to see the rest of it.

The pickles look great too. Don't you get a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when you see all those jars? I'm proud of you for coming up with your own spice mixture.

(I guess I had a lot to say!)

Looking forward to seeing you people again!