NaKIN soap blog

The Surprises of Nature

2012-01-20T01:00:00.000Z

December was cold. We got a lot of snow for Christmas, which was incredibly nice, but now it just feels like it has been snowing forever. In this weather I just want to snuggle up in bed, preferably under an eiderdown. It is amazing to me to think that in late November I was out on the allotment, building raised beds and digging manure and seaweed into the soil. There was quite a lot of weeds that I had to get out before I dug in all the goodness, so I was actually weeding. At the end of November! That's a new one to me.

Fortunately Dock is a very common weed in the allotment ground, to the dismay of many people, and my delight. I dug up quite a few fat and beautiful yellow roots. This is the most perfect time to dig up roots, when all top growth has died down and all the goodness of the plant is stored in the roots. Next best thing is this spring, just before the plant starts to put on new growth. This, by the way, applies (very logically) to all roots.

I still had a little bit left of the dock oil (my dock is Rumex longifolius, but most species of dock have the same properties) that I first infused. It's colour, dark and glorious, had always produced pretty pinks in soap. So I was eager to chop up some more roots and infuse more oil. The oil is reputed to have many benefits for the skin, but I would use it even just for the colour only. But it takes a while, about 6 weeks, for the oil to acquire the goodness of the root. It's lovely to watch the gradual change in colour, from the light colour of oil to the dark yellow, with a strange tinge of green that almost reminds me of the play of colours in an oil slick. Since I wanted some oil for my Christmas soaps I used what was left of my old oil. It was quite good still, no sign of rancidity, but I had kept some root in it for a lot longer than the 6 weeks and it was very dark and had the characteristic smell of dock root.

Well, surprise, surprise. I didn't get pink. I have read that some people only get a brown colour from dock and that has puzzled me. Mine just turns a light beige when I add the oil and stays that way for a few hours and then, just like magic. it turns pink. Except this time it didn't. It was a nice grayish earthy brown.

Fortunately I had decorated it with yellow rose petals (I know - yellow and pink? What was I thinking) so it actually looked really nice. This recipe was pretty standard, 40% Olive oil, 30% Coconut and 10% Cocoa butter and I forget what else. I haven't done my January organizing yet, I just barely managed to take down the Christmas decorations. Come to think of it, I think I never do any January organizing, but it sounds like a good idea. But I remember that I scented with Lemongrass. I thought it looked good with the yellow rose petals. And why I thought this would look good as a pink soap. Hmm, I'll never know.

Eiderdown

2012-01-14T22:10:00.003Z

I am the happy owner of 3 kilos of uncleaned eiderdown. I originally bought a small bag, perhaps 600 grams, of Eiderdown at the Good Shepherd, a local thrift store. Even if I knew that, cleaned, it would yield only 300 (10,5 oz) grams and a duvet for a full grown person requires 1000 grams (or 1 kilo/35 os/2.2 pounds) I thought it was worth it. I had to pay a bit of money for it, probably about 60$, but Eiderdown is incomparable when it comes to duvets. Mine is old and getting to be rather thin. So I had the idea that I would start to collect eiderdown for the duvet that I would have for the rest of my life.

Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to find some more Eiderdown at the Good Shepherd. This time it was 2,5 kilos of uncleaned down so I knew that I had all the down I needed for my new duvet even if more than half is straw, seaweed and feathers. I couldn't believe my luck. And this time I only had to pay around 40$, making the total outlay for the down about 100$. Eiderdown is truly a remarkable material. Somewhere I saw it described as the Fabergé egg of comforters.

Eiderdown is gathered from the nests of Eider ducks, Somateria mollissima. The female ducks pluck their breast in order for their warm body to get in better contact with the eggs and then arrange the down in the nest itself to insulate the eggs from the cold Icelandic summer. Farmers watch over the nests, protect the ducks from birds of pray, fox and mink and in return carefully remove a small amount of down, replacing it with straw which keeps the nests dry. It is generally a happy arrangement for all. The 4-5 ducklings go to the sea with their parents when they are old enough and the parents return each year to the same nest. The eiderdown is left for the farmer to pick before it is blown to sea. Each nest provides less than 20 grams of down. So it takes down from more than 50 nests to make one single duvet.

I started to clean the eiderdown just after the New Year and soon realized that it would take me absolutely ages. One needs to go over the down very carefully to extricate the delicate strands of fluffy down threads from straw, moss and a few feathers. After spending every evening for a week, I weighed the results of my hard labour and lo and behold, I had almost 20 grams cleaned. That is 2% of the weight I need for the whole duvet. At the same speed it would take me a year to fully clean all the down. I now understand why an eiderdown duvet costs thousands of dollars.

I have found someone who will clean the down for me in a machine. It doesn't cost very much, but picking the feathers has to be done by hand and I have to do that myself. It takes a skilled worker almost one day, so it'll probably take me a week. But I'm actually quite excited. I would prefer to clean all the down myself, but it takes too long.

I am now in the process of trying to find down proof silk to sew the cover. If I'm to have this perfect, most light and fluffy material I need it have have the most glorious fabric cover. I read somewhere that silk has the same thermal qualities as the eiderdown. I have been admiring some photos on the internet that I have have found of vintage duvets. They have the prettiest flowery material and I have to admit that I would love to find something like that in 300+ count silk. The traditional color for duvets here in Iceland is a mid blue cotton. It's nice enough, but I think I have to find silk for this one even if it won't be flowery. I can't wait to get my new duvet. I'll probably never get out of bed.

Happy holidays

2011-12-30T22:03:00.000Z

Snow.
And lots of it.
Candle light.
Big dinners.
Long dresses.
Cookies and candy.
Friends and family.
Presents.
Sleeping late.
Laughing out loud.
Feeding the birds.
Long walks.
Great movies.
Lots of books.
Festive spirits.
Getting the car stuck in snow.
Stranger towing it out.

Isn't Christmas lovely?

The Queen of Hungary's water

2011-12-19T23:47:00.000Z

I found a lot of recipes for the Queen of Hungary's water. The recipes are all pretty different and after reading about it trying to find the correct recipe I discovered that originally it was probably a distillation of Rosemary in Brandy and that it dates from the late 14th century. It has since been added to and modified to include various herbs such as sage, mint, rose, chamomile, lemon balm, calendula and lemon peel. The Hungary water is both a cosmetic and a herbal remedy, reputedly curing all sorts of ailments. My interest is to use it as a toner. I love to use toner on my skin, even if I read somewhere that they are useless. I don't care. So I thought I'd make my own Hungary water.

One common recipe for Hungary water is widely attributed to Rosemary Gladstar on the internet. She has been called the godmother of American Herbalism and she has written many books. This is her recipe for the Queen of Hungary's water and I used that as a base for mine. She uses vinegar instead of alcohol and I think that suits me well. I've been interested in using vinegar based toner for a while, but haven't done anything about it. Although, of course, it is the easiest thing to do.

6 parts lemon balm
4 parts chamomile
4 parts roses
3 parts calendula
3 parts comfrey leaf
1 part lemon peel
1 part rosemary
1 part sage
Vinegar to cover (apple cider or wine vinegar)
Rose water or witch hazel extract
Essential oil of lavender or rose (optional)

Place the herbs in a widemouthed jar. Fill the jar with enough vinegar so that it rises an inch or two above the herb mixture. Cover tightly and let it sit in a warm spot for 2 to 3 weeks. Strain out the herbs. To each cup of herbal vinegar, add 2/3 to 1 cup of rose water or witch hazel. Add a drop or two of essential oil, if desired. Rebottle. This product does not need to be refrigerated and will keep indefinitely.

My own version of this depended on my ability to find the ingredients fresh and free. I wanted to use only plants that I either grew myself or picked from nature myself.

So my version is here: I put in the fresh herbs in this order. I did cheat a bit and used dried lavender from the store since I had just killed my plant (with kindness, you understand). I didn't measure the amounts, but I guess there was more roses and calendula than the others.

Roses
Calendula
Comfrey
Yarrow
May Seaweed (our local Chamomile)
Sage
Lavender
Mint
Calendula
Roses

These were stuffed into a large jar (it looked really pretty) and I poured 300 ml. of white vine vinegar and 300 ml. apple vinegars. This sat in a jar for quite a few weeks until I strained it. I then diluted it, like instructed, with Witch hazel and Rosewater.

The resulting toner smells of vinegar and herbs. I don't mind the smell at all. I've gotten very used to the smell of vinegar, since I use it a lot in cleaning. The toner really works well for me. I use it to wipe away my makeup and it does a great job of it. I then use some infused oil, I love the green Achillea millefolium oil and also the Rose oil that I infused this summer. It makes for a rather shiny face at night, but also very soft skin. I also use the oils under my makeup in the mornings.

I had planned elaborate Christmas presents for the women of the family with this toner and face oil (in a serum type bottle), some face cream maybe and a lovely soap, sugar scrub, bath bomb and body bar - all in delicious scent blends, but you know how it is. Maybe next year I'll start early enough.

Happy mistakes

2011-12-13T22:49:00.000Z

One of the Christmas soaps this year had a different look, quite by mistake. Vanilla for scent and charcoal for the colour, just like the black special blend, but this one has no frou frou look about it.

For some reason the soap didn't mix all that well. I didn't notice that anything was different until a few days after I cut it and the colour started to develop. The look was just like Granite rock. So that was the name it got.

The scent is only vanilla and it smells sweet and innocent, although it looks rather wicked. I made another batch, to try and duplicate it, but that ended up in a very badly lined soap form so I couldn't get it out. It was just stuck in there and I had to spoon it out. It was still quite soft so I thought I'd make small balls out of it to use as decoration or something. The balls didn't want to form nicely so I ended up with really uneven looking balls. The next day when I took a second look I realized that they looked just like pebbles on a beach (yes, the beaches here are black, sand and rocks. White beaches are just an exotic foreign thing to me).

But this mistake again turned out great, because I've had two people enthuse about my pebbles already. Funnily enough, both have a hard time saying nice things about my flower decorated soaps. It's funny how tastes are different, but I can quite see the appeal of the rock look. So I'm going to polish them a bit once they are properly hard and put a few into a bag or on a dish and present them to their admirers for Christmas.

This recipe is a very basic one.

Olive oil 40% - 280g / 10oz
Coconut oil 35% - 245g / 8.6oz
Rapeseed oil 15% - 105g / 3.7oz
Soybean oil 10% - 70g / 2.5oz

Medical charcoal for colour, vanilla for scent and sugar crystals for a touch of glamour. I love it when something that seems to be a failure turns out to be something that I would never have thought of doing myself.

Im memoriam

2011-12-10T22:41:00.001Z

Five years ago, today, my father died. He, like all fathers, was the most handsome man who ever walked this earth. I worshipped him when I was a little girl. I woke up with him very early in the mornings and ate porridge with blood sausage and sipped cod fish oil from the bottle. I was going to marry him when my mother died because I knew that he would need a wife to take care of him. I collected plants and he taught me how to dry them and label them correctly. He also taught me to play chess and appreciate both classical music and Faroe Islands folk songs although the latter was more of a: If you can't beat them, join them.

He loved to watch Opera and sports on TV. He would watch the Olympics and World Cup soccer and practically every major sports event that was shown on TV. And he was serious about it. He would take vacation time and wake up in the middle of the night to watch if he had to. He was also very interested in politics and loved a hearty debate. And he had a great sense of humour. He bought us Donald Duck magazines (in Danish back in those days) and always read them himself first. He'd come home with some candy and tell us that it was from our dentist. I believed that for years and thought we had the nicest dentist.

It is always amazing to me how much more difficult it is to loose a parent than I ever thought it would be. I thought that old people (because I am now an old woman by my own definition as it was some years ago) didn't feel the loss of parents that much. I mean, everyone is old, the parent and the child and old people die. Everyone knows that. So it shouldn't come as a surprise and it shouldn't hurt. But it did.

Tomorrow is his birthday. He would have turned 78, an age that was once ancient to me, but is now not that old. I will spend the day with my mother. I always buy her flowers on this day and I probably will also do that tomorrow. But even nicer, we will go for a coffee in Keflavik, a small fishing village since we are driving my 83 year young aunt to the airport which is right there.

I am very fortunate in that I like my mother very much. She has been my best friend for many, many years. She isn't perfect. She is a lousy housewife and a horrible cook, but she is very intelligent and very funny. And she is the best grandmother anyone could ever wish for. Probably because she was a very good mother. I look forward to tomorrow even if it will be tinged with sorrow and hope that we will have many, many more days together because I can't even begin to think what I'd do without her.

My special blend - The Black

2011-12-07T14:29:00.001Z

Black is the opposite of white, so the next soap was obvious. I love everything vanilla and especially vanilla scented perfume, but perhaps not an undiluted sweet and sickly scent. I prefer a bit more sophisticated blends that have some of the warmth and sweetness of the vanilla but also some element of freshness.

I wanted to try to make a vanilla blend but I didn't want the soap to be brown. I do remember the 70's when everything brown, orange and avocado was the height of fashion but brown isn't exactly romantic. So I wanted to disguise the brown. Don't get me wrong, I love brown soaps and the rustic look of unbleached linnen and stuff, but for this purpose I didn't want the brown of the vanilla to show. I used medical charcoal to colour the soap black and the first idea was to decorate it exclusively with white flowers. I thought that would be a really serene and cool look. But then, when I was rummaging through my stash of dried herbs, I came across the red clover and it was this pretty purple. So I decided to use that for decoration and consequently this soap is a bit wilder than originally planned.

The scent is a blend of Vanilla, Sweet Orange, Palmarosa, Bensoin and a bit of Ylang Ylang. The scent is very nice. Quite unusual, but my younger daughter likes it the best of my blends so far. And she has very good taste.

To decorate I used dried flowers of Red Clover, Rose, Alchillea, Calluna and dried leaves of Rubus. The dried flowers are holding up well so far and I'm optimistic that they'll look nice at Christmas too.

The recipe for this soap is a little bit different. This time I had neither lard, not did I want to sacrifice any more duck fat, so I used castor oil instead. I wanted something to make it conditioning and it can be used for the hair. And I didn't have anything else. This soap also got a bit of sugar and silk like the other ones. I can't wait to test them. They should be very nice.

Olive Oil 45% 225g / 8oz
Coconut Oil 30% 150g / 5.3oz
Cocoa Butter 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Rice Bran Oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Castor Oil 5% 25g / 0.9oz

The soap turned out to be quite black and sultry looking with the dark red flowers. For some reason it got me thinking about my German grandmother and that spun some thoughts about the other soaps and who they would fit of the elderly ladies in my life. But that might be another post.

The market went quite well, we couldn't have stayed another day. The table looked rather bare at the end as we almost sold out. Thankfully we didn't since we had promised a few soaps to someone and those were some of the ones that were left. But all in all a really nice experience. I love talking about soap. I could go on forever, and almost did. Someone asked if we were thinking of teaching how to make soap and I think that might be something to consider. But not till after Christmas. I still haven't done the Advent wreath, but everything is sitting here ready and staring at me. I'd better get going.

My Special Blend - The White One

2011-12-01T23:13:00.001Z

Inspired by my yellow soap I made a white one. I used the most delicious enssential oils and although I intended to use the same recipe as for the white one, I didn't have any lard left so I had to make up a new one. I wanted something similar to the lard, so I reached into the fridge and pulled out duck fat. I love it for roasting potatoes, but I've never used it in soap but since the profile for it's properties on SoapCalc looked good I gave it a go.

So here it is, my lovely white one with some wildflowers. I used the rose buds again and then I found some viola flowers that I had dried. They are really tiny and don't have much of a shape, but they are a vivid blue that almost stands out in the medley of different colours on top of the soap. I used pretty much everything that I could get my hand on: Lavender, Calendula, Chamomile and Raspberry leaves. Now I only have to hope that the flower petals last for a bit and don't all turn brown before Christmas.

The recipe is similar to the yellow one:

40% - 200g / 7 oz. Olive oil
30% - 150g / 5.3 oz. Coconut oil
16% - 80g / 2.8 oz. Duck fat
8% - 40g / 1.4 oz. Rice bran oil
6% - 30g / 1 oz. Cocoa butter

I used both sugar and silk in this soap as well and titanium dioxide to make it whiter. The scent was a blend of my favorite: Neroli with Sandalwood and Bensoin, Bergamot and Palmarosa. This would be an outrageously expensive soap if I had to price it. I used half of my tiny bottle of Sandalwood on this recipe, the rest is in the yellow soap. Sandalwood is a really, really ice scent. But so terribly expensive. I would also have loved to use rose in this, but I understand that it is more expensive than gold. Or maybe that was yesterday, those prices are still going up I believe. But anyway, I really love the scent. It is a true blend, with the scents merging into a whole different entity where it is hard to recognize the component eo's.

I don't know which one I like best, the white or the yellow. And then there is the black, which is pretty cool as well. There is a glimpse of it in the banner photo. That one is for the next post, but first I need to get the market done.

Cut!

2011-11-27T19:02:00.001Z

The yellow soap turned out a very dark yellow and to be truthful I like yellow when it's mellow. But I still like this one very much. The smell is heavenly and although I tend to think that soaps look their best just poured into the mold and freshly decorated, I still love the way it looks. A bit frou frou and old lady. It is going to look absolutely horrible once it gets wet, but who cares? It'll look very good as a gift and then it'll still smell really nice.

I have been on a roll, making more of these, but in different colours with different fragrance blends and I plant to make a few more. I've already done one white and one black and I want to do one blue and another pink. I'm just waiting for a fresh shipment of oils so that I can mix the fragrances that I've imagined for those.

I've also lost it! I'm going to be in a Christmas market next weekend with my soaps and some jewelry that my sister-in-law makes. The market idea just happened and I have no idea how it's going to go. I won't be selling the special blend soaps, but I've made some lavender and lemongrass ones with flower decorations. We have been selling soaps to friends and last week one friend took some samples with her to work and we got an order for about 25 soaps. That is a lot for us and we were thrilled. I guess it went to our heads and therefore the market seemed like a good idea.

I went today to scout out the territory. It's quite cute actually and since we've just had the first snow it looked really nice. It's this place where people can cut their own Christmas trees and then buy some coffe and waffles with cream and jam and also some crafts. Everything that is sold in this market has to be made or designed by Icelanders, so we fit right in.

I've been so busy printing labels and getting myself organized for the market that I didn't have time to do the Advent wreath today. Oh, well I'll get in done tomorrow, or the next day. There's plenty of time... isn't there?

I really like this one

2011-11-19T02:08:00.001Z

I made this soap and I intended it to be just like one that I made last year. I really liked that soap. I loved the colour and the scent, and I especially liked they way it felt. It was the first silk soap that I made. So I thought I would replicate it. But I didn't. In part because I didn't have the exact ingredients and in part because my brain gets ideas most of the time and tends to want to do different things all the time. And I let it. Because that way, life is fun and not boring.

So I did this soap, mostly like I did last time, except I couldn't decide if I should use Annatto seeds and make it a soft yellow or use the fresh Rumex oil that I had just started and make it pink. So I used both. I thought: Maybe I'll get a pretty orange or coral colour. But I didn't and it's a rather dark yellow, but that's fine because the really nice thing is that I did a fragrance blend that I really, really liked and the decoration reflected that and I think it just so cute.

The recipe that this one turned out to be is:

38% - 200g / 7 oz. Olive oil
28% - 150g / 5.3 oz. Coconut oil
19% - 100g / 3.5 oz. Lard
6% - 30g / 1 oz. Cocoa butter
6% - 30g / 1 oz. Sunflower oil (half infused with Annatto seeds and half with Rumex root)
4% - 20g / 0.7 oz. Rice bran oil

I used an infusion of Baldursbra/Mayweed as the water. It gives a lovely yellow colour and also smells really nice. It's a local herb (almost weed) that is sometimes used the same way as Chamomile. I also added about a teaspoon of sugar too the tea before dissolving the lye. Then I added quite a bit of silk threads (still using the bridal silk) and let them dissolve in the lye.

For the scent I used some Sandalwood (the real expensive stuff), Bergamot, Bensoin, Palmarosa and Ylang Ylang. And as the crowning glory I threw on a few dried flowers: Some tiny rosebuds, some Chamomile and lavender and a few herb leaves that I had hanging somewhere. I put this in my boudoir (it's the previous girls room that I now filled with my thrifty treasures) because it smells so nice that I wanted that scent to infuse my special place.

I had this idea a while back that I would like to experiment more with fragrance blends but somehow I haven't really gotten into it that much. I guess there have been other things to occupy my mind. But now I feel that I want to make a few experiments. I've decided to make a few more soaps like this one, but with different fragrance combinations. I think one very white, but a rosy scent and perhaps one blue (if I can bear to sacrifice my indigo) with a greener sort of scent and then I should do a pink one with either Rumex or Rhubarb oil and something lovely smelling. Oh, I'm really quite excited about these. Maybe they look a bit "old lady", but I'm turning into one anyway. They will be my special blend soaps and I make them in my small 500g mold. And then I thought I could do a matching fragrance blend for some sugar scrub cubes. Or dollops, I think dollops look more old fashioned and lady like. And I would love to do both a bath bomb and lotion bar. That would make a wonderful Christmas present.

I'm really getting into the Christmas spirit now, in spite of unseasonably warm weather (it's been raining non stop for weeks). I even baked my first batch of Christmas cookies the other night. I've never been this early. Ever. This is going to be a lovely holiday season. I can just feel it. No. Actually. I know it. Because I decided it's going to be just that. A lovely holiday season.

Soap!

2011-11-13T19:15:00.001Z

I've been making soaps again. The Christmas soaps are pretty late this year, but I've been busy with many other things and so has my cousin. Of course, I have made quite a few soaps this summer and autumn, but perhaps not as many as last year. There are so many things that compete for my time. There is gardening, visiting thrift shops, herbal stuff to make and of course the dying and then I have a few projects at home for some DIY. But most time consuming has been Pinterest (www.pinterest.com). It's completely addictive. I even saw something that I almost pinned. It was one of those clever sayings and it compared Pinterest to Crack. Not that I would know for sure, but I can well believe it.

I just spent an hour and a half to add a Pinterest button to my blog. I had to try it. It looks slightly too big, but I've given up tweeking the size for now. But I love Pinterest and wouldn't want to be without it now. Just a great place to store interesting bookmarks and webpages. This is my Pinterest . I've also started to use Evernote and an organizer/notes thing as well as something called Myfitnespal in an effort to get rid of those eternal extra 5 (or is it 10) pounds (and that's probably kilo's). But at least I'm getting very, very organized. And I have to mention that I finally cleared the clutter in the kitchen today. It almost looks empty now with all that counter space.

But back to soaps. I have been making soaps for Christmas lately. Lavender was a given since my daughter needs it to give to the grandmothers. They just adore Lavender. So we (my cousin and I) made two soaps with Lavender EO and experimented with the colours a bit. One of the soaps was Alkanet infused oil with a bit of Rhubarb oil and the other one was also Alkanet oil, but with more Rhubarb soap. This was to make the purple look a bit more red, to celebrate Christmas. My cousin suggested that and I love to do things a bit differently every time, so I was game. The colours are really nice. I'm not sure which one I like, especially since they change a bit with time as the soap cures, so I'll reserve my judgement for now. The recipe was from last Christmas which I posted before, so I won't repeat it. For decoration we used Sugar crystals to decorate the soaps and that looks pretty good. I think it looks like jewels, but my sister asked if we were using broken glass!

We also did some little soaps to decorate other soaps. We did pink hearts, using the Rhubarb oil from this summer. It only takes a little I find. I used IKEA ice cube molds for those. And then we also did stars. Those were just natural colourless soap that I poured into a tray and I used a cookie cutter to make. Maybe they should have been yellow? But I think I just may spend some of my precious Indigo to make blue soap with a star. That would be really Christmas-y.

Lichen: Obsession no... Oh! What was it again?

2011-11-07T23:06:00.001Z

Or: The importance of being rigorous about writing things down

I had this uneasy feeling that something wasn't quite right, but since I couldn't find the piece of paper I had written my notes down on, I brushed it aside. But I was right. Something was wrong. I got my Lichen soaps mixed up. I'm not used to making many batches at the same time. I usually make just one batch, sometimes two and I have done three at a time, but then my cousin was with me. So this marathon soaping session was quite unusual for me. Afterwards I was sure I had written down what lichen decoction went with what scent and what I put on top of them, but I couldn't find it. So I tried to do it from memory and, boy does that not work!

When I started making soaps I wrote down the recipes in a notebook and then input them into Soapcalc and saved them as pdf files. So I'm pretty organized. But since I was using the same one for them all I just saved the first recipe and wrote the name of the lichen and the scent and what I put on top on a slip of paper that I found in a hurry. Then I misplaced it.

I finally found the piece of paper, so I could correct my mistake. But the results were so surprising that it was really counterintuitive. The Lichen that coloured the most is the one that give the least colour to yarn. The first one I wrote about, Peltigera canina. But parts of that post are wrong, I had the wrong soap mached up with the Lichen. I simply coudn't believe that there was this pretty Peach from so little colour. Admittedly, I used Lemongras EO which is yellow in colour, but that was only about 10 g and then 10 g of Peppermint EO which doesn't have any colour at all. So it must be the Lichen.

I thought I would get a better feeling for the Lichen's potential to colour stuff by doing these experiments, but I have to say: I still haven't quite figured it out. Lichen is still a mystery too me and still just as fascinating. I will continue to read about them and try them out, both as ingredients in soap and as dyes. Even as medicinal plants, because many of them are used as such. Just totally fascinating organisms.

Don't ask how I like the soaps. I haven't tried them yet, they are still curing. I have been using the face cream that I made with lichen decoction. And I like that. Pretty sure that the lichen decoction does something good. I really need to try more soaps, I have a few that I haven't tried yet, the Seaweed soap among them. I've finally exhausted the subject of Lichen soaps although I am still dying yarn with new lichen varieties that I have found. But, not a day too soon, I have also started to make soaps for Christmas. I can't wait for Christmas. I love that time of year.

Lichen: Parmelia saxatilis - Obsession nr. 4

2011-11-01T22:48:00.001Z

Parmelia is the lichen that has most commonly been used here in Iceland to dye. It gives rather nice yellows and browns and even over to reddish browns. And it leaves it's wonderful scent in the wool. As with other lichen, heat will make the colours more brown so dying cold is actually quite smart. There are three varieties of Parmelia that grow here and all are used to dye wool. They all look very similiar, but P. omphalodes is slightly more brown in colour than the others. P. sulcata has a wrinkly kind of surface. I think the one that I collected is P. saxatilis which is known as Shield lichen or Crottle in English. Crottle was also commonly used in Scotland to dye wool.

I came across this lichen by accident. Even if it is quite common here, I hadn't quite figured out where to go to look for it. But my husband and I were taking my mother in law for a drive to see a place where we sometimes take the dogs for a walk. It's a lovely place, only minutes from the city and there is this river and a few small summer cottages and there is also some lava rock that is covered in moss and also Parmelia saxatilis. I sat on the rocks and as I touched the rock to steady myself I felt that it wasn't actually a rock, but a lichen. It looks just like rock. That is so cool! I am always so grateful for these little gifts from nature and in that spirit of gratefulness I gathered a little bit. Just enough to cover my palm really. Because there wasn't that much of it in that place. I'm not dyeing large quantities, only about 20-25 grams of wool at a time (there are about 30 g to an oz). I'm just curious about what colours I can get and I want to document that.

There isn't that much written about lichen dyeing compared to dying with plants, but what there is in Icelandic is about Parmelia. There isn't usually any difference made between the different Parmelias in dyeing literature, but I'm interested in the subtle differences. But the problem lies in identifying them correctly. I may have to look to one of my father collegues for help one day because I just may be wrong about the particular variety.

I did the same with this lichen as I do with all the others. I first simmer it in water and coloured some wool. That gave me a mustard kind of yellow. It's very nice even if I'm not a fan of the curry yellows. There just simply doesn't seem to be a lichen colour that I don't like.

Then I tried to steep it in ammonia, but that didn't really do anything special. At least not yet. It's still sitting there and I'm still shaking it. This can go on for weeks. Up to 16 weeks I've read, so patience is needed. But, I'm not expecting purple from this one. It would be more of a maroon, or in the best case a burgundy colour. But we'll just have to wait and see.

I had rather high hopes for this in a soap. It somehow seems logical that a light yellow liquid will give much less colour than an orange one will. But... You'll have to wait for the next post. There was a bit of a mix up and I couldn't find my notes, so this soap you may have seen before in my Peltigera post. That was wrong. This soap, the one that I decorated with Gallium verum, is made with Parmelia water, not Peltigera as I thought. And it only produced a slight blush of a colour. And no mustard tone to the soap. It really amazes me how unrelated the yarn and soap colours are. I would have thought that there would be more of a correlation between the two. Because even if I have been using the exhaust baths to colour the soaps, there has been quite a bit of colour left in the water. But I'm sure I'll have to try the lichen decoctions fresh in soaps one of these days. For now this is just experimentation for fun. And I have a lot of soaps that smell of Vetiver and something. Oh, yes this one does have Orange Essential oil and Vetiver. At least I got that right.

Going back

2011-10-31T20:00:00.000Z

I've sometimes wondered is it is possible to go back. You know, to visit the past. I think I read somewhere that you can never go back. It's never going to be the same and it's bound to disappoint. And I have tended to agree with this viewpoint most of the time. I know that when I've gone back to visit places where I've worked it's always been kind of awkward. Even if I was there on genuine business and not just to visit old work mates. But then again, I recently met an old friend that I hadn't seen in ages and it felt like we spoke just yesterday. So I don't know.

Nostalgia is a positive thing in my mind, although I've never really looked the word up in a dictionary until now. I just did and I guess my husbands view of it's meaning is more correct than mine. Wikipedia says it's a: Yearning for the past, often idealized. Hmm. I don't feel that way about the past. To me it's more of a celebration. A happy feeling. Memories of an adventurous life, strange places and foreign people. A realization that I was very young once, not that I knew it at the time, and probably made some mistakes. But that's all right. That's life. "Je ne regrette rien" and I certainly don't long for the past to come back. As much as I love to look through my albums at my old photos (and it always brings a smile to my face) I do not want to relive it. It was happy, but not all the time. Any given stretch of time is bound to have it's ups and downs, it's life. That's the way it is. Messy, but wonderful on the whole.

So anyway. I got to go back. To this place that I first saw 31 years ago: Colorado. Wonderful, wonderful place where I spent five years of my life. And it celebrated my return with the most glorious blue sky, bright sunshine and wonderful autumn colours on the trees and a lovely unexpected 80 degrees. I even got parking spots downtown without problems! So, yes. It is possible to go back. It's not the same as it was, but I didn't expect that. I didn't even want that. Part of the fun of going back is to see what has changed. The roads are wider and there are houses everywhere, where there were none before. And new shopping malls. But the Pearl Street Mall is there and the Hill, and The Harvest House and Boulder Canyon hasn't moved an inch. My apartment building is still there and the Denny's is still on the corner. The Dairy Queen has moved from the shed into a better building and now there is a Starbucks close by, and Whole Foods. And a Goodwill store. Perfect! I could move right back.

But, no. I'm back for real now. To my life, the one I live today. I already coloured some more wool and I have planned a soap session with my cousin tomorrow. It doesn't matter how much fun it is to travel, either in time or space, it's always best to come home.

Lichen: Ochrolechia or Pertusaria - Obsession nr. 3

2011-10-09T01:44:00.001Z

The lichens that I have already posted about, have been foliose, but now it's time for a crustose lichen. Those are the ones that are like stains on rocks. This type is quite abundant on rocks in the wood where I walk the dogs.

I am not sure if it's an Ochrolechia or a Pertusaria. It is probably either lactea or corallina. The former is a creamy or gray colour and has a pimply surface and can grow to about 15 cm, the latter is very white and without the bumps and gets even bigger, to 20 cm. I'm not the only one who is confused, P. lactea is sometimes also called Ochrolechia lactea, so if biologists are confused...

But anyway I'm pretty sure that both O. (or P.) lactea and O. (or P.) corallina both grow on the rocks because there definitely are lichens that are more white and others that are more gray or cream. I collected tiny amounts of the cream or gray ones and still have the white ones to explore. Oh, there is so much to do and so little time! But, on the bright side, I have something to look forward to.

It is pretty amazing that a colourless body of a crusty something can produce colour, but it can. This lichen gave me the most beautiful sunny yellow on wool when simmered. I first dyed a small amount of Icelandic wool and as it is very white I got this beautiful yellow. The Alpaca wool that I'm using for the lichen dyes now are much darker in colour, so that the colours are more muted.

After I had used the lichen to dye in water I put the same lichen into an ammonia solution and it turned a kind of red colour with a hint of brown to it. I shook the jar every day faithfully for over 3 months, sometimes thinking it was on the verge of turning purple, but I gave up in the end and dyed with it.

It is a lovely earthy pink. I also dyed another skein in the exhaust bath, which gave a lighter shade. I was very happy with that and expected great things from it in a soap. But of course you never get what you expect in this natural colour business.

In preparation for the glorious pink I expected I scented the soap with Geranium as well as the Vetiver and put some hibiscus on top. But the colour never showed up. Just a slight blush of a tint in spite of the strongly coloured water.

It is so amazing to me that it is possible to get two such different colours from the same material. How can one not be fascinated by these unpredictable things?

Lichen: Melanelia exasperata - Obsession nr. 2

2011-10-02T21:20:00.001Z

I noticed that there was a lichen growing on one of the birch trees in my garden. It wasn't pretty or anything, I actually thought it was slightly revolting. But it was a lichen and there was plenty of it. And it was on my tree. So I took some. It had a green colour that was quite tempting.

I first boiled it in water to see what colour that gave to Icelandic wool. It produced an off white colour. Not the most exciting, but quite useful in many colour combinations. I gave it to my daughter for a blanket that she is crocheting.

Next I put the Melanelia in Ammonia solution and I let it sit for a few weeks. This is quite common to do with lichens because some of them will produce remarkable colours if they are steeped in this stinking solution for a few weeks. And shaken every day. In the olden days they used stale urine, most often from cows. I have it on good authority from an Icelandic dyer that running after cows with a bucket to collect urine is a rather uncertain endeavour. And as much as I love the methods of old, I decided to skip this one. And peeing on it myself just seemed too self sufficient, somehow.

Anyway the ammonia solution is generally 1/3 ammonia, 2/3 water and it's better to have a good lid on this. The smell is horrid. I really knew that it wouldn't produce any exciting results because I have basically read which lichens are the primary dye lichens and Melanelia hasn't been mentioned. But the thing is, there are a few thousand of these lichens and not all of them grow everywhere and maybe no one tried this with Melanelia. So I had to try it for myself.

When it was apparent that nothing exciting (that means reds, pinks or purples in my mind) would come from the Melanelia I used it to dye a small skein of Alpaca wool. The colour was slightly olive green. Not as green as I expected because the water from it was a fairly distinct green in a muddy brownish sort of way. But I read somewhere that the colour of the dye water is not a good indication of the colour that a lichen produces. These guys are just full of surprises. But this is the greenest colour that I have had from lichen.

The Melanelia soap I did was exactly the same recipe as the other lichen soaps. I only varied the water and the scent. For this soap, which I hoped would be some sexy green colour I chose Ylang Ylang with the Vetiver. I didn't get a sexy green, nor the rather muddy sort of greenish brown that I more realistically expected. In fact the soap hardly took any colour at all.

I put some Birchbark with Melanelia on top to make it a bit more interesting, but maybe it's just a bit creapy. But the scent is lovely, earthy and seductive. I might use that again.

But the conclusion is that Melanelia exasperata (I'm pretty sure it is exasperata, but I willing to be corrected if a lichen expert should see this) is worthless as a colouring agent in soap. It will produce an olive tint to wool in roughly equal quantity of lichen to wool. The exhaust bath will be a light beige. No reds or purples lurking in this lichen and it doesn't give much scent to the yarn, although the decoction smells nicely of lichen. But it was a nice experiment and now I can leave it alone on my tree.

My neck of the woods

2011-09-25T18:07:00.001Z

I went for a drive on Friday. There is this place only about half an hour from the city called Hvalfjördur (Whalefjord). It's a long fjord that used to be the major road to the north, but has now been replaced by an undersea tunnel. It's a very deep fjord and I remember how tiring it was to drive it on the way home, first all the way into the fjord and then all the way out again. But it is a really nice place to go to, especially now that there is hardly any traffic there.

I had the idea to just wander about and look at the plants and see what I would find. This is of course a slightly crazy time to go to the countryside, the plants are dying and all the leaves are turning yellow. And red. Glorious reds and oranges and it's just all very pretty. I'm not much of an autumn person. It's my least favorite time of year. But this autumn has been quite nice and we haven't yet has a powerful low pressure system blow away all the leaves. But it's getting a bit cold and as everyone knows it's always really windy out in the country. So I dressed in my trusted ski overalls (bright red and easy to find should I get lost and have to be rescued). I also made myself some sandwiches and took some cookies and something to drink and drove off.

I hadn't planned to pick any berries. In fact I hadn't even thought about berries at all, and even if I had, I would have been sure that they were all gone. But I saw so many fat and juicy berries that I had to pick them. They were Empetrum hermaphroditum, which I understand are called crowberries in English. We call the plants krækiberjalyng and they are the most common berry that grows here. I will make saft from them. Saft is just the juice with a bit of sugar to sweeten, but I thought using honey would be nice. It will be very healthy with all the antioxidants of the berries and the the antiseptic properties of honey. I like to have berrysaft to take in the morning, one tablespoon a day, with the fish oil.

I also found some lichens. Actually I found a lot of lichens and I collected some. I'm not quite sure what type they are, but suspect one of them is a Parmelia. I need some more lichen dyed wool for my someting-soft-and-warm-around-the-neck-this-winter-project. My mother also gave me an Umbilicaria lichen that she collected for me. My mom wrote her BS thesis about moss and lichen that grow on the graveyard wall that is a stones throw from where we lived . I'm very excited to try to dye from that. It could give me that elusive purple.

And I wasn't alone in the fjord. I had the company of the local sheep that still haven't been rounded up for winter. I love the way they look, so haughty and arrogant. Like they own the place. And of course they do. I was just the visitor. This is where they live all summer long. I thought it would be nice to post a picture of them in their natural habitat. So if you see Icelandic lamb in Whole foods, you can be sure that you are buying mountain lamb. They are almost like goats they climb so high.

When I came home I went to the store and bought some fresh lamb's liver for dinner. I used to get inards, like liver, hearts and kidneys for dinner very frequently as well as whalemeat and seabirds. But so many people have stopped eating that although I don't know why. My husband wasn't used to this type of food, but I've gotten him to like both liver and whalemeat, but he won't eat the kidneys and hearts, but the dogs love those.

Liver is really delicious and very easy to make. We use lambs liver almost exclusively here, but calf liver is very popular in Italy and I think some nations eat liver from grown cattle.

But I think that if you can make a delicious meal with just salt and pepper as the only seasoning, then that food is the best. So here is my liver recipe:

Slice one onion and brown it on a pan until it is soft in half olive oil and half butter.
Cut the liver into fairly thin slices and brown them on both side in the pan.
Pour some water over the whole thing and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the liver is no longer pink. But don't cook it longer than that, check it by cutting into the slices. Liver gets very tough and unappetizing if over cooked.
Thicken the liquid to a sauce by your preferred method, I use a maizena thingy from the store. I also add a bit of cream to the sauce if I have some.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve with boiled new potatoes, fresh salad greens and red currant jelly.

So now I just have to make the saft, make some Rhubarb syrup from the last of the Rhubarb stalks this year and then make fruit rolls from the left over mash. I'm also wondering if I could make fruit rolls from the left over mash of berries. And I'm all out of yoghurt and the sourdough bread is almost gone. I bought a lot of broccoli at the store since they had them on offer and I've started to eat this delicious Broccoli soup for lunch. So I'm making a lot of soup and freezing it. And then there is all the timber that I got for free and plan to use to make raised beds for the allotment garden. And I'm crocheting that warm thing and also a jacket type ting from the sweater that I unraveled last week. I really wish I had another weekend coming.

Peltigera soap

2011-09-17T22:17:00.002Z

I had to use the lichen infusions in soaps. That's just obvious. If one can get colour from something one has to try it in soap. I was very curious to see what I would get from the lichens in terms of colour. So I made a few soap with the different lichen decoctions that I had.

After some thought, I decided that they would all share the fragrance of Vetiver, but I would add other essential oils that I felt would match the colour or character of the specific lichen I was using. Vetiver is a masculine kind of scent, rather dry and I thought it was a great base scent. I knew that there was no hope of the lichen scent to come through the soaping process on it's own.

One lichen, Evernia prunastri (Oak moss) is extensively used in the perfume industry as a fixative and base scent. The method of extraction is a trade secret and anyway, I couldn't get hold of that, it doesn't grow here, so Vetiver had to suffice. But other lichens also have this very distinct and generally pleasant smell and one of the benefits of using lichen as a dye is that the wonderful scent stays with the yarn or cloth through it's lifetime and every time the garment is washed the scent is very noticeable.

I started with Peltigera canina and used a recipe for the soap that I think is going to be a good one. It contains lard which I find gives a lovely hardness to soaps in the absence of palm oil, which I have a hard time getting without even getting into the ethical issues. I didn't expect any colour from the Peltigera and I didn't really get any. I'm pretty sure that whatever slight colour there is, is as much a function of the essential oils as the lichen itself. So why bother? Well, besides satisfying my own curiosity, I thought they might be cool to try out. The Cetraria islandica soap that we made some time ago turned out to be very popular. And lichens have many unique components and they are still being researched for all sorts of medicinal uses. Many have anti bacterial, anti viral and anti fungal properties. Peltigera canina has been used as a liver tonic and cough medicine, as well as to treat urinary disorders, thrush, tuberculosis, and rabies. I wouldn't count on it as a rabies cure, though!
The recipe for the lichen soap was:

30% Olive oil
25% Lard
25% Coconut oil
15% Soybean oil
5% Cocoa butter

The water phase was Peltigera canina decoction and I scented with Vetiver, Orange and Cubea litsea. I put some dried plant material on top of it just to make it a little bit interesting. I didn't have the dried lichen so I used Gallium verum, Ladys bedstraw, which I had handy. Peppermint and Lemongras. (I made a mistake, the soap in the picture is indeed scented with Vetiver, Orange and Cubea litsea, but the water phase isn't Peltigera canina. I got my soaps a little bit mixed up, sorry about that. The right picture of this soap is in a post dated Nov. 7 2011.)

I made four soaps with the different lichen decoctions that I had and I had a blast. They didn't give any spectacular colours, but there was one surprise. But I like the Vetiver scent with the variations and I think these soaps just might be the coolest gift to the biologists in the family.

Will the lichen do anything for the skin? I don't know, but I decided to use some of the decoction in a face cream. It's quite nice and since I have been reading some magazines with cosmetics ads I'm pretending it's one of those 100$ miracle night creams that will make me beautiful overnight. And guess what! It seems to work. Overnight! I just love the placebo effect.

Lichen: Peltigera canina - Obsession nr. 1

2011-09-06T21:36:00.001Z

Lichens have totally taken over my life for the moment. They are so weird and different that it's hard not to be fascinated by them. There isn't that much information around about lichen dyes and what little there is is often without latin names and that makes everything difficult. I use latin names a lot although I realize that some people think that is very snobbish. It isn't. It's the only way to talk about specific plants without causing confusion. I read about plants and dyeing in many languages and common names are very different from country to country and they tend to be quite arbitrary so that translating them is no help at all.

Lichens are totally different from other organisms and not much is understood about how they work. They may look like they are a single organism, but in fact they are two or more partners that form a symbiotic relationship. One of the partners is a fungus (mycobiont, for those who are interested) which makes the vegetative body of the lichen which houses the other partner, the photosynthetic (photobiont) one. The photosynthetic partner (there can be more than one) is usually green algae or cyanobacteria (cyano is from the greek kyanos=bluegreen) and it's funtion is to produce energy for itself and the fungal partner. Cyanobacteria is quite well known to most soapers: Arthrospira platensis and A. maxima are the latin names of Spirulina which can be used to make green soaps.

There are about 13,500 species of lichen on the planet, but only 750 are found in Iceland. Lichens are basically of 3 types:

Foliose - which means that they are leaf like in their structure.
Crustose - those are like a crust stuck to a surface and are usually very thin and tightly attached. These are about 75% of all lichens.
Fruticose - these are branched structures.

One of the problems with lichens is that they can be very hard to identify, but at least it's fairly easy to classify them by the above and work from there.

Since lichens grow very, very slowly I am careful to harvest only common lichen that I find growing abundantly. I have a rule of never taking more than 1% of any plant material that I collect and therefore I have no fear of collecting too aggressively.

I have known about lichens forever, as my parents taught us well and especially about the more unusual plants like lichen and moss, my fathers specialty. But I wasn't all that interested in them although I remember noticing how many different species of moss and lichen can grow on one tree trunk in one of the last trips I took with my parents about a year before my father died. He pointed it out to me and showed me how different things grew on different sides of the tree trunks as well as at different heights and on different tree species.

Peltigera canina isn't a particularly good dye plant. So why did I write a post about it? Well, about a year ago when I noticed this lichen growing on a rock in the woods on my evening walk with the dogs. Something about it fascinated me, and I was hooked from then on. I collected a little piece and took it home. I was quick to identify it as the very common Peltigera canina. It has been used as a medicinal plant to treat treat wounds, urinary disorders, thrush, tuberculosis, and rabies. I later found it growing simply everywhere in the woods and in many other places. It is amazing how a whole new world opens up when we discover something new. And what a wonderful world it is.

It will give a light yellow colour to wool and silk. There are lichen that will give reds and purples, so yellow isn't all that special, but I love it anyway. It's soft and natural and it goes well with many other colours.

I have been using Icelandic wool (Lopi) to dye, but for the lichens I decided to use alpaca wool. It's so wonderfully soft that it's obscene. I need something soft and warm for this winter.

Seaweed salt soap - and my icy cold hands

2011-08-28T00:10:00.000Z

I went to pick seaweed with my cousin and mother the other day. We timed it carefully since we wanted to pick a particular kind of seaweed, Pamaria palmata. Dulce is the common name in English, but we call it Söl in Icelandic. Dulce has been used for ages here as food. They are very nutritious and are sold as snacks and some people used them in green drinks. This is why we were going to collect some, because my cousin uses them in her nutritious morning drink and it is rather expensive at the shops. Self sufficiency appeals to me, even if I don't really eat that much of the stuff.

Dulce grows at the very lowest point of the beach where there is movement of the sea most of the time and in order to pick it we had to wait for the lowest tide of the month and we were fortunate that this month it happened to be a Sunday.

We only had to drive about an hour from the city to find a nice place to collect seaweed. There are these two really cute tiny villages with tongue twisting names (Stokkseyri and Eyrarbakki) and old houses made of timber, clad in corrugated iron and painted in vivid colours with white windows. I really love those old houses, no matter how impractical they are in the modern world with their low ceilings and tiny rooms. They have some really nice restaurants in those villages, but we didn't stop this time.

We had to walk pretty far out on the beach to find Söl, the species we were chiefly interested in. We could hardly sea land by the time we found some and had almost given up and turned back. It was really hard to walk on those round seaweed covered boulders and we had had to leave my mother behind pretty early on. I left her, bless her heart, sitting on a rock, hoping she would make it back on land without braking any bones. I had made sure to take some refreshments with us but unfortunately I had the car keys in my pocket, so she was left stranded alone on the beach with nothing to eat and no phone (that was is the car with the food). She wasn't upset at all, but started to collect plants to show us when we returned. Still teaching me about plants, like she did when I was little. So I learned all about the few plants that grow by the sea.

Even if the sun was shining it was pretty windy and cold and we could hardly see land anymore. But all that was forgotten when we started seeing the Söl. We managed to collected three bucketfuls before we started to work our way back to safety, with the tide rising steadily. I was beginning to get a bit worried that we would need to be rescued, but we made it back safely, if a bit tired and cold (did I already say that?).

We didn't just collect dulce. We also saw these really pretty green seaweeds that I now know are Ulva lactuca, or Laver. I collected some because I wanted to use them in soap to see if I could get the lovely green colour.

That soap just had to be salt soap, I mean how could it not be. Sea. Salt. No brainer! It did turn out green and a nice green at that. The photo doesn't do it justice. It will probably not last too long, but I'm enjoying it all the same.

I had decided to make about 2/3's of it non-salt and have the rest a salt soap. So I poured quite a lot of soap into the mold and them dumped some salt into the soap batter I had left. It turned out to be the exact opposite. More salt soap than not. I should have tried to get some fancy blending of the two. But I thought it was going to be a straight line. Oh well!

I used a lot of coconut oil to see if it lathers. So the recipe is quite simple:

Cocoanut oil 50% 250g / 8.8oz
Olive oil 40% 200g / 7.0oz
Cocoa butter 10% 50g / 1.8oz

Seaweed blended with 200g / 7.0oz of water.

I scented it with a blend of Peppermint and a hint of Vetiver. It's quite nice and appropriate for this sea inspired soap. I used fine sea salt. I like that a lot better than coarse salt. It makes a smooth rock hard surface that doesn't scratch. I look forward to trying it. I kind of like salt soaps. They are so different and this one is very authentic with real-live-seaweed that I picked myself from the sea with my icy cold hands. Did I already say it was cold?

Fairy candy - Strawberries

2011-08-21T19:45:00.000Z

Strawberries are Fairy candy. Or they could be Goddess fruit. Definitely they are otherworldly good when you grow them yourself. Much sweeter and juicier than store bought no matter if they are imported or grown locally. I think it's because they are picked just a little too soon so they don't get damaged in transport.

This summer I got a bowlful of my own homegrown strawberries for the first time. A whole bowlful! I've had a crop of strawberries before, but it's always been one or two at a time, but not a full bowl of fully ripe strawberries, deliciously red and sweet and juicy.

I have two varieties of strawberries. Some nameless one I bought in a garden center (they never seem to care about named varieties here) and a named variety that I grew from seed so the name was on the packet, but I have since forgotten it (but I think I have the empty packet somewhere). The seeds came from Denmark and the flowers are pink and the fruit is large and dark and juicy. This variety flowers well and doesn't try to send out runners like the other one does. That is a good thing since that means it will concentrate on flowering and producing lots of fruit. But I lost most of the plants last winter so I want to propagate the plant that I still have. So I saved a few seeds to sow and am hoping to raise a few more plants.

Strawberry seeds need to get a period of cold in order to germinate, so I put them into the freezer after cleaning them well. I only have 11 seeds, but I find that it never pays for me to sow too many seeds at a time. It only results in way too many seedlings and consequently neglect and death. I prefer to sow a few seeds and take very good care of them all. Putting the seeds in the freezer somehow doesn't feel very kind, but if that's what they want...

I grow them in a long and narrow box that I built and hung up on a sheltered wall in the garden. I used some left over timber that I had, screwed the whole thing together and hung it up with some chains. I take the box down in autumn and keep it close to the house, right under the balcony so it doesn't get soaking wet in winter. That way most of the plants survive until next spring. I gave them very good soil this spring and added lots of well rotted horse manure as well as some water retaining gel. I also mulched with the manure and I have fed them with comfrey fertilizer to boost flowering. I seems to have paid off.

The nameless variety sends out a lot of runners and this is not good for fruit production but I can easily get lots more plants. I almost can't keep up with sticking them in pots. I'm growing them to give to my younger daughter (her apartment has a garden) so that she too can harvest her own next summer. Her husband doesn't really like strawberries. Why is it that it's just girls that like strawberries? Most guys seem to be able to take them or leave them. My husband doesn't really eat them. I'm not complaining, I would be devastated if I had to share my berries. There really aren't that many of them. And after all they are Goddess fruit, so really not for men, are they?

Gift from the gods, brought by the butler

2011-08-15T00:00:00.003Z

Filipendula ulmaria - Meadowsweet is a lovely medicinal plant. It is well known as a natural painkiller as it contains salicylic acid, the ingredient in aspirin. The plant is however, unlike aspirin, quite gentle for the stomach and is used to treat heartburn since it neutralizes stomach acids and it is used for peptic ulcers. It is anti inflammatory and as such it works well for rheumatic pain. It is also astringent and a urinary antiseptic. It is even gentle enough to treat diarrhea in children.

It's name in Icelandic is Mjaðurt, which means Meadplant. Mead is a drink that the vikings drank way back when they were delusional enough to think Iceland was inhabitable. There are no surviving recipes for mead, but it was probably alcoholic and some think it was made with honey, but it is fairly obvious that Filipendula ulmaria was used in it.

I got the idea to make a drink from Meadowsweet when I had finished the Rhubarb "champagne". I was sure that it would make a lovely drink that would be even more like Champagne than Rhubarb. The scent of Meadowsweet flowers is sweet and warm, almost vanilla like, but still very distinct. The leaves have a slight almond like smell that is again a bit different. I made a potful to try it out. And Oh! Jumm! I really like it. This is no drink for viking brutes. They can drink robust Rhubarb drinks. This one is a drink for the girls, wearing white lace, sitting in the garden in the sunshine with the butler reverently serving this delicate tasting and lovely natural champagne, like it's a gift from the gods.

The recipe is simple.

Take about 10 - 15 flower heads of Meadowsweet and put in a pot with cold water, about 4 liters/quarts.

Add:
A sliced lemon
500g. /1 pound sugar
1 desert spoon of apple vinegar.

Let this sit for 24 hours
Sieve this and pour the clean liquid into 2 liter plastic bottles, close them and let sit for a couple of days.

When the plastic bottles are quite hard, you put them in the fridge to stop the fermentation.

When you open the cold bottle, the drink will have a gentle carbonation and taste divine.
This drink is lovely and refreshing and would go well with Macarons. You know! Those French lovely cookies that I'm always planning to make. That'll be another post one of these days.

I am making another batch of it these days to give to the vegetable club of the Garden society who are coming to visit the allotment (and I offered to be their host). I did give some to my husband, poor thing, he went into the hospital three times last month and finally got out last week (and no I never did smack him on the head with the bat :) and he's getting all better, finally. Although that could be a result of receiving correct medical treatment rather than drinking this lovely drink. But you never know, do you?
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My favorite books about soapmaking

2011-08-08T21:56:00.006Z

I buy books. A lot of books about all sorts of things. If I get interested in something, the first thing I do is to buy a book about it. Or even better, two books... or more. So I have a few books about soap making. I love all my books and I am always so grateful to the authors that they took the time and made the effort to write a book to share their knowledge with me and many others. I would like to share a few of my favorite titles and books about soapmaking are first in line. I have to say beforehand that I do not know any of the authors. I have only bought their books and read them. I haven't read every book there is about the subject, but if I see a book about making soaps, I look it over thoroughly and buy it if it interests me. What are your favorite books? I might be missing a few!

I think my absolute favorite book about making soap must be Anne Watson's simple little book with the big title: "Smart Soapmaking: The simple guide to Making Traditional Handmade Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably, or How to Make Luxurious Handcrafted Soaps for Family, Friends, and Yourself".

It was my first book on making soap and I did read an awful lot of reviews about a lot of soapmaking books before I chose that. I wasn't disappointed.

The book doesn't have glossy photo's, just very nice black and white line drawings. It isn't big and it isn't expensive. What the book has is very clear instructions on how to make soap. It talks about the dangers of lye (so much so that when I made my first soap I looked like I was ready to go to the moon), equipment and ingredients. And it lays out in very clear steps how to go about making soaps. Anne gives quite a few recipes and I would think that anyone, anywhere would be able to find ingredients for at least a few of them.

The best part of this book is that Anne doesn't try to make the process complicated. She simplifies things quite a lot. Especially that "trace" thing that had me scared that I wouldn't know when it happened and then everything would be ruined. Or that the soap would seize and then everything would be ruined, Or that I wouldn't be able to get it out of the mold or that I wouldn't be able to cut it.

This is a book that I would recommend to any beginner interested in starting to make soaps. It is by far the best in my humble opinion.

Another life saver that I want to mention is Soapcalc. I use it every time I make soap (I tend to make a new recipe each time, that's crazy but that's the way I am. I'm sure I'll come up with THE one perfect recipe one of these days). But Soapcalc is absolutely invaluable. I know there are other soap calculators out there and I'm sure they are just as good, but this is the one I started to use and have gotten so used to. Soapcalc lets me choose grams or pounds or percentages and change between them in the middle. I love that. It doesn't look particularly good, but it is functional. The only thing that is that I would say is: Don't use the default 38% water. It makes for a very wet soap. Change it to 30% or even less.

Anne has also written another book with and equally interesting title: "Milk Soapmaking: The Smart and Simple Guide to Making Lovely Milk Soap From Cow Milk, Goat Milk, Buttermilk, Cream, Coconut Milk, or Any Other Animal or Plant Milk". That is excellent for those who are interested in making milk soaps. Milk is a bit difficult to work with and here I learned that the best milk soap makers can make very white soaps using milks of all sorts.

I also discovered in that book that there are plant milks and that in soapmeking the same rules apply to those as to traditional milk. I come from cow country and it was almost news to me that sheep and goats produce milk, but coconut milk! Almond milk! That's not milk to me, but apparently when it comes to soapmaking, it is. Oh well! You live and learn :)

Another book which I found very helpful was Susan Miller Cavitch's "The Soapmaker's Companion: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques &amp;amp; Know-How (Natural Body Series - The Natural Way to Enhance Your Life)". What is it with these long titles on books about making soap?

What I liked about that book was the complete opposite of what I liked about Anne Watson's book. This book had loads of information about all the different additives that is possible to use in soapmeking. Variations like colors and scents and shaving soaps and exfoliating soaps and ... the list is endless. And that is terribly interesting when one is starting out and is just very thirsty for more ideas to work on. So that is one great book to have on the bookshelf. Again, there are no large glossy photo's in this one, but nice line drawings and plenty of inspiration.

Finally, I have to mention a special favorite of mine. This is a series of books about absolutely everything. Well, everything that is remotely related to the country: Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins.

I just love them. They have bulletins about raising chickens, natural remedies, growing the best blueberries and building a root cellar to name but a few. And they're only around $4 each. They are all written by different people and they say they have more than 200 different titles, some of them very interesting. "Axes and Chainsaws". How cool is that!

I have a few. No! I didn't get the one about axes and chainsaws, but I did get the ones about natural remedies, hand creams and cheese and soap. I think I also ordered the one about beekeeping, optimistically hoping my husband would suddenly change his mind about that. Or maybe I just dreamed that. I can't seem to find it now, but I did find a lot of titles that I would like: "Great Rhubarb Recipes"! I need that one :) And "Making Grapevine Wreaths" (although I think my grapevine is about to give up on life), "Planning & Planting a Moon Garden" might be the answer to that or maybe I should just get "Sleep and Relaxation: A Natural and Herbal Approach". That actually sounds really good. I should just do that.
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Luxury from the garden - Lilac infused oil

2011-07-31T21:53:00.001Z

The end of July is such a busy time. I feel that summer is nearly over, almost before it began and there is still so much to do. I have a long list of things to complete in my allotment garden and my own garden at home is getting very overgrown and slightly neglected. I was late in dividing the plants this spring, mostly because of the cold weather, so I need to do that in autumn. I have a few plants that are getting way too big and they have smothered some smaller ones. So I need to tidy it up a bit this fall, if it is to look decent next spring. But as I sit and look out into the garden I am amazed that is looks quite nice.

I have mostly chosen plants and shrubs with pink flowers (Peonies, Dicentra, Astrantia, Deutzia, Clematis, Honeysuckle, Lonicera tatarica, Lilac, Syringa palibin, and the dainty Saxifraga x urbium) and a few with white ones (Peonies, Rhododendron, Lily of the valley, Astilbe, Amelanchier, Philadelphus), dark reds (Peonies, Astrantia, Hollyhock) some violet (mostly Campanulas) and an occasional yellow (Primulas, Trollius, Rosa Friesia, Honeysuckle, Iris pseudacorous) and blue (Clematis Alpina, Iris sibirica, Geranium and Violas). I have a small Japanese maple with it's lovely aubergine foliage and a similarly coloured Viburnum diablo as well as my apple tree to contrast all the green foliage of the ferns and shrubs as well a a couple of Euphorbias, one lime green and one purple. So all in all I am pleased with the garden. I do miss some of the plants that I have tried many times to get to grow in my garden, but without success. Clematis montana, Anemone sylvestris and A. hupehensis and many, many Hellebores are among my many casualties. And all the Mediterranean herbs, Rosemary, Thyme and the lovely Lavender. I have killed them all repeatedly.

I am always interested in adding new plants, especially if they have a nice scent. I really, really like the ones that smell good and constantly bury my nose in them and inhale deeply. I have often lamented the fact that it isn't possible to make essential oils from some of the loveliest flowers like Honeysuckle, Lilac, Viola and Lily of the Valley to name but a few. But I have found a way to capture some of their scent to keep for the winter months. I infuse their flowers in oil. So now my kitchen tables are covered in flowers that I am drying slightly which I then intend to cover in olive oil.

I pick the flowers in full bloom when they smell the strongest. It is of course best to pick them in dry weather around midday, but before it gets hot, but beggars can't be choosers, so I pick them even when it rains. I just let them dry off a bit before I put them in a jar and pour oil over them, making sure the oil completely covers the flowers. I am using Olive oil now, but I have used Almond oil, Peach kernel and Sunflower oil as well as Jojoba. It is best to choose an oil that agrees with your skin and has a decent shelf life.

The important thing is to infuse the same oil at least three times. I let the flowers or petals sit in the oil for 2-3 days and then strain it and squeeze the plant material well with my hands to get all the oil back in the jar. Inevitably there is always some water that gets mixed up with the oil and it can look quite gunky. The smell of the oil may also be slightly off in the middle stages of this process. Don't let that bother you, all will be well. When the last flowers or petals have been strained out I let the oil sit for a bit and let the gunk sink to the bottom. I then use a Turkey baster to transfer the oil into the final squeaky clean container, be it a bottle or a jar. That way the oil is pristine and completely free from any impurities and the gunk is left at the bottom of the old jar. It may be a good idea to add some vitamin E to the oil and store it in a cool place to ensure that it keeps well. I use infused oils as a face serum and body lotion and I also use them in my creams. They make really nice gifts when bottled in pretty bottles with nice labels.

I am quite excited to be getting my first batch of Lilac oil. The lilac flowered quite profusely this year so I can sacrifice a few perfect flowers without denuding my shrub. Last year I made Lilac drink, which was really nice, but this year I am making infused oil from my Lilacs. I'm also in the process of making Rose oil and Calendula oil and will make some Honeysuckle oil as well when they flowers and another batch of Honeysuckle infused honey. I still have my rose oil from last year and it smells divine and I can't think of a lovelier way to start and end each day.
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My Icelandic sweater - Dyed with Rhubarb root

2011-07-28T14:20:00.001Z

I finished knitting my Icelandic sweater. Knitting it didn't take that long, less than a week. It was finishing it off that was a bit fiddly as I have never done one that is cut up in the middle. Like a cardigan. I actually only knitted one Icelandic sweater before and that was many years ago. So I'm no expert. They are usually knitted from rope roving which we call Plötulopi. It's not spun and it pulls apart very easily. But you can also just as easily twist it back together.

There are fashions in these sweaters as in everything else and today they are usually knitted with a pattern only around the shoulders rather than at the front of the arms and the bottom of the sweater as well. The fit is also tighter. Although I have to say that some of the older patterns are beginning to look quite good to me. I used a pattern called Héla that available free on the internet, but I adapted it to suit my needs. I made the sweater longer and changed the rib to a proper rib and I added a steek. That was new to me. I found really good instructions for that at the excellent See Eunny knit website.

I made the pattern myself. It's just flowers and hearts and something. I wanted to make it girly because I thought it suited the colours. The sweaters are usually made from naturally coloured wool, so this is a nice change. I really enjoyed dying from Rhubarb root. I got very nice colours and there is something really soft and gentle about the colours that is completely different from synthetics. I also loved to be able to knit with colours that I made myself.

I know my husband wants a sweater so I may start to knit him one soon. His will not be girly at all and I don't think I'll use my natural dyed wool for his sweater. It'll be quite traditional with natural sheep colours. I know that he wants a light background colour and probably brown tones rather than gray. Now I just need to find a nice pattern. Since his is going to be in the round it'll take much less time. I should we able to finish it in one week.

I like to have something to knit or crochet although I only do it sporadically. I have been crocheting a pattern for a hat from the 40's and am looking forward to putting that together. I love 40's hats. I bought one in a charity shop that I absolutely love. It's black and I use it when I go to funerals. I used to wear hats all the time in the early 90's, but I guess that went out of fashion. The one I'm crocheting now, I'm doing it in a shiny red yarn and it could look good. Or just terribly silly.

I love blog awards

2011-07-26T23:31:00.002Z

Topcat of Titania's Dreamy Delights awarded me with a blog award. Thank you for that :) Getting an award is just really nice.

The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award are:

1 – Make a post and link it back to the person who gave you the award

(and include their website address)

2 – Share 7 random things about yourself

3 – Award 7 recently discovered bloggers with this award and

contact them to let them know they have won.

The hardest part is to nominate 7 blogs. There are so many to choose from, but the good thing is that I get to choose someone who hasn't been nominated and I decided to nominate a few blogs from far away. Many of these I can follow by using Google Translate and although I know the translations are sometimes quite approximate (to be kind) I wouldn't be able to understand anything at all if not for those translator. Thank you all international soap makers who delight me regularly with your wonderful blogs.

Happy Tiny Bubbles - Finish blog: http://happytinybubbles.blogspot.com/
Les savons de Lavandine - French blog: http://lessavonsdelavandine.blogspot.com/
Grön Sape - Norwegian blog: http://gronnsaape.blogspot.com/
Delicate Matter - Russian blog: http://tmateria.blogspot.com/ I had a problem posting a comment to her, so I don't know if she'll see that.
Gioia Made Soap - English language: http://gioiasoap.blogspot.com/ Also problem to post comments here, but...what can you do?
Sapo Onis - Spanish language (I don't know from which country) http://sapo-onis.blogspot.com/
Monchi Soap - Japanese blog: http://monchisoap.blog102.fc2.com/ I just have a hard time posting a comment on that site so I don't know if she'll see that.

The seven random things about myself:

1. I have two Bichon Frise dogs. They are Perla, the mother, and Táta, the daughter. Perla is my sweetest darling, she is most beautiful, well mannered and dainty. Like me, she is a fussy eater. Táta is very boisterous and she'll eat anything that crosses her mouth and as a result she is a bit chubby. She's constantly ona diet, but it's hard because she'll eat the bird food and the goldfish food (and her mothers food if she can). She loves to get wet. And she loves absolutely EVERYONE.

2. I like to wear white. Specifically White Levi's 501's, White Jockey T-shirts and White Keds. I got really bored with all the black clad women here in the dark North. I mean, I know black is sophisticated, but when EVERYBODY dresses in black ALL THE TIME it just gets depressing. So I rebelled. I wear my whites when I garden, so sometimes, technically, I wear brown also!

3. I'm 5 foot 10 (177.5 cm) like Princess Diane. I wanted to be small and blond with curly hair and brown eyes when I was little. I added: A smaller nose and bigger boobs to that list when I got to be a teenager. Now I'm just really happy with the way I am "warts and all" so to speak. I even made peace with my straight hair.

4. I love American Country music.

5. I sip cod fish oil from the bottle every morning.

6. I work out with a good friend of mine 3 times a week. We lift weights, go to spinning classes, do Yoga and Pilates. My favorite form of exercise is Pilates, by far. I think it's because it's easy and it doesn't have to cost anything (have I mentioned that I'm a closet cheapskate). I used to do it at home, on the floor, every day for an hour. Boy did I look good then :)

7. I am a HUGE fan of Terry Pratchet. He writes fantastic social commentary books in the form of Fantasy literature. Best known are his Discworld series. My favorite characters are DEATH and the Wiches, particularly Granny Weatherwax. I plan to be like her when I get old.

Was that too much information, perhaps? Oh, well!
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Lupine soap - looking for lime green, but no such luck!

2011-07-19T22:24:00.002Z

It isn't often that I'm lost for words. Some members of my family would say that is impossible. I talk a lot. I just seem to deal with things verbally. But now I feel stunned. I just don't know what to say. I probably shouldn't even mention it. I mean I'm sure to offend someone if I admit to wanting to take a baseball bat and give my husband a good whack on the head. Don't get me wrong, I love him dearly. But what is it with men that makes them live life in a way that can only be described as: Suicide by lifestyle? So there! Now I've said it. I feel better all ready. (And he is slowly regaining his health and way to frail to be able to take a whack on the head. So I just give him a kiss every now and again. It measurably improves his oxygen saturation.)

I did make a soap while he was in the hospital. I woke up in the middle of the night and got this strong urge to visit him. Which I did. I have learned always to listen to such urges. When I got back home I was still wide awake and decided to make a soap using the leftover Lupine decoction I had from dyeing earlier.

Lupine is an alien in Icelandic nature. It was originally imported as a soil improving plant, because it has the ability to bind nitrogen in the soil. Unfortunately it is a thug, colonizing large areas of land and in the process it eradicates the more delicate native species. Instead of 20 species cohabiting, we now have this one. Very showy, but a poor substitute for the local Flora. But since it gives a very lovely lime green when used as a dye plant I've sort of semi-forgiven it. And at least by picking the flowers, I can prevent it from setting seed and spreading even further. So that is a satisfying, if quiet, revenge.

Lupine flowers make the most wonderful dye. One would think that they would produce a blue or a purple, but they give the most wonderful lime green colours to both protein (wool, silk) and cellulose (cotton) fibers. Naturally, I wondered if I could get the ever elusive green colour in soap by using Lupine decoction. It would have been so much fun. But it didn't work. Instead I got this quite soft yellow. Not bad, but not green. I fully intend to try it again and use lower temperatures next time to see if that makes any difference. Since I made this soap in the middle of the night and was quite tired, I didn't bother to wait for anything to cool down much, so I soaped this one at unusually high temperature (130F instead of the more usual 90F) and that may have had an effect on the colour. I'm also pretty sure that the temperature is the reason it seized on me, but I did get it into the mold alright, in spite of that.

Lupine soap

Olive oil 40% 200g / 7oz
Coconut oil 30% 150g / 5.3oz
Grapeseed oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Rapeseed oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Cocoa butter 10% 50g / 1.8oz

Water 33% 165g / 5.8oz (this was water that I had simmered Lupine flowers in for an hour)
Lye 70g / 2.5 oz

I added some lavender and Cubea Litsea EO for scent and that smells lovely. Lupine doesn't have any scent itself.

I was thinking as I made this soap, tired at five o'clock in the morning how amazingly relaxing it is to make soap. I realized that I now relax by making something, creating something rather than trying to relax by laying down on a couch like I used to. And what a wonderful way to relax. And have fun at the same time. Naturally.

Rhubarb hair colour - and that is the last of the Rhubarb recipes

2011-07-09T00:27:00.002Z

My Rhubarb talk went really well. The venue was this folk museum that has some of the oldest houses in Reykjavik and it looks like a small village in the olden days, complete with animals and people in the national costume. The weather was incredibly nice and the turnout was good. People had to squeeze to get into the room.

I gave them all the recipes that I've posted and then a few others. I was a little surprised that people were surprised that you could do something other than just jam and pie. So the ice cream, soup, drinks and muffins recipes were all enthusiastically received. But I did save the best for last and I think that really, really surprised them: Hair colour from Rhurbarb!

I was a bit surprised myself when I found them and I have to admit that I haven't tried them, but I just had to share them anyway. And please let me know if you dare to try. And, no. The photo's are just for fun and in no way reflect the outcome of the recipes.

This recipe is for lightening hair and originally comes from a book called "Natural Beauty" by Aldo Facetti, but I found it on Ehow

1 oz. (30 g) rhubarb root, finely chopped or powdered
1 pt (1/2 liter) cider vinegar
2/3 oz. (20 g) chamomile flowers
2/3 oz. (20 g) marigold flowers
Juice from two fresh lemons, squeezed and strained
2 oz. (50 g) acacia honey
2 oz. (50 g) 95 percent proof liqueur
Thick conditioner

Boil the root in the vinegar for 10 min.
Add the flower petals and simmer under lid for 5 more min. and then let cool.
Strain and add the lemon juice, honey and liqueur.
Add enough conditioner to make this into a creamy consistency.
Apply to hair and cover with sower cap.
Rinse with cool water and let hair air dry.

Here is the recipe for dark hair. I found it on Harmony Green blog where there are also a number of other recipes for herbal hair dyes.

3 tbsp Rhubarb root, mashed
2 cups water
Kaolin clay to thicken

Simmer the mashed root until half of the water has evaporated.
Add enough clay to make into a paste.
Wash hair and divide into sections. Apply the paste to every sections like any other hair dye.
Leave for 15 min and check the colour by rinsing and drying a strand. Leave for additional 15 min. and keep checking until the colour is dark enough. After 1 hour the root will not give any more colour.
To make hair even darker, repeat after 2 days.

I am pretty sure that the blond recipe works because all the ingredients are tried and tested hair lighteners and it also contains honey and conditioner so it shouldn't be too harsh. I hae to admit that I am a bit intrigued by the other because there the root is supposed to mae the hair quite dark. Now I know that in acidic environment the rhubarb root colour will turn yellow and that in an alkaline the root will turn a lovely mahogany brown. I guess the clay must be alkaline.

I might have to try this out to satisfy my curiosity. But not yet because I am putting finishing touches to my Icelandic sweater. It is very pretty in it's summer colours from Rhubarb and I look forward to wearing it. But I guess that is the subject of the next post. And then I'll have to start to think about something else!

Rhubarb to dye for

2011-07-02T15:46:00.001Z

When I started to look into natural colours to use in soaps I was inevitably led to websites about dying fibers with natural materials like plants and bugs. I was fascinated because I had always thought that the only colours you could get from nature were dull beiges and browns and maybe some greens. And that didn't appeal to me. I like rainbow colours, vibrant and clear. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the exciting pink that the Cochineal bug gives and the deep purple of Logwood, not to mention the fabulous blue of Indigo.

I have been collecting bits and pieces of dye stuff for just over a year. I came across a website that sold some natural dyes and I ordered some like Madder, Alkanet and Logwood which I tried to uses in soap, mostly successfully. But I also ordered some mordant even if I had no clue what it was. I only knew that it was used in the dyeing process, but didn't really understand it's function. Then I started to notice books about dyeing and I bought some. In my Icelandic book about medicinal plants and also in general books about the Flora of Iceland there is always the mention of how each plant was used in the past, either for food, medicine, dyeing or other practical purposes. I found all this absolutely fascinating stuff! It's hard to explain, but I find it somehow comforting to learn how to make things that usually come out of factories.

When I was a kid, we were taught a lot in school. We had cooking and baking lessons and handiwork lessons where we learned to knit and crochet and sew and embroider. Or rather the girls did, the boys learned woodworking and such which I would also have liked, had I known that it was possible for females to do macho things like that. But I didn't know about sexism then and now I am very thankful for what I learned at this early age. I remember when I moved to the States and heard my American friends talk about baking "from scratch". I had no clue what they were on about. Scratch? What was that! Some ingredient? Equipment? I couldn't believe it when I found out that it was possible to buy something in a box, add water and eggs and call it baking. Hmm. Where's the fun in that!

So anyway, back to natural colour. I wrote a post about my first dyeing experience using Dandelion - Taraxacum officinale) and this cold spring I have been busy dying with some plants that are in season as well as some of the dye stuff that I have bought. I have now dyed from Cochineal, Alkanet, Comfrey, Rumex, Lupin, some Lichen and now Rheus (Rhubarb to you and me). And this post is about my Rhubarb colours.

When I was asked to do this little talk about Rhubarb I wanted to show a lot of different ways to use the Rhubarb. One of them is obviously to use it to dye yarn and fabric. And what colours! Beautiful soft yellows, through orange to corals to green (with the help of some copper). I can't wait to finish my sweater. The Icelandic sweaters are usually made in the natural sheep colours of greys, browns, white and black which I really like, but knitting one using my own home dyed yarn is just so cool! I've almost knit enough to be ready to knit the pattern. I just need to make one up. I want it to be a flowery, girly untraditional something. I have to see what I can come up with.

It is possible to use both the leaves and the root of Rhubarb to dye animal fibers. I don't know how cotton receives the dye. I need to find out. But wool and silk take the colour quite well. The dyebath is made beforehand by simmering the chopped dye stuff (either the root or the leaves) for 30-45 minutes and strain it and let it cool. The leaves give a geenish yellow, but the root gives the most lovely range of colours in the photo.

The wonderful thing about Rhubarb is that there is no need for a mordant. That means that there is no pre-treatment required. All one needs to do is to wash the fiber to get it thoroughly clean and wet. Squeeze out excess moisture and put it into the cold dyebath. Then the whole thing is heated up to about 80C (very, very slowly if one is dyeing wool. It should take at least an hour) that temperatur held of 30 minutes and then let cool down over night. The fiber is then rinsed and dried.

I have a few books about dyeing. I own everything that has been published about it in Icelandic that I have been able to get hold of, some of the old stuff has been typed up and photocopied. But out of everything that I have seen on the subject there is one woman that stands out to me as the most generous and reliable source of knowledge. I have two of her books and love them both. Jenny Dean has a blog that I recommend to everyone and her newly republished book, Wild Color, is not only beautiful but also invaluable to those who want to learn to dye with natural colours. I can only humbly thank her and all the other women who have written books and article and blogs about dyeing and shared their knowledge with me.

Rhubarb soap

2011-06-24T12:04:00.002Z

As soon as I started to chop the Rhubarb root I knew that it would give colour to soap. That strong yellow colour is even stronger that that of Rumex so there was no doubt in my mind. And chances were that it would produce a pink, like the Rumex does. So I chopped some root and poured olive oil over it and let it sit for a week or two.

Since I had all this Rhubarb infused water also left over from dyeing I decided to use that also for the lye. so this is a double coloured soap. The Rhubarb is in the water phase and in the oil phase. And it produced a lovely pink that is still deciding whether to go to the blue or yellow end of the spectrum.

I made a recipe based on what ingredients I have right now, but it turned out to be remarkably like the Sorrel shampoo bar that I made some time ago. It will probably be a great shampoo bar although I hadn't really thought specifically about making it that. At least I look forward to take it to the gym.

Rhubarb soap

Olive oil 47% 280g / 10oz (out of this 40g was Rhubarb root infused)
Coconut oil 25% 150g / 5.3oz
Rapeseed oil 17% 100g / 3.5oz
Cocoa butter 8% 50g / 1.8oz
Castor oil 3% 20g / 0.7oz

Water 33% 200g / 7oz (this was water that I had simmered root pieces in for about an hour)
Lye 83g / 2.9 oz

When I stirred the lye into the soap, the whole thing turned this magical blue pink colour that I recognize so well. The colour then turned a more tomato red as the ph dropped. I didn't wrap my soap in a blanket to insulate, I never do (maybe I need to try that) so it gelled in the middle. I kind of like that, but some people prefer to see the soap a solid colour throughout. The gelled soap is darker than the ungelled. The soap is still curing, but it is very soft. I used Geranium, lavender and a touch of lemongrass in the absence of a natural Rhurbarb fragrance. Although I wonder: Does Rhubarb have a smell? I don't really think so, it's more of a taste isn't it?

I couldn't resist taking the photo outside with my apple tree blossoms. I bought the tree almost ten years ago and I knew it had pink flowers, but I've never really seen them properly until now. The spring has been so cold that the caterpillars haven't gotten to the flowers and now the tree is just covered in these sweet scented beautiful flowers. Oh, I love it. Finally something good came from this cold weather.

As I was snapping the photo balancing the soaps on this pressed glass dish (in the shape of an apple) that I bought because it was a neat retro looking yellow (turned out to be dirt), one of the soaps fell to the ground and got dirt on it (the bottom one) I wiped it as best I could and continued to try to get the apple blossoms into a good position and then of course another soap fell and I could hear the plop! of it diving into the goldfish pond. The fish have been pouting for a few days because my husband put some cleaning stuff in the pond (quite harmless) but they didn't like it one bit and have protested by going on a hunger strike. They are now in an even more of a huff, poor darlings, but at least they are clean!
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How to drink Rhubarb

2011-06-23T11:02:00.003Z

Rhubarb is great to drink. The tartness of it makes a refreshing taste for summer heat in combination with a touch of sugar og honey for sweetening, lemon juice and even a touch of Ginger for a more spicy version. I find that it is really easy to just trow it in a pot and improvise, but here are a few recipes that I am going to give in my talk about Rhubarb.

I have posted this recipe before, but it is the only one that I've posted without having made it myself. My excuse is that I wanted to try it, but it takes a long time to be ready so I thought I'd post it so that I didn't loose the recipe. Unfortunately I can't remember where I got it from. But here is is, a little boozy treat for those who like that sort of thing. I have to say that the taste of this isn't really all that much Rhubarb, but rather a sweet something that I can't put my hand on. But it still might make an interesting gift.

Rhubarb liquor
This recipe is for about 6 dl. and takes about 4 weeks to do.

5 dl / 2 cups Rhubarb pieces
4 dl / 1 3/4 cup vodka
1 vanilla pod
1,5 -2 dl (3/4 cup more or less) simple syrup

Put the Rhubarb into a jar. Pour the vodka into the jar, put a lid on and shake for a few minutes.
Let this stand for about 2 weeks and shake every now and again. Add the vanilla pod.
After about 4 week you sieve the booze, add the simple syrup and stir well. Taste and add more syrup as you like. Let this stand for about a month to let the flavours mellow.

I didn't find that it mellows that much, but I did let a piece of vanilla pod stay in the bottle and I think I probably shouldn't have. There might just be a tad too much vanilla taste.

Rhubarb syrup is great to make because it can be made into drinks and to make pink lemonade. I like this recipe which I got at Miss Print blog.  The syrup can also be used in cocktails if one wants to.  The recipe for syrup is something like this:

1 cup rhubarb (washed and dried) cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 1/4 cups water
1 cup sugar

Put all ingredients into a saucepan and stir. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally.
Once mixture has boiled, turn down the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes until the rhubarb is soft and the red colour has bled in. Sieve the mixture and pour into a bottle and let it cool.  This should keep for a few weeks in the fridge.

The recipe can be tweaked a bit.  I like to add some lemon juice and occationally a piece of ginger to make it slightly more interesting.  Use as sauce on ice cream, as a drink concentrate and mix with still or sparkling water.  Pour into lemonade to make it pink.  Or slosh some vodka into it to make a boozy drink.

I am now in the process of making a third recipe. The name is lovely, so I had to try it: Rhubarb champagne and I found it on an Australian site: Just like my nan made

Rhubarb champagne

2lb rhubarb
1 sliced lemon
8 pints of cold water
1 lb sugar
1 dessert spoon of vinegar

Wash rhubarb and cut up roughly, add sugar, finely sliced lemon, vinegar & water.  Let stand for 24 hours, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.  Sieve and pour into plastic bottle and close them. Used soft drinks bottles are ideal. Let stand for a few days. This will start to ferment and becomes alchoholic after 2 weeks. Before that it is a fizzy sweet drink, probably a bit like my Ginger ale.

This needs to be put in the fridge to stop fermentation.  Do that when you like the taste.

I can't wait to try this one, it sounds really interesting and I'll be sure to add my verdict to this post.
But on to other things Rhubarb...

UPDATE: I really like the "champagne". It tastes quite sophisticated and unlike any other rhubarb drink I've tasted. The name isn't that far off.
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Everything Rhubarb and some Chocolate too.

2011-06-19T12:05:00.001Z

I love Rhubarb. I love the colour and I love the taste. When I was little we used to pick slender stalks and dip them in the sugar bowl and eat them like candy. My mom also used to make rhubarb compot which we ate hot with cold milk as desert. And it seems that the only jam that was ever available back then was Rhubarb jam, the only Rhubarb thing that I don't really like. I've made it a bit of a hobby to find unusual recipes with Rhubarb and I've posted some here like the delicious Rhubarb soup and the fantastic Rhubarb ice cream.

I got a phone call the other day from a woman I've never met and she asked me to participate in the Day of the Rhubarb which is being held in a kind of Folk museum in the City. Apparently she got my name from the Gardening Society as someone who is an expert on using Rhubarb. Oh! Ok! I can be that!

So I've been up to my eyeballs in Rhubarb ever since that phone call, wiping the dust off my various Rhubarb recipes and looking for new ones, making stuff from the recipes to snap photos and even creating one, this Rhubarb and Chocolate chip muffins. Well, at least adjusting a recipe to fit me needs. In my 20 minute talk I want to show how incredibly versatile Rhubarb is and give people recipes for every part of the plant.

I didn't have a photo of my Rhubarb syrup, so I made some so that I could snap a picture. When making syrup, there is always the problem of what to do with the mash that is left from sieving. This time I adjusted a muffin recipe and came up with this:

Rhubarb and Chocolate Muffins.

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

2 tsps baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1/2 cup melted butter

1/2 cup rhubarb mash plus almost the same amount to put on top

1/4 cup milk

3 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup dark chocolate chips

Start by turning the oven on to 200C / 400F and line some muffin forms. This recipe is perfect for 12 muffins.

Mix the sugar, melted butter, rhubarb mash, milk, eggs, and vanilla extract until smooth. Combine the dry ingredients; flour, baking powder and stir it into the wet mix. Don't over mix this, a few lumps are fine. Add the chocolate chips.
Fill the muffin form and put a small dollop of rhubarb mash on top and a chocolate chip. Sprinkle with some sugar. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, check with a toothpick.

They were really nice and I was very happy that I didn't have to throw away food. Although I could have put it on the compost heap, but this is so much better.

The speaking thing is on June 30th and I have reserved the rest of the month to everything Rhubarb. Dyeing yarn and hair, insect poison, and, yes! There is Rhubarb soap. Might be two different ones. And it's all coming soon to a ...
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Liquid gold - Dandelion honey

2011-06-14T03:14:00.001Z

Those dandelions are everywhere and I've had a nagging thought that last year I wanted to make something from them, but was too late to collect the flowers. And couldn't remember what it was. That happens to me a lot and it's got nothing to do with age. It's just the way I am. Feeling rather frustrated that I hadn't written anything down, I kept scouting for the best places to pick the flowers and pray for some sun so that I could pick them fully open. The weather this spring has been really dismal, but things are looking up. We saw double digits yesterday - 13C. This is what I've been reduced to. By now I'm grateful if the temperature climbs above 10C (that's about 50F) and ecstatic if the sun peeps from behind a cloud.

Then it came to me. Dandelion honey! I read about it somewhere (didn't write it down) and I knew that I had to try that. It just sounded so jummy to me. The only trouble was that I imagined that it would require so many flowers that it would take forever to collect them. But when I was collecting the flowers to make a dye from them the other day I knew that it takes no time at all. And it's pleasurable, too.

I had to look for a recipe again, since I hadn't written anything down. Always write things down. I know this. But I still don't! Thankfully, I found this really good recipe with step by step photos on a German blog: Heilkraeuter. The recipe is very easy, but it takes some time to make mostly because it needs to simmer for a long while.

Dandelion honey

3 handfuls of Dandelion flowers
1 liter water / That's just over a quart
1 kilo sugar / 35 oz sugar
Juice and rind of 1 lemon (the original recipe give 1/2, but I like lemons so I used it all)

Wash the flowers quickly and gently in cold water. Pour the water over the flowers and let it stand for about 2 hours (or longer, it's no biggie). Bring to boil and then turn of the heat and let cool slowly overnight.
Sieve the flowers from the water and discard (or even better, put on the compost heap). In a saucepan, pour the sugar into the flower water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and simmer until it reaches a syrup stage (110 C / 230 F). This took me 3 hours, but the time may vary depending on the temperature. Pour into sterilized jars.
Use the syrup as you would use honey.

I made another batch that I heated a little less, maybe slightly over 100C / 210F, to make a more runny honey. The first one can be used as a spread on bread, the second is better for my yoghurt.

It tastes remarkably like honey, sweet and flowery with a hint of lemon. And it's vegan.

This German recipe uses the flowers whole, with the green sepals. I have seen some recipes that say you should only use the yellow petals and therefore you need to spend a lot of time pulling away all the green stuff, because it is bitter. This isn't true. I tasted it and I have also tasted both batches that I made and they are very far from bitter. The sepals taste nothing like the leaves. So I wouldn't recommend that anyone wastes time on that. But have a go at making the honey, it's really good.
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Dandelion dye

2011-06-10T11:56:00.001Z

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are such a welcome sight when they appear. That wonderful sunny yellow is one of the first signs of summer up here in the north. This year we are having the coldest spring for a long time. But the dandelions don't mind. They cheerfully flower absolutely everywhere. Of course many people dislike this weed, but I don't. It's very easy to get rid of should one want to. Just dig it out. Although it is a very useful plant so it's good to have around. But perhaps not in the lawn.

Some people eat it in salads, the leaves that is. I've never done that, probably because it's best to pick them young and in May when they start to flower it can be pretty cold and therefore I am not in the mood to go on foraging trips.

The dandelion is a medicinal plant. There is a clue in the name. If a plant is called Something officinale it is a plant that is known for it's medicinal properties. Dandelion leaves are nutritious and a good diuretic. The root of the plant is considered a good detoxifier and a tonic for the liver. But that isn't what I was going to say at all. What this is all about is dying.

It had to happen sooner or later. With my interest in the medicinal properties of plants and in using them to colour and scent soaps and oils as well as to pretty up my garden, I had develop an interest in dyeing with plants sooner or later. I have been collecting supplies for that for quite some time. I have lots of foreign dyestuff like Logwood, Madder, Alkanet, Annatto, Indigo and the vibrantly pink Cochineal - Dactylopius coccus. I have been reading about it for over a year and have some fantastic books about dying with plants. And I have read them all, again and again. And then I finally did it. I couldn't resist those lovely yellow flowers and picked quite a few flowers that were fully open in a rare moment of sunshine in this cold spring weather.

Dying isn't at all complicated. Most of the time you need about equal amounts of plant material to yarn (or whatever you want to dye). You put the plants into a pot with some water and simmer or boil it for about an hour and then strain it. This will work for most plants. Then you pour the dye solution into a pot and fill it up with water and put the yarn (or whatever) into the pot. This is then simmered for an hour or so and often you let it cool in the pot. Then you rinse and dry. And that is it. Apart from the mordanting and modifying. Mordants are important. Without them the dye will not attach itself to the fibers. The most common mordants are metal salts, like aluminium, iron and copper and they do affect the colour. As will changing the PH balance. So there is a lot to play with. And it can get complicated, but mostly it's easy and fun.

I used Icelandic wool called Lopi, which is hardly spun and pulls apart really easily. It also felts really easily, so I didn't exactly make things too easy for me. I used this wool because I thought it would be fun to use local plants to dye and then knit me an Icelandic sweater using many different colours. I haven't had a sweater since my last one fell apart, but they are nice to own and most people have them to use in summer. Because it's cold in summer. Lopi is what is used in the sweaters, so I had to use that. But it was quite a challenge to dye it because of the felting. But I managed to wind it into two small balls.

The colour was a very light yellow, not a touch of the brassy colour of the flowers, but a surprisingly light, greeny yellow, quite delicate and pretty. So now I have started this journey. I haven't given up soap but if I am to ever finish that sweater I have a busy time ahead of me gathering flowers.
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Heavenly duo - Vanilla and Neroli

2011-06-02T11:42:00.001Z

I love vanilla scent and I have used up all my vanilla soap so I had to make another one. This time I thought I should combine it with some flowery scent (Neroli is my favorite) because Vanilla can be a tad too sweet on it's own.

For those lovely scents I thought I should try Madder root again. I have used it a few times and of course the challenge with Madder is to get the blueish red dyes to appear. Apparently Madder has five different dyes ranging from yellow through warm red and brown to blueish red. The dyes are sensitive to PH, blue reds appearing in an alkaline environment and the warm reds in acidic solutions.

Since Madder root is water soluble I decided to give it a long time in the caustic soda to try to extract the maximum amount of dye. I have read that one should rinse the root in cold water to wash away the more yellow dyes, so I did that. I also decided that I would add it quickly to the lye solution while it was still quite hot to see what effect heat had on the Madder, hoping that it would extract more colour. I let the madder sit overnight and soaped at room temperature. When I combined the lye and the oils the Madder showed it's lovely blue reds, but very quickly turned to peachy coral. I think that colour is fashionable right now, so I didn't mind. Madder seems to want to be warm coloured in soaps and that's the way it is.

The idea was to take a part of the Madder coloured soap and add Vanilla to it and that part would turn brown and cover the Madder colour. I had also planned to attempt a fancy swirl, and use a cardboard separator in the middle and all.

The reality was that I had started to make the soap without setting up the molds first and it took a while to line them and cut the cardboard and then the soap started to seize. So much for my ambitious plans. I used Neroli essential oil with a touch of Benzoin, ylang ylang and a small splash of Cubea Litsea. I was a bit surprised since I was soaping at room temperature, but soaping is unpredictable and I think that is what makes it so fascinating for me.

But it smells devinely and I love the feel of it on my skin. I used the last of my Almond oil, so I need to order some more. It is really nice in soap.

The recipe I used this time is:

Coconut oil 25% 125g / 4.4oz
Olive oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Almond oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Rapeseed oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Cocoa butter 15% 75g / 2.6oz

Water 30% 150g / 5.3oz infused with dried and chopped madder root which is then strained
Lye 70g / 2.5oz

My fascination with natural colour has taken me a step further and I am now in the process of using plants to dye wool and a tiny bit of silk, just to see what colours I can get. I'm having loads fun and have learned a lot, some of which may be helpful in colouring soap. I have for example learned that when extracting dye from roots, heat will bring out more of the yellow tints. So next time I used Madder I will use less heat and see if I can coax it to a slightly pinker shade.
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The Eggsperiment

2011-05-22T23:16:00.001Z

My plastic eggs, from a few weeks ago. Well I learned a lot! So here it goes.

Small plastic items are very difficult to use as molds for soap. And those eggs were really hard to keep steady. I did try to put the halves together, but that was just a mess. So I ended up pouring soap into the halves separately and tried to get those to sit somewhere without toppling over. Of, course I hadn't really prepared anything, just jumped right in and then had all these halves of eggs, full of soap and nowhere to put them! I'm pretty sure that the whole thing could be executed more successfully by somone with a bit more patience and forethought.

But the fun part about this was making all the different colours and scents and I did have some surprises there. I made 7 different colours:

1. The blue. I made a lovely blue colour using indigo. I love that colour to bits and I will absolutely make blue soap again. The perfect scent had to be Peppermint.

2. The pink. I used Rumex oil for this and added Neroli essential oil. The colour didn't turn out pink at all. Just a beige. So either I used too much Rumex oil or it doesn't work as well when added to traced soap. This I need to try out again and find out for sure.

3. The yellow. Annatto oil, naturally, with Sweet Orange and Palmarosa scents. I could have used Sea Buckthorn oil or possibly unrefined Palm oil. The Annatto came out a slightly orange yellow, but has faded to a nice lighter one. I'm not a fan of orange yellow. So quite nice. I've used Annatto before and I like that yellow and find that it keeps it's colour for at least 6 months (I used the soap up in that time).

4. The green. I used dried Parsley and Rosemary for this one. I should have used a bit more Parsley since the colour was a little light, a yellow green. I used the dried herb and added it to the traced soap. I need to try to use it as a tea and see what colour it produces. I pretty sure that Cocobong uses tea when she uses Nettles for green and she has great results.

5. The lavender. Well, no prices for guessing Alkanet infused oil and Lavender scent. But the Alkanet failed to turn lavender. It is a very strange shade of light brownish Aubergine. I have no idea why, except to venture a guess that Alkanet probably wants to be in the oil mix when the lye is added. So another thing to test.

6. The orange. Hah, I'm so stupid! Just because I could get a lovely orange by adding Annatto and Alkanet to oils, it doesn't work when lye is in the mixture. I knew that! Silly me! I'm really quite ashamed. But I added Lemongras and Ylang ylang to this tan colour.

7. Uncoloured. At the last minute I decided to leave the soap uncoloured and add Benzoin for scent. That colour is just slightly beige and smells lovely.

I could have used vanilla and gotten more brown colours. But I didn't use Madder root since I would have had to make a special batch of it because it needs to go into the lye. Nor did I make a black egg, but charcoal soap is quite neat and aniseed would be perfect since it smells a bit like licorice. So there were quite a few possibilities. I wanted a bit more colour although I hadn't expected to get really bright colours. I have to admit that really wanted a bit of pink in there. Oh, well. Next time.

But I had an adventure when trying to put the two halves together. I had thought that it would be easy to just rebatch and whip some soap and use it with a cake decorating thingy (which I bought for use with soap). Well, I was wrong. It would probably have been easier with regular whipped soap because it has a stiffer consistency. This was a fiasko on par with the original chaotic "making-of-the-eggs". The halves were not even, so I had the hardest time putting them together. And as is patently obvious from the photo, I've won no prizes for cake decorating.

But it was fun. I really had a blast. It's probably unnatural to enjoy ones own company so much, but I have to be honest. I did.
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Sourdough starter - the making of Grumpy

2011-05-16T09:23:00.001Z

Making my own sourdough starter was just way cool. Each starter is unique to it's location. I was fascinated by that. That my sourdough starter would really be mine, uniquely. In addition sourdough bread is considered to be much more nutritious, easier to digest and have a lower glycemic index than other types of bread. It has long been my favorite bread, especially if it has rye in it. But I never really knew all that about sourdough. Just that it tasted good. I have learned a lot from various websites, but especially www.thefreshloaf.com, but it took a while for me to grasp it all. I wanted to write it down so that I could repeat the experience should I need to at some point. Here is how he started his life.

To mix together flour and water and expect it somehow to come to life almost seems to defy logic and science. It is of course the magic of life and I am thoroughly in awe of my beloved Grumpy. Sourdough starter is simply made by mixing flour and water and the yeast that is naturally on the flour and lactobacillus bacteria that is mostly on our skin will take residence and start to ferment. Since there is a lot of micro organisms all around us, it is possible that some of them will try to take over the starter. You will know that your starter is fine if it has a pleasant tangy smell. Somewhere between beer and fruit. The yeast likes an acid environment, oxygen and a temperature between 18 and 29 C (65 and 85 F), the middle being optimal. I saw somewhere that some people put a tablespoon or so of pineapple or orange juice in the starter to increase the acidity. I tried this once when I felt that the starter was a bit sluggish and it only improved.

But back to the birth of Grumpy. I had made a starter previously. That time I "cheated" a bit and put in some dried yeast. That was fine, but I wanted to make it without any help. So I took a straight sided jar and put about 50 g. /1.8 oz of Rye flour into it. Then I added the same amount (50 ml /1.7 fl.oz) of room temperature water. I used water from the kettle that has been boiled and cooled to room temp only because the cold water is really, really cold. We have very good tap water here, no fluoride or chlorine added to it. I would consider using bottled water if I lived where water quality is questionable. Then I stirred the flour and water to make a smooth paste and get some air in there. Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini suggest that one should have a wooden spoon dedicated to this and avoid using metal. She didn't explain why, but I liked the idea and I now have one. I also read somewhere that in Finland (the Finn people are renowned for their excellent rye bread) they had a special wooden bowl for the dough and it is scraped clean rather than washed. That way the yeast culture simply dries and is easily refreshed with water and a feed next time. I will consider buying a wooden bowl next time I go to Helsinki. But for now I use a glazed earthenware bowl that my mother in law gave me.

Since I love rye bread I really wanted to make a rye starter. Which is fortunate because it is one of the easiest flours to use to make a starter. Even if one doesn't intend to bake a rye bread one can use a rye starter. Or, alternatively, one can start with a rye starter and turn it into a wheat starter by feeding with increasing amounts of wheat once the starter gets going.

But back to Grumpy. I placed the jar on the kitchen counter and waited. Now, this was in February and even if I usually keep the house at 23-25 C (72-77 F), it will be cooler close to the windows in very cold weather. Therefore it makes a bit more sense to start a starter in spring or summer. It didn't take more than about 2 days for bubbles to appear. Then I threw away some of it and added water and then some more rye. This I repeated every day. I discovered later that it is better to feed the starter twice a day and be sure to pour away half of it, feed it with equal amounts of flour and water. Now I throw out all but 1-2 tablespoons and then add about 35 g. /1 oz of water and the same amount of rye flour. I first add the water and make sure that it is at room temperature. The water that is standing in the kettle is perfect for that. Then feed the starter twice a day for a week. That way you should get a very lively starter.

Being the miser that I am, I really suffered when throwing away half of the starter. But you have to do it. It is much less wasteful. When the starter gets going it will double in a few hours. Since you need to feed it an equal amount twice a day you would soon end up with a bathtubful of starter and the next day, two tubfuls, then four! You get the drift. It's exponential growth. So throw away half! Some people use what they throw away in waffles, pancakes, cookies or pizza dough, but I don't bake those, so I weep and waste.

Now the test of the starter isn't only the smell (which should be pleasantly sour) but the rate at which it rises. You should not attempt to bake a bread with it unless it doubles in about 6-10 hours. It won't be strong enough to raise the dough sufficiently if it doesn't. Believe me, I tried!

Now, I wrote another post about baking a bread with the starter, but I want to finish this by discussing how to take care of the starter. I had to try a few places for my starter and I used a thermometer to check temperatures. I found the perfect place for Grumpy to feed in my living room on a shelf below my faithful November cactus (Schlumbergera truncata). That cactus dates from 1977 when my husband gave me this little baby plant with one bud on it. The bud promptly fell off and I, being young and childish, was offended and shamelessly tried to kill it. I pushed it behind the curtains and didn't water it, hoping it would die. But by spring it just started to grow vigorously. So I began to take care of it and was rewarded by profuse flowering the following November. Every year after that it would be like a ball of fire on the window sill. When I moved to the States it got left behind, as did my other worldly possessions. Years later my great aunt, who had lived on the floor below me, told me that she had stolen a cutting of it (because as everyone knows, cuttings take better if they are stolen, rather than given) and that her very large and robust cactus, that boomed like crazy every year, was that cutting. When she died at the age of 96 my father came home with her cactus and gave it to me. The cactus thrived, but to my great disappointment, it didn't flower. I kept it in the best location, took good care of it but... nothing. Until my father died. That Christmas it started to bloom again. And it kept going until the spring. And bloomed again in the fall. And it has been going ever since, blooming twice a year. I can't think of a better place for Grumpy to rest while he feeds.

But back to him. I have been baking one bread a week and I store him in the fridge in the days between baking. What now works for me is this: I take him out early on Friday, measure about 70 g. of Grumpy, add 70 g. of water and 70 g of flour and stir. I put him on his shelf and keep an eye on him. If he doubles I make a sponge in the evening. If he doesn't double I feed him once more and make the bread in the morning. For the bread I use anywhere from 100 g to 200 g of the starter. I use double the amount of water and triple the amount of flour in any mixture I like (so 1-2-3) and then I add nuts and seeds as I fancy. What is left of Grumpy gets a feeding and goes into the fridge until the next time. And I just want to say that is is way easier than I ever thought baking bread would be.
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Rebatching using a plastic bag.

2011-05-05T21:14:00.000Z

Quite some time ago I rebatched soap and used Alkanet infused oil to colour it and Lavender essential oil to scent it. The colour was wonderful and it smelled lovely, but the texture left something to be desired. Since I had read somewhere about rebatching using a plastic bag, I decided to try that.

I used the type of bag that is used for oven frying. I figured it could stand the heat. I wouldn't use a regular plastic bag for this, I'm pretty sure it would just melt. I put the lumpy lavender coloured soap in the plastic bag, tied it close and put the bag in a pot with hot water. With the top of the bag sticking out I let the water come to an almost boil and then turned it down to very low heat, left the soap there for a while and forgot about it, accidentally. When I came back (I think it was 2-3 hours later) the soap was very nicely melted, but it had turned brown. Hm. Not what I intended. I was sad to loose the nice lavender colour, but at least the scent was still there. I couldn't do anything about the colour so I figured I would go with the flow and make cup cake soap. I squeezed the soap from the plastic bag into a bowl and used my electric whipper to whip it up. I then spooned it into a cake decorating bag and piped it into muffin forms. The rebatched soap was very smooth with this method, but not really quite firm enough to make a great whipped soap. It is better to do that from scratch. I haven't done that in a long time, but might just give it a go again soon. Especially since I need some way to rescue my rather dull rebatched soapmuffins. They might look ok if I could get a nice fluffy white top on them.

But anyway, there are two lessons in there. The first is that Alkanet doesn't like heat. This actually corresponds with my experience that it is better not to heat the Alkanet infused oil, but add it to the other oils. The second lesson learned is that the plastic bag method workes great. It's easy to get the soap into a bag, it doesn't have to be finely grated, just not in big chunks and there is no need to sit and watch the pot, the soap will just melt nicely in it's own good time. There were no lumps or bumps and I'm sure that the soap would have been fine poured into a mold. So this might just be the easiest way to rebatch.
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The call of the Muse - It's not a destination

2011-04-29T22:17:00.002Z

It took me a while as a young student of art and design to realize that the purpose of my school projects wasn't always to produce something incredibly beautiful for my teachers to admire. Sometimes the whole purpose was to go through a process. A process that tested my technical capabilities, challenged my mind and stretched the physical qualities of my medium. Thus I gradually learned to expand my self imposed limits of creativity. The outcome or final product was part of the process and interesting as such, but it wasn't the beginning or end of all. This is not to say that everything I did as a student was very ugly. Some was, but some was quite good (if I say so myself, I even won a few awards in student shows - sorry, I just had to brag a bit).

The freedom that one gets from adopting this mindset when creating is wonderful and it makes life so much fun. I love to do. I love to do things. In the sense of doing something to make something. Some thing. The whole process is joyous. I feel good while I do it and I love every step of the way. The beginning of an idea. It can be like a tiny sprouting seed that takes days to emerge, a little bit at a time. Almost shy to expose itself. Or sometimes it gushes forth like a waterfall, screaming for immediate execution. I respond to the call of the muse when I can, but some ideas have been germinating for years and decades and are still abiding their time. I tend to be a bit spontaneous, but even so there is always a preparation stage, during which the idea will mature, change, evolve. And then there is the execution. That is bliss. It's the culmination. It's full of excitement and unexpected happenings, some happy and some disastrous. But almost without fail there is the birth of the next idea. Oh, what fun! And then it's all over and I'm left with something. Some physical thing that somehow became the product of the process. But it is not the whole point.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy it if people genuinely like something I did for it's face value. But they will never be able to experience it the way I have. And I don't particularly have a need to explain. Which is why I tended to be reluctant to put a title to my work in the old days. I'm not a practicing artist so this isn't a big issue anymore. These days I make whatever strikes my fancy. Soap, mostly. Creams, lotions, herbal remedies, bread and yoghurt. I'll grow plants and knit, crochet, sew and maybe dye fabric and even bind a book one day soon. And I do it for me. Precisely to experience the joy of the process. Except it is sometimes an issue. It annoys me tremendously when people foster on me their preconceived notion that everything is supposed to be pretty or good or nice. And then proceed to tell me so, when it obviously isn't. Or the opposite. Sometimes that just isn't the point.

If I ask you to taste something I made. Share with me the laughter, when it tastes revolting. Make that memory with me. When I make something that would be considered hideous in any culture on this planet, don't insult my intelligence by admiring it. Maybe that experiment wasn't about beauty. Ask me what I learned. And please don't tell me that my work in progress is ugly. How do you know? Why would you want me to know that? What if I care? And what if I don't care? What if I'm having fun? I'm playing. I am learning. And I am living. May I suggest you do that too.
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Happy Easter

2011-04-24T11:29:00.000Z

"Sweet is a small gift" was on the little slip of paper that was inside my Easter egg. I like that a lot better than the slightly insulting admonitions of my youth like: "Money turns many into apes". But I think they have started to make up new ones rather than use the fairly well known traditional sayings and adages. My egg is the dark one in the middle, I don't like milk chocolate. The others are for my daughters.

The small gifts that I had made for The first Day of Summer were appreciated. I gave the lip balms, some face cream, a few soaps, some beautiful blue yarn that I picked up at a thrift shop and a book. My mom also brought gifts. She had picked up some old books, an old (1950's or 60's) German Encyclopedia about crochet and knitting and another on games and card playing which found appreciative new owners. We really like to go treasure hunting in thrift shops. There are so many interesting things to find and I also really like old books. They are often much more current than one would think. And if they are not, they can be really funny.

My mom gave me "Hlín, the yearbook of Icelandic women", 40 years worth, unbound. So I guess she approves of my plans to start to dabble in bookbinding. They date from 1917 to 1957 which was the last year it was published. It fascinating to read. I've found 2 soap recipes and quite a few tidbits about dyeing with plants. Not to mention a few recipes for traditional food. I have been taking a peep at them, but need to cut up the pages of some of them to get a decent look. The paper is pretty yellow and I should probably photocopy the oldest onto acid free paper before it crumbles to dust. I look forward to attempting to bind them. I think they deserve some nice girly book cloth. I may have to make my own. But I can do that :)

But I forget, the point of this post was to say: Happy Easter. Eat lots of chocolate!

The First Day of Summer

2011-04-21T16:02:00.003Z

Well, the good new is that summer and winter froze together last night. That signals a very good summer, which is comforting since the weather gods are throwing a spectacle of every variety they can think of at the moment: Sleet, rain, wind and short (very short) sunny spells. The First Day of Summer is the first day of the year, according to the old Icelandic calendar and the beginning of the month of Harpa. The Old calendar had two seasons, summer and winter, and people would count their age in winters. We have been giving gifts on this day for five centuries, which is a lot longer than the tradition of Christmas gifts. This day was also a special day for courting and romance.

I am having the closest family over for dinner and I made more lip balms. I realized that the choice of a pink with peppermint or an orange with a flowery scent wasn't really for the boys, so I made a third lipbalm with Annatto oil to give a yellow colour and used Sweet orange oil. I also have a few junk shop finds for presents (only for those who like that kind of thing) and I made some face cream which I put into new containers which I like very much, airless pumps. So there will be a few gifts, but nothing expensive.

Today is also the start of Easter, so this year it gets a bit jumbled with Easter decorations. Of course they are all about spring and summer so that's fine. And I am most definitely putting on some white clothes and a bright lipstick to greet summer and the new month of Harpa with a smile on my face.

Lip balm - a perfect Summergift

2011-04-16T12:33:00.003Z

I have been planning to start to celebrate the First day of summer in a more formal way than before. It is the oldest holiday in Iceland and unique to this country, I think. It's funny how I have gotten more interested in old people and traditions as I grow older. It just seems that older people can teach me something about the world they knew. With younger people, it's more like: Jep! Been there! Done that! Oh yeah! That too! No surprises there, really, so it's all a bit repetitious and slightly boring. But older people are very interesting, they know stuff I never knew, lived in a time that's long gone and they aren't hanging around that much longer either.

I'm still a bit frustrated that missed some good opportunities to question my great aunt, Anna. I just didn't appreciate soon enough how much she had lived through and how much I would learn if only I had figured out what to ask. She always had an open house on the First day of Summer. She didn't really invite anyone, we were just supposed to know and show up. And we did. It was an old fashioned coffee and cakes gathering of the most boring relatives. But my father made sure we showed up. I have been thinking that I should revive this tradition, except to do it with my closest family and do dinner. I also want to give everyone a small present, like is customary to do on that day. I'm not thinking of another mammon-fest, but just an occasion where I, as the matriarch (my mom is there, obviously, but she doesn't do family meals. It's just not on her radar), give small summer presents. And I thought of lip balm. I have given people lip balm before and they like it very much. I do too. I think home made is the best and it literally takes minutes to do.

I have been looking for these sliding tins for some time in Europe and I found them at a British web page: Of a Simple Nature. I bought a few (too few) and went ahead the other day. I made two recipes, one pink and one orange. I think they look so cute. The red one has Peppermint essential oil, wonderfully fresh and traditional. The orange was a first for me. I mixed Alkanet and Annatto seed oils to get the colour. It's very pretty, although it doesn't really show on the lips that much. The scent for the orange lip balm was a combination of Vanilla and Rose. It smells wonderful. I figured I should do something sophisticated for those who are not fans of peppermint.

I have never written down my lib balm recipes, but this time I did. So here it is. It is a very small recipe, I did one for each colour and filled 6 tins each. It's pretty standard, no glycerin or honey, but it is a consistency that I like. I can be made softer by adding more oil. Anyone can do it and I don't really know why everybody doesn't.

Just melt together in a waterbath or use the microwave (just use short bursts so it doesn't burn):

10 g / 0.35 oz. Beeswax
10 g / 0.35 oz. Coconut oil
17 g / 0.6 oz. Castor oil

Pour into small jars or lip balm tubes.

For a pink colour: add some Alkanet infused oil and Peppermint essential oil
For an orange colour: Add Annatto infused oil and Alkanet infused oil about half and half or adjust to get the orange shade you like. Add Vanilla and Rose essential oil.

Another colour might be yellow, with just Annatto infused oil. That would probably make a very pretty lipbalm. It is tempting to use the citrus oils for yellow and orange colours. Some of them are photo toxic, but not all. For example, Sweet Orange is not considered photo toxic, but Bitter Orange is.

From what I can gather the following citrus based oils would be safe to use in lip balm and creams and lotions:

Essential oils of:
Mandarin (Citrus reticulata)
Sweet Orange (Citrus sinensis)
Tangelo (Citrus x hybrida)
Tangerine (Citrus nobilis)
Neroli oil (Citrus aurantium)

Also the DISTLLED essential oils (NOT expressed essential oils) of:
Lemon (Citrus limon)
Lime (Citrus aurantifolia)
Grapefruit (Citrus paradisi)
It may be better to shy away from those if the method of production is unknown.

So maybe I'll add a yellow lip balm with Orange scent and that will be a perfect summer gift.

Colour... please

2011-04-13T15:40:00.002Z

After the miserable months of January, February and March it really is time for some colour. While winter has some lovely moments, the absence of colour is what makes it so difficult. Absoluely everything turns gray and brown. Spring brings back colour and makes the heart sing with happiness. Just seeing colours can make one happy and I had to smile when I saw these multicoloured plastic eggs in the Good S some time ago. I actually thought that someone with a terrible taste had dreamed these up as Easter decoration, but my husband said they are for Easter egg hunts. Silly me. But I bought them anyway, thinking that they might be used as molds for bathbombs or soaps or something.

I have been feeling a bit under the weather for the last couple of weeks. I had a minor surgery and haven't been able to go to the gym. As a result I have spent two weeks with the remote control firmly clutched in one hand while munching sweets with the other and generally experiencing the weariness that accompanies the end of winter. I had lots of things that I wanted to do, but just couldn't bring myself to actually do any of them (except make fresh yoghurt, I did do that). But then one evening I just got my butt off the sofa, got out my Grumpy, fed him and put him on his shelf, I made lip balm in two colours and flavors/scents and I used those funny little plastic eggs as molds for soaps. So three projects in one evening. Boy, did that feel good.

I just realized that easter isn't far off and now I need to start to prepare for that. My mom used to decorate for Easter almost as much as she did for Christmas. She embroidered little tablecloths, pillow cases and runners and we always collected the little chicks that decorate the chocolate Easter eggs that are customary here. When my sister and I got up on Easter Sunday we would go to the living room where my mom had put our almost identical eggs on this runner that was embroidered with yellow chicks, easter lilies, tulips and eggs. And there would be the chicks of Easters past and yellow candles. We would rip the cellophane off the eggs, see whose egg was the prettiest and then start to breake it up to get at the sweets it contained as well as the most important: The saying. There was always an old saying or adage inside. And back then it could be anything. I sometimes got the most horrid sounding things ("The stupid usually have a large head" springs to mind (it really sounds more poetic in Icelandic) and felt miserable, especially if the chick on my sisters egg had a prettier face than mine. Nowadays they only put the nicest sayings in the eggs.

The egg soaps were a fun little project that I still haven't completed. Getting the soap out has been interesting, to say the least. So I will have to see if I can make them presentable or if they are heading for the rebatch bin. This is all a bit fiddly and perhaps a little frou-frou, but they could be fun. The colours did turn out differently than I had anticipated. That means I learned something new. Which is great. I'll share the new knowledge in another post.

But I realized that I needed some retail therapy when I saw photo's of Lilacs on a blog and it almost brought tears to my eyes. Lilacs bloom in the middle of June in my world! So I went out and got this big garish pink Hydrangea to brighten up my life. Just to tide me over until nature starts it's annual show.

I finally won!

2011-04-09T13:52:00.000Z

The-ugliest-soap-anyone-ever-made-reward has got to be mine. I made this soap sometime before Christmas and I had high hopes for it. I thought it would be perfect as a gift to old people as a soap for a foot bath. I had just gotten some Ginger essential oil and wanted to try it. I had read that it's warming so I had this brilliant idea to combine it with the eggshells that I so ardently collected during the big bake fest.

When I used finely crushed eggshells in my Alkanet and lavender soap I liked it, but I like very scratchy. I did however suggested that normal people could use it on their feet. So I thought it a brilliant idea to do a special foot soap? That time I had thought that the eggshells would sink to the bottom and form a layer at the bottom with a pumice kind of surface. But they were pretty suspended throughout the body of the soap. This time I sprinkled a layer on the bottom, thinking that the soap would soak in and automatically embed the eggshell in the bottom layer. Well that didn't really work. The result was a completely dry layer of eggshells that just sat on the bottom of my mold when I lifted the soap up. What little managed to stick to the bottom of the soap was uneven and not pretty at all. Fortunately, I had also put some eggshells in the main soap, so it wasn't a total disaster. I still had a ton of exfoliating power in that soap.

I thought carefully about this recipe, but I can't find the recipe file. But I wrote down the ingredients so I know it contains: Olive oil, Coconut oil, Soybean oil, Cocoa butter, Honey, Ginger EO and Peppermint EO and then the eggshells. I think it might be 30% of the first three oils and then 10% Cocoa butter. I used honey for it's lovely humectant qualities and it also gives a nice lather. The eggshells need to be very finely crushed, or one can use poppy seeds.

I thought that since the colour was a sort of beige from the honey, it would look good with brown accents so I used cocoa powder for a line and sprinkled a bit of it on top with some brown sugar.
It looked fine in the mold. But when I took it out to cut it it was horrendously ugly. Not only was the bottom uneven and ugly, but the line looked dirty and the sugar on top just plain uninteresting. I quickly shoved it out of the way so that no one would see it and puke. And promptly forgot all about it.

Until today, I had cold feet, literally, so I went and found it and used it as foot soap. I guess appearances aren't everything, because it works fine. For feet. Not for the body. I tried it. The eggshells are just a bit coarser than when I used them before (pounding them with a pestle in a mortar is a lot of work) and they did scratch my legs quite severely. But that is very good for hard skin on the feet. The scent of ginger with the peppermint is very nice, not too strong and maybe I should have used more. Although I can't say that the soap alone made my feet feel warm, I'm sure it helped. So all in all , not a bad soap. But boy is it ugly.
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Perfect sourdough bread - with a little help from a French friend

2011-03-31T22:32:00.005Z

I love my sourdough. I love it slightly toasted with some
cheese. And yes, I'm planning to make my own soon. The
Rose jelly is also a favorite and easy to make.

Another bread with a different recipe. I've been making the same bread a few times but thought I'd try something a bit different. So I found this website, chocolateandzucchini.com, which is the very best one that I have found so far. It has very detailed explanations and she even tells you the why's. I love that. I need to know why. I hate not knowing why, so this woman is my new hero. She is French, but she writes it in English. I just love her blog and highly recommend it to everyone interested in cooking, because this blog is not just about baking.

This recipe has worked very well for me every single time. I have followed Clotilde's recommendation to make the starter in the evening and start the dough the next morning. Clotilde is very good a explaining everything, but this is my shorter version of it.

200 g. Starter sponge. This post explains how to make the starter.
400 g. Water
600 g. Various flours
I usually use about 150 g. Rye, 250 g. Spelt, 200 g. Whole wheat and mix them with a whisk.
15 g. Salt (the recipe calls for 10 g, but I like salty bread)

Put the sponge in the Kitchen aid bowl and add the room temperature water and stir. Then add the flours. Stir on the lowest setting for a few seconds. Then let it rest for 30-40 minutes. The rest allows the flour to absorb more water. Then add the salt and any nuts or seeds that you want to add. I've used sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and pine nuts. Mix for a few minutes until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and looks smooth. (This can all be done by hand, obviously). I put olive oil on my hands to avoid the dough sticking to them and gently coax the dough out of the bowl and into an earthenware bowl. As I do this the surface of the dough gets covered in oil, but additionally I put the plastic bag on top and wrap the bowl in a kitchen towel and put it by the shelf for an hour or two.

After that the dough will have risen. Then I take the dough out and use a spatula to fold the edges into to the center. I do this all around the edges of the bowl and then I cover it with plastic and wrap it a towel and let it rest for another hour. Then I repeat that. Let the dough rise until it has doubled. If in doubt poke a finger into it and if the indentation remains, it is ready. I fold the dough again and gently lower it into a pot. To prevent the dough sticking to a pot. I pour a bit of oil into it and add some flour. Rub the mixture on the bottom and sides of the pot. I have a terrible time remembering to cut slashes in the bread, but that looks pretty neat. I found that using oiled scissors is much easier than a sharp blade or knife. Put the lid on and put the pot into the cold oven. Turn it to 240 C/460 F and let it bake for one hour.

Many people use dutch ovens or baking stones, but I own neither. I have used a stainless steel pot with its lid to bake the bread. It works beautifully even if it is rather unconventional. When the time is up I take the pot out of the oven turn it upside down and knock on the bottom. If it doesn't sound hollow I put it back in the oven. Alternatively stick a cooking thermometer into the center of the bread. It is done if that reads 100 C / 210 F.

When it is done, the bread needs to cool completely before being cut or it will be gummy. I've found this to be true. The bread lasts me a week and I don't freeze it, but it is easy to freeze half for use later in the week.

This recipe works really well for me. The bread rises beautifully and much better than when I have put the dough into a preheated oven like many other recipes suggest. I am working on getting the courage to try the sourdough baguette recipe next.
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Vanilla

2011-03-26T20:17:00.003Z

The embroidery is a baby's duvet cover that my mother
made when she was expecting. She says her mother made
her do it. I'm glad because it is pretty. The little bowl was
a gift from the artist and the tiny pearls are my sister in laws.
She makes very pretty necklaces and bracelets.

When I was little my mom always made vanilla ice cream for Christmas. She made it in the ice cube tray without the inserts. The tray was bog standard and not pretty at all,but she always used real vanilla corns. That ice cream, naturally, had the holy taste of Christmas. Just absolutely heavenly. Homemade vanilla ice cream just can not be topped. I have always hated to throw the used pods. I just knew there was a use for them even if I hadn't thought of it. Of course there is lots that can be done with it. In powdered sugar it becomes vanilla sugar that is used in cake recipes and in alcohol it turns into vanilla essence. I am now furiously trying to find excuses to buy vanilla so I can make something nice from them. I also have this wonderful oil that I put cut up used vanilla pods into and now it is a lovely smelling oil that I rub on as a body oil.

I love the sweet and warm scent so I have been wanting to make Vanilla soap for ages and finally went ahead. I wasn't quite the succcess I hoped, but it does smell lovely. I had this vanilla in glycerin and it was dark brown. I figured it would make a very dark soap so I thought I'd try to see how my white soap gratings would turn out in a dark brown base. I also wanted to experiment with a cocoa line which I think Tiggy at FuturePrimitive was the first one, at least she does it expertly. So the plan was to have a darker bottom with a cocoa line and then above that a white line! How cool. And on top of the I would have a lighter layer of soap with the white soap shavings and I would have a bit of white soap for decoration. I wanted to see what finely grated soap shavings would look like in a soap. I wasn't thrilled that my Confetti soap resembled Spam just a tad too much.

I love the way those dollops almost look like flowers.

Well, that was the plan. I thought that by using powdered sugar I could get an white line! I should have known better, of course the sugar just melts. Why I didn't try TD I don't' know. But anyway the result was a soap that falls apart. But I wiped away the sugary mess and pressed the two halves together and they managed to stick together, at least long enough to be photographed. But all was not lost. I just used the bottoms to make scrolls and squirls to use as decoration later. I have to say that I'm still disappointed (and always will be) that it's not possible to make a pure white Vanilla soap. I guess it's the memory of the creamy white Christmas ice cream with the tiny little dots that tasted so good. But the top on this soap is pretty, with the white blobs looking a bit like roses (I stirred them with a toothpick). So I think I'm liking this one, even if it fell apart.

I am just about to try it out properly in the bath. I did try the off cuts when it was fresh and it was promising. But here is the recipe.

40% Olive oil
25% Coconut oil
15% Lard
15% Cocoa butter
5% Rape seed oil

Water 33%
5% superfat

I used Vanilla with just a touch of Palmarose, Rosewood and Ylang Ylang to take away the cloying sweetness that pure vanilla can have. I also used both sugar and silk in the lye solution and that should make for a good and silky lather.

So I'm off to have a nice long soap in tub. The weather is miserable, rainy and feels even colder than when it snows. So the warm and comforting scent of the vanilla is going to be lovely and I'll finish with a my precious vanilla oil and dream of spring. At least the snow is melting.
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Soap blog - It's been a year

2011-03-21T00:02:00.002Z

I like to pick flowers from the garden to put in a vase in
the house. I dearly love my peonies and the timing of
their flowering was a deciding factor in the date of my
daughters wedding. This particular bouquet was the
inspiration for her wedding bouquet.

Today it is one year since I posted my first blog post. I had surfed the Internet and read other peoples blogs for a long time before starting my own and it really took a lot of thought to decide what my blog should look like. It obviously involved looking closely at other peoples blogs, not to copy them but because I wanted mine to be a bit different, but not weirdly so. I wanted it to reflect my personality and that was a lot more difficult than it sounds.

The photo for the header had to be something very wide and not very high. Not a shape that one normally uses for pictures! I cropped one that had a lot of green in it because I like that colour, it's friendly. I chose a fairly simple template that had a white background and the orange headlines... well that was just a part of the theme and I hadn't fiddled enough to know how to change that.

That left the problem of soap photos. I had some photos of the first soaps that I made. I realized that my soaps were not necessarily the prettiest and I didn't (and still don't) have a light box. The photos were bound to be ugly if they were close ups or boring if they showed one soap very, very far away. So my solution was to pile a lot of stuff around the soaps so that there was something interesting to look at. This afforded me with an opportunity to showcase some of the junk I pick up in flea markets and even some justification for buying more. By tweaking the colours slightly I got a softer and more uniform look to the photos. So now I had a look and then I needed to think about how to write and what to write about.

Having been an avid reader of blogs for a long time, I have my own likes and dislikes. I like getting a glimpse of the person who writes the blog, I like being told where ideas come from, I really like people who give credit to others, I love people who share recipes, methods, ideas and good suppliers. I don't like blogs that look like they are isolated from the world and never speak of other soaps than their own. I also favor blogs that show their followers and a blog roll. I find so many interesting blogs that way. I love to look at blogs from faraway places even if I have to resort to Google translate. My own blog, when translated to my own language, sounds hilarious. But I am grateful, anyway, for the translations.

I thought long and hard about sharing my recipes and my decision to do so was mostly because I found it enormously helpful when I was starting out. But also because I was pretty certain that I would be preaching to the choir. And that was who I wanted to get in touch with, other soapers, not customers. I don't know if I would share my recipes if I blogged in Icelandic. Maybe I would. Although I really do think there are people out there who are completely disinterested in making their own soap. These people are potential customers, but they probably have no interest in reading about how to make soap.

I was a bit shy at first. I didn't want to expose myself too much. What if no one wanted to read my blog? How sad is that! So thank you Happy Tiny Bubbles for being my first follower. I was so thrilled. I still am thrilled every time someone wants to read my blog. But I kept it a secret for the longest time. I think my husband was getting suspicious that I was having an affair. He'd ask me what I was doing as I hammered away at the computer and I would casually reply "Oh, I'm just writing down some recipe ideas" as I'd turn the computer screen away. Today there is a handful of my closest family that know about my blog, but mostly it's still my secret.

When I started this a year ago I did it for me. I wanted to interact with other soap makers and get an outlet for my own experiments and thought. The blog has turned into a place where I store ideas and recipes and basically have fun. I use my own blog to look for the recipes when I bake and I have a number of posts that are in draft. I put my ideas down here and some make it to be posts, others just hang there until the right time comes along. I expect that I will continue to post my soap recipes as well as to post about my ventures into bread baking and (hopefully) dyeing and bookbinding and paper making to name a few. Where this blog takes me is anybody's guess. But today I have given my blog an overhaul and changed it just a bit, mostly to reflect the season. It may be snowing outside, but the calendar says it's spring.

I love the community of bloggers that I have gotten to know in this past year. Many of them I have started to regard as friends and I am always excited to read their latest posts. I thought it's about time I show my true face for a change as I thank all my blog friends for a fantastic first year. I really look forward to another year of following others and writing about my own exciting new projects, soaps or who knows what :)
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Yoghurt - homemade and to die for delicious

2011-03-18T13:16:00.004Z

I have been picking up jars of all shapes and sizes to use
to store herbs and all sorts of stuff. This one is perfect for
my yoghurt. I hae two that I alternate. I also can't resist
collecting coneswhen I see them laying on the ground.

I eat yoghurt every morning for breakfast. I'm not adventurous (at least about food, I find it a bit of a bore to have to eat constantly) so I always eat strawberry yoghurt. Last time I was on vacation I got in the habit of mixing my own from the buffet because they didn't have the European style yoghurt that I like. I used unflavoured yoghurt that had an ingredient label that said something like: "Yoghurt and not much more" (many makes have all sorts of nasty sounding stuff in them) and then I mixed it with strawberry compote, almonds, walnuts, dates and rolled oats and whatever else took my fancy. Oh, what a breakfast! Much better than the small cup of yoghurt I had gotten used to. So when I came home I started to think about making my own. I've looked a yoghurt makers at stores and I've seen so many recipes through the years and often thought about it, but... you know. When you haven't done it, it just seems to be such a bother.

But I found this wonderful website, Smallnotebook.com and blog (I love the clean uncluttered look of it as well as the subject) about organzation and clutter and some really good instructions for making your own yoghurt. So I just did it!

It was really much easier than I anticipated and the result was a stunningly good yoghurt. I didn't use any complicated equipment, all you need is a candy thermometer that goes up to 180 F / 85 C, a pot, a jar and the oven.

I only used 600 ml (20 fl oz) of milk for my first try. I measured the milk into a pot. Put it on the stove, turned on the heat and waited for it to reach 180 F / 85 C. It does so when it starts to bubble and threatens to boil over, so watch it carefully. When that temperature is reache some people try to hold the milk at that temperature and that will supposedly give a thicker yoghurt. I didn't try to do that, but took the pot off the heat and plonked it into a large bowl with ice and water to cool. This cools the milk fairly rapidly (which I understand is better) and it should go down to 110 F / 42 C but not colder. Then I poured some milk into a glas jar and stirred in 1-2 tablespoons of store bought yoghurt, unflavoured. After that I poured in the rest of the milk and stirred the whole thing. Then I put it in the oven.

Now, my oven has a digital display so I turned it to 45 C. But I also put a candy thermometer into a glass of water and stuck it in there, just to check the temperature. It turned out that my oven is colder than it displays, so I turned it up until the candy thermometer read 110 F / 42 C, which turned out to be 50C.

The yoghurt stays in the oven for 7-8 hours and during that time it shouldn't be moved too much. I did this in the morning and just about freed my oven in time for dinner. For some people it makes sense to do this late at night and take it out in the morning. Then the whole thing is put in the fridge to get completely cold. After that it is ready to eat.

Mine turned out perfect. Just the way I like it. Much better than the organic yoghurt that I bought to use as a starter. That was unusually thin and watery and I was worried that it wouldn't be any good, but that fear was unfounded. I do not like yoghurt that has been thickened with gelatin or starches, but those who do like that can probably use those to thicken their homemade yoghurt if they want. I've also seen recipes that used powdered milk in addition to regular and that will make a thicker yoghurt. I use full fat milk for my yoghurt, but it can be made with reduced fat milk, although why anyone would want that is beyond me.

I didn't add any sugar to the yoghurt, but I defrosted some strawberries and added sugar to those and heated that on the stove. When it cooled I whizzed it in a blender and put in in a jar in the fridge. Now I can make my own blend every morning. I don't want everything to be mixed together too much, I enjoy the contrast of the sweet strawberries and tart sourness of the yoghurt. But I have seen recipes that put sugar and vanilla into the milk before it is heated so I guess that is a possibility for those who have a sweet tooth. I really recommend this to anyone who eats yoghurt. It's like so many things that just taste completely different when home made. And this way you know exactly what is in it.

Sowing seeds

2011-03-12T22:47:00.006Z

It feels really strange to be sowing seeds now. Outside everything is covered in snow and it feels like Christmas. Apart from the ever increasing daylight. This light is the first sign of spring here and now the sun rises at eight in the morning and it is still light when we get home from work. But spring is still a long way away. Traditionally, the danger of frost isn't really over till middle of June, but with warmer climate most people now start to plant out in May, but under close watch. Even so this is the right time to start to sow seeds for an early crop. This requires some preparation and thought and a lot of suitable vessels to sow seeds in. I often buy seed trays and modules, but since most things have doubled in price in the last two years
I decided to make newspaper pots this year.

I think everyone should grow something to eat. It's fun and there is nothing in the supermarkets that can compare with homegrown vegetables. I have been growing my own for the past two years and really enjoy it. I have a small allotment garden, but it's possible to grow quite a lot in pots on a balcony or even in a window sill. I have already planted garlic outside because it needs the cold in order to develop cloves. But at the beginning of March it is time to start to sow the first seeds.

I have put quite some thought into it this year and have written down how many plants of each vegetable I plan to grow. Last year I was given some plants and that dictated a lot of what I grew. I am now only going to grow what I really like to eat. This year I need more broccoli, more carrots and more rutabaga. And more lettuce of different sorts as well as rucola and spinach. I love both. No chard! I tried it, it's just not good. And I don't care if it looks good in the garden. Plenty of things do. I grow calendula, borage, mint, comfrey and violas to take care of the pretty part of the vegetable garden. I did beans last year, They were kind of pretty too. But I don't really like beans, so this year I'm sowing peas. I love green peas... and beets. And I want to grow more of some potatoes and less of others. I was given 6 baking potatoes last year and they were just fantastic. I also plan to try celery and I need two kale plants. My sister in law told me that they make the best chips! So I need try that.

It has been my experience that I sow too many seeds of each plant and end up with a glut which inevitably gets too much to keep up with and at least half of my seedlings die because I didn't prick them out properly. This year I am only sowing a few more seeds than I want of each plant.
Then I plan to sow some seeds every 2-3 weeks, especially
lettuce, spinach and rucola. That we I can extend
the harvest since those plants tend to bolt.

But back to the newspaper pots. I made some last year when I had run out of pots and they worked very well. They can be planted directly out so that the roots of the plants are not disturbed. I have seen that in the UK they sell pretty wooden somethings to make them and being a great admirer of equipment in general and wooden equipment in particular, I want one. But in the absence of a thingumajig I found a square vase that was perfect.

I was actually quite proud of myself for making them square this time, rather than round. They fit much better into the tray that holds them. I prepared the tray by putting newpaper in the bottom and then sprinkling a thin layer of soil on top. This helps to keep everything nice and moist.

The pots themselves are very easy to make. I used half the size of a tabloid, cut along the length. Tabloid size is standard here for all newspapers. So I cut the sheet in two and used two sheets to give it stability. I then fold the piece leaving 1-2 inches / 3-5 cm (which becomes the bottom. Then I roll the paper around the vase, scrunch the bottom and pull the pot away and put it in the tray. I almost fill it to the top with soil.

Then I water it. It's better to water before the seed is sown because watering will move the seeds around. Alternatively water from the bottom. I cover the soil with vermiculite or small size gravel. It helps keep moisture in and looks tidy.

After sowing the seeds I label them. This is very important. I have often thought that I was sure to remember exactly what I sowed, but that is not so. It's really important to label clearly and make sure that those labels don't get lost when the seedlings are potted on. I finally cover the tray with a cut up plastic bag.

I put the tray onto a window sill and check it every day. I lift the plastic off to ventilate if it looks too wet and once the seedlings appear I tend to take the plastic off during the day to let them get the most daylight. I also stroke the small seedlings in order to mimic wind. Or you can blow on them. This will toughen them up and prepare them for real life.

I also use egg cartons for lettuce leaves. Lettuce has really shallow root systems so that works perfectly. Toilet rolls are very good for peas and sweet peas and everything that has a long root system. It is even possible to sow carrots in them and plant the paper rolls directly out in the garden when the weather gets nice enough.

I also use the plastic boxes that lettuce and strawberries come in. Those really are perfect mini greenhouses complete with drainage holes and a cover.

The first seedlings are already appearing and I can just about believe that this time I won't kill them all, but grow them into healthy plants. Oh, I look so forward to spring.

Vote for your favorites on Great Cakes Soapworks

2011-03-06T23:04:00.004Z

I love many colours together, like a rainbow. These soaps
were lined up and I just had to snap a photo. The decoration
on top looks pretty, but isn't really practical. The herbs
change colour and go brown if the soap is wrapped in cello.

Amy Warden at Great Cakes Soapworks is having some fun on her blog. She has asked for and received suggestions for nominations for several categories of soap blogs and has published her nominations on her blog. She is now inviting people to vote. Like a lady, she hasn't nominated her own blog, although it is quite worthy of a few nominations. My blog was nominated in two categories and I am tickled pink :)

Many of my absolute favorites are also there, but some are unfortunately missing. There are so many good blogs out there and it is hard to pick just a few. I wasn't quick enough to nominate, but I have voted. Sometimes it was easy and sometimes I had a really hard time to pick just one.

But...... Go on!......Have some fun!......
Vote for YOUR favorite blogs. There are a few categories so you get to vote for a few.

Voting is open until 10 pm March 7th CST so go vote, it's fun.

Parsley for the fresh green of spring.

2011-03-05T01:34:00.003Z

The clay plaque is by my little one and it hangs in the
kitchen. I completely fell for the measuring cups I saw
in the MOMA store, especially the colours. I like green.

My body is screaming for spring but unfortunately it is a long way off. The true season to start to be in the garden isn't really till late May up here in the north. But I have started to plan my vegetable allotment garden and this weekend I will sow the first plant. I have been making pots from newspaper. I did that last year as well and it worked pretty well. I have to admit that I also just like the way it looks all green, sustainable and kinda cool.

I finally made my green soap. I have been meaning to use Parsley for ages. The reason is that Parsley has a lot of Chlorophyll and therefore it should give a good green colour. Chlorophyll, of course, is what makes Parsley such a good breath freshener after eating garlic. It's also a great antiseptic, by the way, as well as chock full of vitamins and minerals. Apparently chlorophyl is available as a colouring substance, but I haven't seen it anywhere myself. I just dried some parsley that I've had growing in a pot. I use it in cooking too, not just as garnish, I like it and actually eat it. Dried Parsley is not oil soluble. I tried to put some fresh Parsley into oil and even used a stick blender to try to disperse it into the oil. That did not work at all. So this I time I crumbled dried Parsley and used 2 tsp which I blended with the EO's into a recipe of 500 g. (about a pound) of oil. I could have made tea and probably should have, but I wanted to have a part of the soap without colour to play with it. I'm getting a bit bored with one colour soaps. But the white part got pretty stiff so I ended up with white lumps in the soap rather than swirls of any kind. Oh, well!

The recipe I used is a little bit different than last time, but that is only because I ran out of some ingredients.

36% Olive oil
30% Coconut oil
25% Rape seed oil
5% Castor oil
4% Cocoa butter

Water 33%
5% superfat.

I used a combination of Rosemary, Peppermint and Ginger essential oils for fragrance and the result is a fresh and green scent that almost clears the sinuses.

The soap is very, very soft. I cut it after a week, but that was difficult. I don't know if that is the rapeseed oil or not. I probably should only use 15% of that. It produces soft soap. But the colour is still a pretty green although it doesn't really look very green in the photo. But I have a feeling that it may turn to olive with time. I'll add that info to this post at a later stage.

Confetti soap with Rape seed oil

2011-02-27T02:14:00.003Z

The tiered cake stand is a part of our dinner service and gets
a lot of use. I pile cookies and candy on it at Christmas
and at other times it may store ginger, lemons or whatever.

I had planned to do this soap before New Years day. I thought it would be so appropriate for the occasion, but I didn't do much soaping during the holidays. Being the cheepskate... strike that... thrifty, the way I am, I have been saving my off cuts and putting them in a small bowl. It was starting to look really pretty with all the colours, so I could just see how it would make a lovely looking soap. It didn't quite turn out the way I wanted, but now I know what I should have done differently. And that is what it's all about, isn't it?

There is nothing wrong with the soap of course, but I had envisioned it white with smaller speckles of colour. So why exactly I used Orris root, lemongrass EO and large bits is beyond me! Except of course I had just gotten the Orris root and had to try it, I hadn't really thought about the colours of the EO's until I poured them and I thought that if I used a grater it would get too small so I chopped it into pieces. But I like the scent and I used lots of it. Maybe too much, but that was an accident.

This is also the first soap that I do with Rape seed (Canola) oil. I have always had this thing about it. I mean, it's used as a motor oil and up till recently it wasn't edible. I will still absolutely not use it as food although I might consider it's use as biodiesel.

I am rather pleased with the decoration. I have gotten these curled bits of soap when trimming and then when I saw what pretty decorations some people used them for I decided to make them especially for decoration. That was not successful and now I have no idea how I accidentally got the few that I had. Life is just really strange that way sometimes.

The recipe I used (The soap was 5% superfatted):

30% Coconut oil
30% Olive oil
25% Rape seed oil
10% Cocoa butter
5% Castor oil

I used some sugar in the water which was 30% of the oils. Maybe a little too much discount on the water, the soap was very quick to trace after I put the EO's in.

The soap bits are ends of soaps that have been coloured with Rumex oil (the pink), Annato (yellow) and Alkanet (lavender). I used 1 tsp of Titanium dioxide to get the background a bit lighter. The scent was a blend of Lavender, Rosewood, Lemongras and Ylang Ylang and I used 1 tsp of the Orris root powder to see if the fragrance lasts better.

I did try the of cuts of this soap to see what it is like and I have to say that this recipe has a very creamy lather. Don't know if that is the Rape seed oil, the sugar or just this combination. I'll get a better feel for it when it has cured. One thing that I feel that this soap could have benefitted from is a few scaps of green soap. It would have made the decoration on top a little bit more flower like. So that has to be my next soap. A green trial using dried parsley.

Hmmm... Bread?

2011-02-20T17:54:00.004Z

I have a few cross stitch pieces that my great aunt made.
She gave many of them to my daughter but I have still to
put them in a frame yet. Love the tureen with the
vegetable decoration. It came from my mother in law.

I have been thinking that I may be suffering from a serious midlife crisis. Like the middle aged men who run out and buy motorcycles, trade in their wife for a younger model and so on. Except my symptoms are an obsessive interest in making things. All sorts of things. And one obsessive interest seems to breed another and snowball into a collection of unfulfilled areas of interest that manifests in a stack of books.

The other day I suddenly got an urge to bake a sourdough rye bread. I honestly do not know where I got that idea from. Most often my interests seem to evolve naturally from one area to another: Soap to creams and lotions and back to soap on to essential oils and medicinal plants with a detour to crocheting borders for duvet covers and from there to dyeing with natural materials to bookbinding (yes! Bookbinding is fascinating), but this had no connection to anything else and surprised me. I love to bake cakes and cookies, but that is just selfish, indulgent greed. Bread? No! Tried it once. Killed the yeast. Decided it was not for me. But then I got this strong urge. One problem with a sudden urge to make sourdough bread is that one has to have a starter to make it. Making a starter takes at least a week if successful. So I have been having a close relationship with Grumpy, my starter, for a few weeks. It wasn't successful at first. He seems to be in good shape now and I have high hopes for his longevity.

It was a bumpy ride that started with an innocent mix of rye flour and water in equal amounts. I used a glass jar. Then I waited for it to start to bubble. I stirred it every day, twice a day, until it did. Then I fed it. Also every day. This involves discarding half of it and adding more flour. It soon started to ferment and bubble quite happily. It was a bit like magic. Life from nothing, it seemed. But getting from there to bread is only a part of the way. My first attempts went into the trash with an loud bang. I could have killed a man with that heavy blunt instrument. This last one I baked in a cast iron pot that was too big, so it looks flat, but it tastes very, very good. I also think that I may be starving my starter. But I'm getting there. I used a recipe from The Fresh Loaf site. The recipe for the first bread is:

300 g. Whole wheat
150 g. Spelt
50 g. Rye
50 g. Whole grain starter

375 g. Water
10 g. Salt

I used my rye starter which is a bit wet. If the starter is very dry then use less, about 40 g.
This recipe is very simple and it worked fine for me. I dissolved the starter in the water. Added the salt. Then the flour, which I had mixed well with a whisk. I use my Kitchen aid mixer with a dough hook to mix the dry and wet ingredients. Then I put the dough (it's sticky) into an oiled bowl and covered it with a plastic bag and a towel. Placed it somewhere warm and draft free, I let it rise overnight on the kitchen counter, for 10- 12 hours.

There is the wet finger test to see if it has risen fully. You poke a wet finger into the dough up to the first knuckle. If the hole remains and doesn't spring back then the dough is fully risen. Then the dough is taken out, stretched a bit and folded, this should be done gently to preserve the gas bubbles that the rising has produced. Then the dough is shaped into a ball. It then needs to sit for another 2-3 hours and should rise again. I put mine into a cast iron pot that had been heated in the oven at 230 C / 450 F. I put a lid on and let it bake for 40 - 50 minutes, the last 10-15 without the lid. To test for doneness one can apparently knock on the bottom of the bread and it should sound hollow. This process is beyond my comprehension so I prefer to stick an instant read thermometer into the center of the bread. The internal temperature should be about 99 C / 210 F.

I will continue to work on my bread until I get the perfect loaf. I still have some way to go and taking good care of Grumpy is a high priority now.

Tooth Soap - or perhaps I just need a vacation

2011-01-28T02:07:00.007Z

And did I mention that I love old tools? They just don't make
them like they used to. Those toothbrushes have real boar
bristles, but they are way too big and scratchy to be used for
anything other than cleaning. And, yes, I use them for that.

I made tooth soap, oh! probably about a year ago. I actually got quite absorbed by the subject and experimented with different recipes and forms. I made one that actually (quite by accident) had the consistency of toothpaste and I really liked it. It had a mild and nice taste and a lovely green colour but it oxidized very quickly and turned an ugly brown colour. I used it for the longest time by wiping off the oxidized surface and using the fresh lovely green paste, but in the end I gave up and threw it out. My current tooth soap is a white bar soap.

My interest in tooth soap started a few years ago when I started to look at toothpaste in the "natural" section of the grocery store. I had tried Tom's and found that to be quite nice, but then I tried Weleda toothpaste and that had no fluoride. Now I'm not going to say anything to discourage anyone from using toothpaste with fluoride, but I decided for myself that the health of my gums was a higher priority than cavities. So I used the red Weleda toothpaste for a while and liked it a lot. But it started me wondering what toothpaste was anyway. And after reading labels and researching I discovered that people have used a lot of different stuff to clean their teeth and soap is certainly one of them and modern day toothpaste contains SLS.

Now, I need to say that my dentist hasn't noticed any change in my oral health since I gave up commercial toothpaste, but I would not want to interfere with anyones use of the commercial stuff. I just gag if I use it after all this time. Nuclear waste springs to mind.

But I am very interested to hear if anyone has done experiments with tooth soap. The soap that I have used for the last few months is very simple and I have to admit that it has a horrible taste. But only in the beginning, you get used to it. It's a basic 70% olive and 30% coconut. To that I added calcium and magnesium tablets that I crushed and some bicarbonate as well. The bicarb is what gives it an unpleasant taste. In an effort to counteract that I added some Xylitol, but I cant's say that I taste any sweetness.

If I were to do another one (which I will eventually although tooth soap seems to lasts forever) I would probably try to dig up the recipe for the green paste and use some parts of that and use 100% olive oil. Suds really are unnecessary. But I have to say that my favorite recipe is the one that I read that Benjamin Franklin used. It was honey and charcoal. My son-in-law agreed to try it out with me and I think I have to hold him to it.

But, having confessed to this strangeness, I also have to admit that I just really need a vacation. I think I have mentioned once or twice that I don't like cold weather at all. So even if we have had a fairly mild winter so far I am jumping ship and heading for the southern seas to bask in sunshine for two weeks.
...

Silk and Sorrel shampoo bar

2011-01-21T19:27:00.004Z

Another weakness is glass. I found this carafe dirty
and full of spiders. The candlesticks were favorites,
but I wasn't careful with the candle and one of them
broke when the candle burned down. I should throw
out, I know, but I can't bear to just yet.

Finally I made a shampoo bar with silk. I've wanted to do one ever since Strenua Inertia gave me a tip to add silk to the lye. That soap turned out really nice. I liked it so much that I used it on my hair with very good results. So I had to do a shampoo bar with it. And since I really like Njóli oil, I decided to use the infused oil of it's close cousin Rumex acetosa (Sorrel) or as we here call it, Hundasúra. I have had this one root infusing in oil since last fall when I pulled it from the garden where it had enjoyed a lovely summer. The root of it just looked so jummy that I cleaned it and cut it up into oil. The colour of the oil is a nice yellow with a slight orange tinge. It's not quite the same colour as my previous Rumex oil (which is from the species longifolius) so I have been very curious to try it in soap and see what colour it gives.

So I did and obtained a beautiful, but rather strange colour. At first it turned a pretty pink, but when I added the EO's they imparted a very yellow colour that changed the soap to a lovely peachy orange. Now that I've cut it, I think it is perhaps a bit like is in vogue right now - those pale fleshy beige tones. I'm used to Rumex oil changing overnight from beige to dusky pink. But this one didn't. It started out a fairly warm pink and turned into a salmon colour. That may be because of the EO's that I used. For scent I used a combination of Lavender, Sweet Orange and Vetiver. It smells green and fresh. It is the start of my blending experiments.

Olive oil 40% 240g / 8.5oz (out of this 15g was sorrel root infused)
Coconut oil 25% 150g / 5.3oz
Soybean oil 20% 120g / 4.2oz
Cocoa butter 10% 60g / 2.1oz
Castor oil 5% 30g / 1 oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz

I used both sugar and silk in the lye water hoping to make the soap that lathers nicely and leaves my hair very silky. Even if it hasn't cured long enough I did try it out and I think I achieved that. It lathered exceptionally well and my hair felt very, very silky.
.

Essential oils and fragrance blends

2011-01-12T22:30:00.004Z

I can always use more bottles and jar. Although I probably
need a bigger house soon.

I love my stuff. I don't feel quite comfortable to be so materialistic, but I really, really love my stuff. To the point of having to fight a wish to hoard. I often feel a slight reluctance to use my precious essential oils. I almost act like Gollum in Lord of the Ring whispering: "Mine, all mine" in a half crazed voice as I clutch them to my bosom. Ok, maybe not that. But I look at them, sniff them and Google in order to get inspiration for combinations that are to die for. I also dread the day that I have an empty bottle.

Last year I made many soaps and usually a different recipe each time. I have learned a lot from that and have formed what I would call an intuitive sense of what combination of oils and fats I like in soaps. All that means is that I couldn't write down "the perfect soap recipe", but would have no problem to put together a recipe that I really, really like at a particular moment. My preferences still change a bit from day to day. One thing that I feel I still have to do is a series of single oil experiments. I have read the results of other's experiments (in particular Helen at Strenua Inertia blog), but feel that there is nothing that replaces hands on experience. I have even started to think about doing a series of two oil combinations and three... Somehow I get a feeling that things could get a bit difficult quite quickly.

But one thing I am certain of and that is that this year will be devoted to colour and scent trials. I want to start to blend EO's to get some more sophisticated scents. I have been reading about scents and I have a few ideas of my own, that probably are a bit crazy since I haven't seen them anywhere else, but that only means that I simply have to try them out.

I did find an interesting website about EO blends. It's a company called Rainbow Meadow and they have a section where it is possible to tick individual EO's and get suggestions of blends. They even give ratio's and have a calculator to give amounts according to soap batch size. It's fun and I thank whoever did that. Another blending guide is at About.com where cotton swabs are put in a jar. Another even more economical way is to use toothpicks. This way if the recipe is for 2 drops of one oil you dip two cotton swabs/toothpicks in the oil and put in a jar or plastic bag, three drops = three swabs/toothpicks. Then you close the jar and sniff it a bit later. Very simple and clever.

Fragrances are frequently classified into top, middle and base notes. The top notes being the smallest molecules, the ones that are most volatile, reach the nose first and last for the shortest time. Citrus is typical of these. The base notes are the heavy scents like sandalwood, vetiver and oak moss. And the middle notes are in between the two and serve to marry the scents together. I read somewhere that it makes sense to always start with the base note when blending oils. I am going to follow that advise since I've read in several places that the order that the fragrances are mixed matters to the outcome. The proportion of base, middle and top notes also matters. The base note needs to be about 55% in order for the fragrance to last. The middle notes should be around 20% and the top note 25%. So in numbers of drops, that would be 11 of base, 4 of middle and 5 of top. Obviously each note can be made of different fragrances and most commercial perfumes are very complex blends of a lot of ingredients. Very few are made of natural flower essences or absolutes, but two that I know of are Joy and Chanel no. 5. I love the former and am starting to like the latter. But of course this is about perfumes and those rules may not necessarily apply to soap fragrances, but it's good to have a starting point. Now all I need to do is to classify my EO's into base, middle and top and start blending.

New beginnings - or Sugar Scrub Cubes revisited

2011-01-07T23:19:00.002Z

How cute is that lamp base. Someone has carved a garland
of flowers on it. And it's actually quite well done. I keep
wondering who didn't want it because I absolutely loved it.

I'm not one for New Years resolutions, it's all I can do to remember to write the new numbers for the year much less initiate a complete change of lifestyle. Who on earth got this idea that the deepest, darkest winter is a great time for major upheavals in peoples lives? But even so there is always a magical kind of feeling about the start of a new year. It's a fresh start even if it's the most miserable time of year. One of the only redeeming qualities of January is that it's the time to get a new yearly planner. I love all sorts of calendars, planners, diaries and datebooks especially when they are new and pristine and virginal. Digital doesn't have the magic at all. Although I have to admit that I rarely find exactly what I'm looking for in the printed versions. I have always thought that one of these days I'll design my own system that will work perfectly for me. Who knows, maybe one of these days I will.

I made more Sugar scrubs for Christmas presents. This time I used an ice cube mold that I got in a junk shop so they are not dollops like before, but proper cubes. I have to say that it is much easier to use a mold. Just fill it up and put it in the freezer for a few minutes and they pop out easily, for the most part.

I have grown to really like the Sugar cubes. They are a gentle way to scrub the skin, perfectly safe for the environment and leave the skin very soft with all the nice oils and lovely soap. I made them to go with the bath bombs so I used Alkanet infused oil and got a pretty pink. The Alkanet may also give a slightly lavender colour which probably happens if the soap is very alkaline. I also used scents and the pink Sugar cubes got Lavender EO, just a few drops are enough. I also used Annatto seed infused oil to get a yellow colour that accompanied the Lemongras EO. No colour for the Peppermint but a mix of Rumex/Njóli oil and Alkanet for the Palmarosa EO. That produced a rather dusky pink which went well with the Njóli soap that I put the tiny rose buds on.

I experimented with using Coconut oil instead of Cocoa Butter and that works fine as well. They were a bit softer, but that's all right. The recipe is here and also a link to Mayren Abashed's blog which is where I found it originally. I wrapped the Sugar cubes like hard candy, although my cellophane was a tad to stiff for that to work really well. But it looked kinda cute and the recipients of the gifts were quite pleased. And that does count. There really is a lot of truth in the old saying that it is sweeter to give than to receive.

Bombs away! - Happy New Year :D

2010-12-31T18:23:00.008Z

The little hens were a present from my daughter. She found
them in the Good S. but they are more my thing. The
heartshaped candle holders are Danish and were still in
the box. I like this type of simple Christmas decoration.

I finally made bath bombs. I've wanted to do them for the longest time, but somehow it seemed too complicated. It isn't. It's really easy. In fact it's almost too easy. I used a very simple recipe from The Excellent Living Guide. There are many guides and tutorials on the Internet and most of them are good. Now I am not the greatest bath bomb fan, but my sisters really like them, so I thought I'd have a go at making them as presents.

I had managed to get myself some Citric acid and I found that to be the hardest part of the whole thing. I am now the proud owner of 25 kilos of the stuff, so I can make them for years to come. The most wonderful thing about the bath bombs is that they don't swallow up all my EO's. The recipe that I used is:
1 cup Citric acid
2 cups Baking soda
2 tsp. oil (like Olive or Grapeseed)
1 tsp. EO

The real trick to this is to blend the oils with the dry ingredients and then have some water in a spray bottle and carefully spray a bit of water and stir well with a wire whisk. It doesn't take much to moisten the mixture enough to be able to make the bombs. And that is fairly easy. Just scoop a lot of mixture into both parts of the mold, squeeze together very hard and gently release the bomb from the mold. Tapping the mold can help with this. Let dry for about a day. Store in a dry place and use. I read that they don't keep very well.

Now I have one of those plastic Christmas ornament types that I've seen used as a mold and I tried that. I didn't like it. Firstly it makes a very large bath bomb. Some may like that, but I don't. So I came up with using some plastic packaging from a type of coffee. I don't use it myself (strictly Nescafé in this household) but my cousin has been collecting these as small soap molds, for which they also work well. The resulting bombs are smaller than those traditional ones and they look a lot like the French Macarones that I like so much.

From this recipe I can make 8-9 bombs of that size. I made a few batches, one with Lemongras and Annatto infused oil, one with Lavender and Alkanet infused oil, one with uncoloured oil and Peppermint EO. The fourth was my failure, it had Palmarosa EO and a mix of Annatto and Njoli oil. The mixture was a bit too wet, so that the bombs had sort of semi-fizzed after a day. I haven't tried them in the bath yet, I think they'll work for me at home, but they are not pretty.

I threw in a bit of corn starch, maybe half a cup, into one recipe. It can apparently aggravate yeast infections, so beware of that. I have also read that milk powder can be used and I have that somewhere so I may try it one of these days. In another batch I used about the same amount of Epsom salt which is good for sore muscles.

Those candleholders are very typically Danish and
are most likely from the 40's or 50's judging from
the box. I don't dare to have living lights on the tree
so I decided to hang them up on a thin wire circle and
hang them in the window.

I thought it appropriate to end this year with a bang. We do that here in this country. On New Years Eve the population goes completely insane. Everyone can buy fireworks and almost everyone does. There are several tons of fireworks fired up around midnight. The noise is unbelievable, there are fireworks absolutely everywhere and finally a thick smoke envelops the city. We have a fantastic view over the city, so we prefer to participate in the madness only as spectators with our closest relatives.

I wish everyone a happy New Year. I am thankful for the year that is almost at an end and I thank you all for a most wonderful year of getting to know you, so many people all over the world who share an interest in making soaps.
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In the spirit of Christmas

2010-12-28T17:40:00.004Z

The cookies jar is another find at the Good S, but the
candle thing (what is that called) is German, but bought
in York, UK when I was a student. My uncle has one that
is white and big. He must have bought it in Prague where
he studied, but this was the biggest I could afford.

Bluegras is the Icelandic common name for Geranium sylvaticum. It alludes to the fact that it was used for centuries to dye cloth blue. Sometime after 1780 an old woman died in Iceland and with her the knowledge. She didn't share it with anyone and the art was lost. Just before 1980 another woman in Iceland was the only one left who knew her craft. She had just been diagnosed with cancer when she told me that she was going to teach me how to wash, starch and iron the traditional priest's collars. It wasn't a request. All priests in Iceland prayed for her partly, I'm sure, because they feared that the knowledge would die with her. I also prayed fervently because I wasn't at all sure that I would be able to supply the collars as perfectly as my aunt had done for decades. My great aunt lived another good twenty years and by the time she died in her 90's she had taught others.

Knowledge and passing it on is what keeps civilizations going. Traditions, recipes, ways of doing things, stories and wisdom is passed from one generation to the next. I have a feeling that grandmothers have passed along the majority of the knowledge until there was printing and books. Now the internet is this wonderful source of knowledge that one couldn't even have dreamt about before.

I am very grateful to the many women (and few men) who make soap and blog about it. The knowledge that they share so generously has become a constant source of delight for me. I eagerly wait for every new post and photo and I try to find new blogs every now and then. And new countries. I am also grateful for Google translate. I know that the translation isn't perfect, in fact at times it makes foreigners speak the weirdest English, but how else would I have an inkling what bloggers in countries like Russia, Japan, Chile, Turkey and Spain are talking about. As it is I have learned so much from so many people that I have never met, nor am I ever likely to. I love that and I am grateful to every one of them.

I have a favorite recipe that I have never given to anyone (well, no one has ever asked so it's not like I said no, even if I would have wanted to). It is my German grandmother's Christmas cookies. My mother has made them every Christmas for as long as I remember and so have I ever since I had a home myself. I usually make a double recipe because they are quick to go. In the spirit of Christmas I would like to share it.

150 g. /5.3 oz. Hazelnuts (or Almonds if you prefer)
125 g. /4.4 oz. Dark chocolate
175 g. /6.0 oz. Icing sugar
2 egg whites

Grind the nuts and the chocolate in an almond grinder. Blend the dry ingredients, siv the sugar if it is lumpy. Whisk the egg whites stiff. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites. Don't stir. It will look like it is impossible to do but it will get there. Make little tops with a teaspoon onto a baking paper and bake for 7-10 minutes at 175 degrees C. Let cool on the baking paper. Store in a cake tin.
The cookies sometimes keep their shape, but sometimes they go flat. Either way they taste wonderful. Crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside and they are of course absolutely essential for reading comprehension during the holidays.
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Purple is (also) the colour of Christmas - Alkanet and lavender soap

2010-12-18T01:08:00.003Z

The goblet is a favorite find that I got for less than a dollar.
The other mercury glass pieces are modern and not as nice,
but I felt it needed company. Mercury glass is called poor
mans silver in Danish. I think that is so neat.

The pretty purple or lavender colour that should come from Alkanet infused oil has eluded me until now. I am very happy with this colour. I used a lot of infused oil and I also used a decent amount of lavender, having recently received a large shipment of EO's.

I have had Alkanet root infusing in Olive oil for a few weeks now. I figured it would be convenient to have it in a 1 liter bottle, ready to go when I feel like it. I then just top it up since the Alkanet still has a lot of colour in it and keeps turning the oil a dark red. I learned this from someone in fabric/yarn dyeing, just to give some credit to whose who deserve it. I just can't remember exactly who to thank.

Lavender is a classic scent. It's not one that is at the top of my list of favorites, but many people seem to like it a lot. And "vive la différance". I love the colour though. The colour that the church uses for this time of the year is purple, so in a way it is a very Christmas-y colour and a very sophisticated one. I have to admit that I stick to the traditional red, green, gold myself although I used to be more adventurous, way back in the olden days when I was hip and cool.

The recipe is similar to my recent ones, but with a little bit of soybean oil. The oz are approximate and I did discount the water quite a bit.

Olive oil 40% 280g / 9.9oz (out of this 75g/100g was Alkanet infused)
Coconut oil 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Lard 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Cocoa butter 5% 35g / 1.2oz
Soybean oil 5% 35g / 1.2oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz

I did two batches, one with 75g and one with 100g of Alkanet oil. I can't tell the difference between them. I put Lavender EO in this and sprinkled some buds on top. The soap turned a very pretty blue and seemed to stay that way for the longest time. Then it started to turn lavender and a really nice one at that. I'm very pleased. I don't know if I can repeat that, but I'll be sure to brag about it if I do.

Now I need to stop making soap and start to bake the cookies for Christmas. Eating cookies is necessary for me at Christmas, especially when reading the Christmas books. I practically loose my ability to read if there are no cookies. Books are a very common gift in Iceland and the bulk of all books that are published here come out in the month before Christmas. We have plenty of time to read since our Christmas starts at six o'clock on the 24th and we then have two more day off. The 24th is the main holiday. It is when we light candles, all the church bells ring and we sit down to dinner in our finest clothes. After dinner we open presents and there is always a book or two in there. In addition I cheat a little bit and usually have a stash of my own that I have gathered just in case I don't get any for Christmas.

For this year I have 6 volumes of an old magazine, dating from 1907-1912. I found them in a black plastic bag, sitting in the rain destined for the trash (what is wrong with people?). I also have two books my husband gave me, one about medicinal herbs and one about dyeing with herbs. I got hold of a book about kitchen cosmetics from the seventies and three volumes by Regine Deforge starting with "La bicyclette bleu", not in French though. But now I think I'd better start baking those cookies.

Simple soap

2010-12-11T03:17:00.004Z

That little enamel jar with a lid has holes in it, but someone
had put a sticky bandage on it. I thought that was so sweet.

Simple soap is what got me started in the first place and here is one. I wanted to do another milk soap and this time a soap that I could recommend for pregnant women and babies. So no fragrance. Kind of silly since I have been getting more fragrance and now have a lot. But that is what I suddenly wanted to get back to. A simple soap. Very simple.

It is the kind of soap that I like to think my paternal grandmother would and could have made. The ingredients would have been readily available to her even if they lived on an isolated farm in the north. I like the thought that she made soap. They had to be pretty self sufficient and it would fit with what I know of my grandfather who was very innovative in his farming. In those days it was considered strange to have goats, pigs and ducks in addition to the traditional sheep and cattle. But my grandfather was a very strong character, intelligent and ambitious for himself and his family. My grandmother... I wish I had known her.

I really think that it is such a shame that we don't get to know our grandparents when we ourselves finally reach an age where we start to be truly interested in our forefathers and mothers. Or am I the only one? Now I have so many questions! I am fascinated by the past and how people lived then. I know a little bit, but not the every day little things that interest me.

I love that photo of my dad and his mother and siblings.
She obviously sewed the dresses and probably the pants
as well. The sweaters of Icelandic wool were knitted
by her, but the kids probably knitted their own socks.

I never got the chance to know her. She died ten years before I was born with her two youngest daughters. She was thirty five and they were two and seven. On December 12th 1948 an avalanche hit their farmhouse and buried it. With my grandmother and her little daughters died also an old aunt, her daughter and the daughters son. In all, six people died and one survived. My grandfather was buried for four days in the snow. The three older children were away at school. My father was the oldest at fifteen, his brother one year younger and their sister was ten at the time. The photo of the three of them with their mother is the only photo that exists of her.

So I made this soap to be simple and pure. Something that she might even have made and passed the recipe on to me if things had turned out differently.
It is a small recipe, 500 g:

Olive oil 45% 225g / 7.9oz
Coconut oil 30% 150g / 5.3oz
Cocoa butter 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Sunflower oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Castor oil 5% 25g / 0.9oz

Milk 38% 190g / 5.3 oz infused with M. maritime/chamomile
Lye 72g / 2.5 oz

I wanted to use some gentle herbs that won't harm a babies delicate skin so I put a few tablespoons of the Icelandic substitute for chamomile, Matricaria maritima in the milk and warmed it. I then froze the milk and carefully put the lye in, a little at a time. It turned a beautiful yellow colour. I also added a bit of sugar water to the milk. I like the way it increases bubbles. I then put the soap into the freezer to prevent heating. The result is a very softly coloured yellow soap that has no scent whatsoever. There is a lovely simplicity in an unscented soap. The absence of scent is the ultimate clean. Pure like the country air and the bubbling trout river that runs through my grandparents land.

My father would have been 77 today had he lived. He died on December 10th 2006. I still think of him every day.

I like to remember them all at this time of the year. I wish I had had the chance to know them. But since that is not possible I like to give my thoughts to them around this time in an attempt to honor and celebrate their lives. Not only my grandmother and her daughters, but also the little branch of the family that died with them. My great aunt and her daughter and her brave nineteen year old grandson, who died after three days in the snow with the two year old in his arms.

December

2010-12-04T15:33:00.004Z

This wonderful reindeer that I got from my colleagues. The
small candlesticks are so typically scandinavia. They
ended up in Afrika with some other stuff so our older
daughter she could get some Christmas spirit from home.

I love this time of year. Or more specifically I really, really like December and Christmas time. Not because I like cold weather. On the contrary I dislike being cold intensely and am of the firm belief that being born here was a terrible misunderstanding in high places because I like sun and warmth and lush plants and animals running around and all that summer stuff. So if it wasn't for Christmas I would wither away and die in the intense darkness that surrounds us at this time of the year.

December is a special month. My birthday is today and my father had his birthday exactly one week later and a week after that it is my husband's birthday. My husband and I had our first date in December and we always celebrate that much more than our wedding anniversary. And then we have Christmas which is a three day holiday here and New Years is two. And we always try to take the week between the two off if we possbly can to really get time to read and enjoy the holidays as much as we can.

I have one rule about Christmas preparation, to do only the things that I take pleasure in. It used to be customary here to do a complete cleaning of everything before Christmas. That included the closets and top of the kitchen cabinets and basically every nook and cranny. I am blessed in that my mother wasn't much of a housewife and neither am I. So this never made much sense to me. When I was about twenty I had girlfriends who said that the scent of Ajax was necessary for them to get into the spirit of Christmas to which I replied that they should put some in a bowl, put it on the radiator, turn off the lights and light some candles. Who is to see dirt in the dark of winter. For those not in the know, Ajax is a particularly nasty smelling cleaning product.

I couldn't resist drying the leaves on the Japanese maple.
They were really bright red, but the colour didn't last. I
used them anyway with the pretty larch cones I picked.

Like in many Nordic and European countries we start celebrating on the first Sunday of Advent which was last Sunday. I always make an Advent wreath which has four candles that are lit on consecutive Sundays until Christmas when all four a are lit. I think that tradition is German in origin. I wasn't brought up with that, but started to make my own the first year I had my own home. I always make a fresh one each year. The look can vary, but this years is very simple. I have learned one thing about making those and that is to get big and thick Church candles for my wreaths because they burn for a long time. I have had two catch on fire, which probably isn't much for over thirty years.

This is always my first Christmas decoration. Following that I put a green (fake) pine garland in the kitchen window and decorate it with lights and bits and bobs. All sorts of strange stuff that has accumulated and doesn't fit anywhere else. Some of it is my daughters handiwork from kindergarten, some is little gifts from people I care about, a lot of it is something that has been there for ever and I have no idea where I got it from.

I was going to write: But the point is..., but there really is not point to this post other than to get an excuse to sit down in our conservatory and watch the birds as they fly from one tree to another. We have pond in the garden that we keep unfrozen so they can take a bath, something that is essential to their survival in winter. The sun is about to set, exhausted after a five hour stint and I have lit a lot of candles. I sit with my computer in my lap, one dog to my side and the other warming my legs, my husband in his easy chair reading. I have a cup of coffee and some cookies and a stack of magazines that I didn't have time to read on my last business trip. Perfect! And of course this is the point. To enjoy life.

Oh, and the soap! But of course peppermint EO and crushed candy canes on a milk soap with a teaspoon of TD. I just had to do it. Christmas has to be full of clichés and a little bit corny.
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Lemongrass and madder - Unexpected combo

2010-11-30T20:14:00.003Z

Those Russian ladies are always cute. I have no idea where
I got them. Is that weird? The braiding I got in my favorite
flea market The Good Shepherd for about 4 dollars. I used
some of it on my little daybed that I recovered. That post
is still a draft :)

Trying to match fragrance to colour is a challenge, especially when one is committed to using natural colours only. This combo may or may not be repeated.

I used Madder root for this soap and this time I used a bit more than I have done previously. The colour is more of a tan than the warm red that I was hoping for, but that may suit the scent better. Although somehow I guess Lemongrass should be either yellow or slightly green. Which reminds me, I need to try dried Parsley soon!

But I love Lemongrass scent, it lasts so much better than lemon. The soap smells lovely and I used dried bits of Lemongrass on top. Tha may not be such a good idea because it was a bitch to cut.

This recipe was the same as the one I used for the Palmarosa soap apart from the colouring material and the scent. I think I need to wait to use the soap before I decide what I think about it. I may learn to like it yet.
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Annatto - A silky ray of sunshine in the middle of winter

2010-11-26T19:00:00.003Z

I dug out my tablecloths to use at the wedding, so I have
rediscovered their beauty even if I hardly ever use them.
I bought the lamp shades for an old and rather ugly
light fixture but they were the wrong size. Typical.

I've been wanting to try to use Annatto seeds to colour soap for the longest time. I finally did and I have to say that the result is a very pretty yellow. Much mellower than unrefined Palm oil. I have read that the colour fades, but I'm willing to accept some fading. That's only natural...with natural colours.

This soap also has silk fiber. I just had to try that after Hellen at Strenua Inertia gave me that tip. I have quite a bit of silk left over from sewing the wedding dress and pulling a few threads is very easy. I can't wait for this one to be ready, I've never tried silk soap.

The scent is the classic combo, ylang ylang and orange essential oils and I put dried flowers on top to pretty it up. It hardly needs it though. The colour is lovely, the scent is to die for and I have high hopes for this one in the skin caressing department.

The recipe was a simple but trusted 40-30-20-10

Olive oil 40% 200g / 7.0oz
Coconut oil 30% 150g / 5.3oz
Lard 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Cocoa butter 10% 50g / 1.8oz

Water 30% 150g / 5.3 oz
Lye 72g / 2.5 oz

I used about one tablespoon of Annatto infused oil and put some silk tread into the lye.

This soft yellow colour is the same as the colour of the sky this afternoon, just before the sun set. It was absolutely beautiful. We are having dry and cold weather now and it is so nice to have clear skies and sun, even if it is only for at few hours. I love this time of year, the advent starts on Sunday and I have bought everything I need for the advent wreath which I make every Christmas. So making that and baking some cookies is the plan for this weekend.
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Milkmint - A milky white and minty soap

2010-11-20T14:51:00.003Z

One of my friends is and artist and I just love the colours
she uses. I don't wear much lace, but have a hard time
resisting buying it and this scarf made it home with me.

I am so proud of this one. I think I wrote somewhere rather nonchalantly that some soapmakers try to get their milk soaps very white. My attitude was rather like: "As if that matters". But I had to try. But midway through the experiment I decided to cheat and put a little bit of Titanium dioxide in there. I didn't quite trust the soap that I painstakingly made to be as white as I wanted. But I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten it this white if the bases hadn't been very white...Or would I? Well I'll never know. But I don't care. I think this is my all time favorite soap. At least right now. I tend to love best the latest soaps.

I had read somewhere, probably in the book I have about making milk soaps, that the trick is to dissolve the lye very, very slowly in the frozen milk and not let the soap heat up too much. So I did that. I half froze the milk and put a bit of the lye into it and stirred until the milk was almost completely thawed and then I put it back in the freezer. I waited for it to freeze again and then I put a bit of the lye into it ... Repeated this many, many times until all the lye was dissolved. Obviously the last time the lye/milk solution should be at about room temperature and so should the oils. I combined the two and the soap came together perfectly. I added some TD and Peppermint EO.

I got the brilliant idea to crumble some dried mint on top. I had the last mint of the summer that had gone to flower and I had dried that even if they say that it should be picked before flowering. I think it's my German genes that make me ignore advise like that. So I put it on top of the soap. It was so pretty. But I made one mistake. I put the soap in the freezer and I think that resulted in the pretty green and purple herbs on top turning brown. OR, it could have been that I wrapped it too soon. Oh, I could have cried! But not for long. Chuck it up to experience. I'm going to make that again and this time not put it in the freezer and absolutely not wrap it too soon. But the smell is lovely. I really like peppermint essential oil. It is nothing like artificial scent. Just pure and fresh.
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Palmarosa - Perfect for pre-Christmas tension

2010-11-13T22:32:00.003Z

The cups and saucers were my grandmothers. I never
use them, they are too small. But I really love them.

This year is the first in many that I'm not thoroughly annoyed with stores for starting to advertise Christmas in October. I realize that Christmas is in fact about fifteen minutes away! So I've begun to make lists for Christmas. It is very easy to do my Christmas lists because I write the lists in my Book and I have Christmases past in there too. The Book is also where I write my soap and cream recipes. It is a Moleskine unruled which I bought because I couldn't find a squared one. I always write better on squared paper so I prefer that. Then I got a squared one and I figured I would just finish the one I had started. That was in 2007. So now I have an overview of my lists of presents, people and food for three Christmases past and a lot of recipes in between.

I have been cutting and wrapping a lot of soaps lately and one of the prettiest in the pink Palmarosa scented one. Palmarosa smells a lot like roses but is a lot more affordable. The essential oil comes from Cybopogon martini a grass that is related to Lemongrass. The benefits of Palmarosa EO is said to be to balance the skin's production of sebum, stimulate cell regeneration and moisturize. It is also antiseptic. In aromatherapy it fights depression, anxiety and anger. It is relaxing and uplifting for the mood. What a great combination. In fact absolutely perfect for the preparations for Christmas.

The soap is coloured with my favorite, Rumex oil, at about 20g per pound. It never ceases to amaze me the way that starts out tan or beige and turns overnight into a pretty pink. I got the idea to put the rosebuds on the top at the spur of the moment and crushed a few as well. A friend gave them to me some time ago as a tea, but I couldn't bear to use them. I really like the result, so I made a few other soaps with similar decorations, but different flower stuff.

I made this recipe with lard and grapeseed oil both of which I find to be very nice ingredients in soaps. The total weight is 741g, a whacky number, but...

Olive oil 34% 250g / 8.8oz (25 gr of this was Rumex infused)
Coconut oil 24% 175g / 6.2oz
Lard 18% 130g / 4.6oz
Grapeseed oil 16% 116g / 4.0oz
Cocoa butter 9.5% 70g / 2.5oz

Water 30% 222g / 7.8 oz
Lye 103g / 3.6 oz

I reduced the water from what I have used and I think that worked really well. I cut it after a much shorter time and now I know why I have read warnings about soap getting to hard to cut.

The fragrance is lovely and I really look forward to using this soap. I like the decoration. I have been playing with that and I have gotten wise to the fact that you really, really need to plan the cut and decorate with that in mind especially when using larger pieces of flowers or buds. These I had to be creative with to be able to cut them without ruining the decoration.

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My gift to myself - Madder root and Neroli soap

2010-11-07T14:24:00.003Z

That lovely little tablecloth I bought in Slovakia. The
little lantern is from the Good S as is the glass bowl. What
a fantastic shape.

I love making new recipes for soaps. Mostly because I get new ideas, but sometimes I just don't have the ingredients that I need, so I improvise. I try to use all my soaps to see how I like them and I really use them for a while to get a strong feeling for my preference. I recently have been reaching for the same one, and realized that I really liked the way it lathers andfeels on the skin. So I decided to make that recipe again, just for me with my absolute favorite fragrance, Neroli.

I also welcomed the opportunity to use Madder root again. I really loved the colour I obtained last time, but it did fade to very, very light pink. I therefore used about twice the amount as before. But this is a facination of natural colours. They reward me by being different every single time and I never get bored. This time I got a very lovely peach colour. A little bit more delicate than I intended, but who am I to argue with nature?

The recipe I used was a bit different from the one I intended to recreate because I didn't have enough Almond oil, so I improvised. It will be interesting to see if I like the soap as much as the other.

Madder root and neroli soap.
This recipe is for 700g

25% Coconut oil 175 g / 6 oz
25% Lard 175 g / 6 oz
20% Grapeseed oil 135 g / 4.7 oz
17% Apricot kernel oil 118 g / 4.1 oz
7% Almond oil 50g / 1.7 oz
6% Soybean oil 45g / 1.5 oz

I put about 2-3 tbsp of Madder root into the lye water and let it sit until cool enough to use it in the soap. The soap turned a nice pink which I felt was quite blue pink tobegin with, but it rapidly changed to a much warmer pink, ending in peach. The scent I used was mostly Neroli, but I added some frangipani that I had left over and some ylang ylang as well. It smelled wonderful and I do hope it stays. I put the soap in the fridge to prevent trace in the hope that it would also result in the fragrance holding.

The smell of lye is gone now and it seems that the scent comes through in a nice and gentle way. That is the way I like it, so perfect for my birthday present which is in a few weeks. I look forward to it. I know I'll get a great present!
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Sugar scrub cubes (or dollops) - A new way to rebatch

2010-10-31T17:06:00.004Z

I love the enameled electric stove that I picked up for a
song. I can use it for dyeing. The tablecloth is a simple
cross stitch that I loved and for some reason I started to
buy the milk glass. Nobody seems to want it.

I've been intrigued by Sugar scrub cubes since I first saw them, but my distaste for Melt and Pour bases (at least the ones that are sold here) has precluded me from making them. Apparently they could only be made using that. Oh, the hardship of being a fanatic! But I had been thinking that since I melt soap to rebatch soap, surely regular handmade soap could be used for those. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel I started to search the Internet and found the answer on Mayren Abashed's blog: Mayren's Sugar Scrub Cubes using CP/HP Soap shreds the 1-2-3's Method.

She, somewhat ingeniously, had come up with a simple recipe that I had to try. Her sugar cubes are actually cubes, they look great and she makes them in wonderful colours and adds scent to them. Me, being the way I am (and not having a cube mold also), made ... well I decided to call them dollops rather than blobs, although that would describe them too. And I make them scent free also, since I just wanted to try out the recipe to see if I could make them (and I was getting low on EO's).

It is actually quite simple, like the 1-2-3 name suggests:

1 tbsp oils/butters
2 tbsp soap shreds (I grated some of my natural homemade soap)
3 tbsp sugar

I grated some of my soap finely and used that. I used Olive oil and Cocoa butter and put those into a bowl with the soap shreds and put this into the microwave. This I then heated in short bursts and stirred regularly. When everything had melted I took it out and let it cool just a bit and then stirred in the sugar. Mayren suggests 3 tbsp when using 50/50 hard and soft oils, 4 tbsp when using all liquid. The sugar mix quickly turned into something like a dough ball, which is what should happen and it was really hot. This is the stage to add scent but I skipped that. I guess the colours could go into the oils before the sugar. Now, since I don't have any small silicone molds, I used a teaspoon to make my dollops and tried to shape them as best I could (hot, hot, hot) and then I rolled them in sugar. That improved their appearance a lot!

Now, I tried this in the shower and found that I used up the one although it could have been a bit smaller. I liked this shape a lot as it fits nicely in the palm without me dropping it. I liked the combination of soap and sugar and the great thing about sugar is that it does dissolve and doesn't end up in the sea doing harm to sea creatures. I have read that these sugar cube scrubs will leave the tub slippery, but I didn't find that mine did. But I'm sure they may do so the next time. Probably depends on the oils and soap used.

I think these could make great Christmas presents, especially if coloured and/or scented. I need to see if I can come up with some natural colours that are oil soluble. I can think of Alkanet root and Annatto, so red and yellow. I wonder if there is a green possibility? Maybe clay?

Update: With the addition of a few drops of essential oils and some colour infused oils, these can be made into the most lovely gifts. Ice cube trays are very easy to use and much quicker than using a spoon. Just fill up the cavities and pop the ice cube tray in the freezer for a few minutes and the sugar scrub cubes will easily pop out.

To make the best of a bad thing - Rebatched Sea Buckthorn soap

2010-10-23T21:47:00.005Z

Last chance in the garden. Everything has pretty much
died down, except the Hollyhocks which are blooming
like crazy. This lovely cream colour is just lovely.

I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that winter is here. Today is the "First day of winter" according to the traditional Icelandic almanack. We have had the most wonderfully mild weather this fall and I've enjoyed that so much. Almost for the first time that I can remember we have had all the leaves on the trees and bushes turn their beautiful red, orange and yellow colours. Usually they are blown away be strong winds before we get to see their glory. I have also enjoyed the last few flowers in the garden that have continued to bloom all the way into the first frosts, among them are some Hollyhocks that are in bloom for the first time.

I made a soap quite some time ago that included a some Sea Buckthorn oil and a lot of other goodies. It was a great soap (I think) except it was so soft as to be almost mushy. I waited and waited for it to harden up, but finally gave up and decided to rebatch it.

It has now been curing and has turned into a very nice yellow soap. The colour is quite a bit lighter since I mixed this with some whipped soap that was mostly white hard oils, but hadn't turned out the way I wanted. So that was a lot of hard oils that I combined with all the soft ones. I've been meaning to post about his rebatch except I lost my notebook so I couldn't find the recipe. When I found the notebook I discovered that I hadn't written it down in the notebook at all. So I searched for it on my little computer and I found it.

The combined recipe for this rebatch turned out to be:

Lard 34%
Olive oil 24%
Coconut oil 22%
Jojoba oil 10%
Cocoa butter 8%
Wheat germ oil 1.5%

The water was 1/3 water and 2/3 a combination of Oat meal tea and Aloe vera. The additions to the yellow soap were Sea Buckthorn and St. Johns Wort oils along with about a tablespoon of honey. When I rebatched this I used yoghurt as a liquid. The precise recipe is hard to figure out, but I like this soap as a gentle bath soap. The lather is very soft and creamy.
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Farewell gifts

2010-10-16T20:31:00.004Z

I have a wall where I hang family photos so I am always
on the lookout for nice frames, preferably old. The
three children are my grandmother and her siblings and
I think she also owned the pearl necklace.

In a recent post I mentioned that I was making soaps as farewell gifts for a group of people that I have been meeting a few times a year. I made a soap with Patchouli EO and decided to make a pink one for the women in the group. I used Geranium and Lemongrass with Rumex oil to make it pink. This one I used 15 g. to 500 g. of oil and I put the oil in at trace. It still turned out a very light pink. And the center, which gelled is a lot darker than the outside. I don't mind that, but some may do. The solution is to either wrap the soap to have it all gelled or put it in the fridge. But anyway, I am pretty certain now that putting the Rumex oil in with all the others will produce a stronger pink colour than putting it in a trace.

I haven't been particularly involved in thinking about packaging and labels, although I've thought about it a lot. Mostly I'm still thinking about some sort of stamp of a logo. I have it in my head, waiting to jump out on a pice of paper. I realize that to sell soap they must be packaged and that is also true for when they are given as gifts. From what I see from others, they put as much effort (and money) into packaging as they do into the soaps. I am in awe.

But I had to do something so I got some cellophane bags. They were way to big (couldn't find small ones) but I solved that by cutting in half and using the bottom for the girl's and the top for they guy's. So different soaps and different packages. To make this a bit simple for myself I had cut little pieces of soap and made o hole in the corner, through which I tied a piece of raffia. I then used the raffia on the outside as well.

Not terribly original, but fast and easy. I did intended to photograph the packages, but I was finishing them at the last minute. I made a few extra and figured that I would bring some back and snap a photo of those, but I ended up giving the staff all the extras for husbands or wives. They were all delighted with their soaps and everyone of them put their gift up to their nose to have a sniff (and we are talking about a few very middle aged men here). And even if I put all the ingredients on a label on front, the ones they were most interested in were the scents. So much for unscented soaps!

I've been tagged

2010-10-15T07:49:00.005Z

I was tagged by Courtney Robyn at Courtney Robin's nest. I love the great community of soapers from all over, although I also kind of like being slightly anonymous. But I'm happy to play along today. So here are my answers to those questions.

1. What is your biggest pet peeve?
Airport security - I'm soooooo sick of discussing my cosmetics with middle aged men and being felt up by strange women. I just don't understand why they can't leave me alone.

2. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
Oh, that's easy. Somewhere (anywhere) sunny and wonderful. I love Sorrento in Italy and that area. France is also tempting. Sarasota in Florida is great. In my utopia "nothing to do with reality" I'd like to live on my grandparents farm in the northwest of Iceland. Preferably with them in the house that they built, but was crushed in an avalanche ten years before I was born. My grandfather was very innovative and farmed with all kinds of animals, grew strange vegetables and taught my father about the many different plants that grow there. I'm sure he would have been the first ,bee farmer in Iceland and we would have a few hives and probably have heated arguments and passionate discussions. My grandmother and I would make soap and creams and jams and herbal potions and blood saussages. She was a very gentle and sweet woman, my father told me, and I would have loved to know them both.

3. Have you ever been searched by the cops? (LOL inquiring minds want to know)
No, but airport security has a special fondness for me.

4. What is the one thing on your mind right now?
My masters thesis, my french classes, my mothers bathroom and my daughter's mirror and....
And of course the next soap. What do you mean one thing? One thing? On MY mind?

5. Favorite song right now.
This one is my favorite for many, many years. It's sung by Gail Davies and Emmilou Harris is in the background. It's called "It's a lovely, lovely world" and it's the happiest song ever! I used to ride along in my beat up old car when I lived in Colorado in the early 80's and sing along and just become happy. I never thought much about it's name or who sang it and it took me 25 years to find it again and buy it on itunes. I haven't found anything public with this song and it so deserves to be played more often. I made a slightly sentimental video for our anniversary two years ago (husband kept complaining that I wasn't romantic enough. After making this video, I hardly need to civil anymore. I SO won!).
That video is private so even if I posted that for a bit, it was always going to be for a short time
But do look the song up and if you like it it's cheap to buy on itunes, something like 99 cents. And that is the best depression therapy I know!

I also love Jean Shepherd's "Slippin' Away", especially this video on YouTube. I have this song on an old record, but her voice is amazing even at her age.

6. What talent do you wish you had?
To speak French fluently. Alternatively, if we can be not practical I wish that I could stretch time. I have it on expert authority that one needs to go very, very fast.

7. Favorite drink.
Ginger ale, especially the one I make myself, and my husband says tastes like Landi (Moonshine) (which I have never tasted, so I can't say).

8. In one word, how would you describe yourself.
Yeah! - See here's the thing. One word doesn't work for me at all. I talk a lot and have done since I was little, I'm told.

So I'm not sure how to tag other people, except to name the ones that I want to tag AND haven't already been tagged by Courtney. So here is my list in no particular order:

Texia - Sanga Natual

Tiggy - Future Primitive

Potions & Chaudrons

Michelle - Soap Pixie

Hellen - Strenua Inertia

Heidi - Happy Tiny Bubbles

Swanee - By Swanee

Edith - Innoscents Handmade Soaps

Lyn - Lynnz Artisan Soaps and Candles

Miss Polly - Miss Polly Soap

Those who feel so inclined can play along. It's really up to the individual, but others can go and check out their blogs all of which I read regularly and a lot more.
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Rose hips - full of vitamin C

2010-10-10T22:47:00.002Z

I really wanted to make these into a necklace they were so
pretty. And I really would like to be able to make oil from
those seeds. There's so many of them.

Autumn, not at all my favorite season, does have a few redeeming qualities. One is the crops that are there for the picking. I'm not a cook, but I love to bake and make sweet stuff. That of course includes jams, jellies and syrups. I have posted a few of my recipes but one I haven't posted yet is rose hips. I picked a lot last year. I in fact only discovered them here last year as I was walking the dogs.

There is this huge overgrown bush close by my house in no mans land and suddenly it was full of these lovely red fruits. I quickly realized that they were rose hips and having read about them in Danish magazines for years (decades) I excitedly went a picked a few. And then a few more and then even more since I started seeing them everywhere. I think I still have some in the freezer since last year and I guess I'll use those to feed the birds this winter. My only regret is that I am not able to extract oil from the seeds because there are so many seeds, it's unbelievable. I did find a something on the internet that was supposed to do that, but It was too expensive. But it would sure be fun to be able make my own rose hip oil. I have infused rose hips in oil, but it's not the same.

But this summer was very good and so far the only sign of autumn is in the shorter days, so now we can light candles in the evening (and taking photo's without flash is getting increasingly difficult. But temperatures are still in the 60's (we call that summer over here) so I have to wait a bit longer to gather a decent crop of rose hips since they are at their best just after the first frost. And I read somewhere that rose hips have the most vitamin C in the coldest regions so here it must contain mega quantities. But I have started to collect a few to make into a jelly to join the red currant and gooseberry jellies that I have already made. I like to make small quantities, so my recipes are usually enough for maybe 6 jars or so. Although i only had 3/4 of a jar of gooseberries, but boy are they good!

I like to make fruit syrup as well a jellies and one of the advantages of not making jam out of the rose hips is that there are a lot of tiny hairs inside and they used to be used a an itching powder by naughty boys in the olden days (before my time) and most recipes recommend that the seeds and the hairs be removed. I'm too lazy to do that. It's just too much work. So here is my recipe for a jelly where that stuff is just sived away.

2.3 liters / 2 quarts Rose hips
1.7 liter / 1.5 quarts Water
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 packet pectin (depending on what you use the directions can be different)
1/4 tsp butter
3.5 cups sugar

Top and tail the rose hips and put them in a pot, pour the water over and let simmer for about 1 hour, or until the rose hips are soft. Mash this in the pot with a potato masher or use a food processor if you wish. The pour this into a jelly cloth contraption and let the juice run of for at least an hour, longer if you can. Squeeze out all the juice.

Now measure the juice, you need 3 cups. If there isn't enough then add water.

The juice along with the lemon juice is put into a clean pot and this is heated. Add 3 tsp of sugar to the pectin and set aside. Add the rest of the sugar to the pot and when that is dissolved, but the butter in and boil the whole thing hard for 1 minute. Then add the pectin/sugar blend and boil for another 1/2 minute. Pour into sterilized jars. Close them when cold.
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Orange dog soap

2010-10-02T19:43:00.007Z

The old books were used as props for the wedding. They were
stacked here and there in the house. We got them for free at the
Good S. Those fall colours we had this year were fantastic.

I thought I would do an orange soap to keep Jennifer at Jenora soaps company. One of the reasons is that I saw unrefined Palm oil in an asian food store the other day and I just had to have it. I have never used Palm oil because it isn't sold here. I know that there is a lot of controversy surrounding Palm oil and I respect that. But I wouldn't be human if I didn't succumb to trying out a new oil!

I decided for some reason that this would be a good dog soap and that it should go into a tube. I had intended to cut it into long half rounds since I thought that would be a good shape to fit nicely into the palm as I wash the dogs. I did cut a few that way, but some I cut smaller. I have no idea why, but ever since I have been thinking of trying to do a landscape, using this as a setting sun. That would be very patriotic.

The soap is without scent, but with some herbal oils because Bichons have a tendency to have skin problems and I thought it would be nice for my bitches to have nice skin conditioning ingredients.

Recipe:

Coconut oil 25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Palm oil 25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Olive oil 25% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Soybean oil 20% 100 g / 3.5 oz
Castor oil 5% 25 g / 3.5 oz

Water 38% 190g / 6.8 oz
Lye 71g / 2.5 oz

In addition to this I added 1 tsp. of Comfrey infused oil and 1 tsp. of Yarrow infused oil, both infused in olive oil. So the SF is a bit more than the 5% that the recipe reports.

But the soap traced very, very fast and I had quite a time getting it into the tube. I was therefore a bit surprised that the soap was quite soft when I took it out of the mould. The colour is a very strong orange-yellow. It is a little bit too saturated for my taste. The colour is not dissimilar to the Sea Buckthorn soaps that I did some time ago but it is more orange, so not a bad try for an orange soap. But maybe I'll try to use more socially acceptable colourants next time.
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And my Very Green Soap

2010-09-24T22:10:00.004Z

That metal circle will be a great frame for a wedding picture
of the kids. I have just the right photo for it but need to
photoshop it to fit. I also dried some of my Hollyhock.

I actually intended to try to make another blue soap with indigo be cause the first one was a total failure. I had put the indigo powder into oils and it did not give any colour. So I figured that I should put it into the water, so I tried that. Well, that sure didn't work either so I changed direction and reached for my dried herbs in the hope that I would be able to make green soap.

I chose Comfrey, since I have quite a bit of it already dried and still a lot left in the allotment garden. I think maybe I read that Cocobong has used that and gotten a good green, but I'm not sure, it might have been nettle. I know that I have read that Parsley is supposed to give a good green. I tried to put that into oil. Do not do that. It's completely pointless. So now I'm drying some and I will try to put that into the water for a soap sometime.

But back to Comfrey. I have some of that in oil and also some that I simply dried. Since the infused oil isn't particularly green I put some crushed dried leaves into the lye water and let it sit for a while and it did turn a bit green, but not a lot. So I decided that I would leave the leaves in and attempt to make them smaller with the stick blender. Which I did and it worked fine. I don't usually like to leave flecks in the soap if I can help it, but if I hadn't there wouldn't have been much colour at all.

Since I had just bought some patchouli EO I decided to use that for the first time along with some Bergamot and Lemongras EO's. I have to admit that I wasn't sure what Patchouli was like because I have never had it. It is very Hippy to me. Reminiscent of the seventies. Which is good. A bit masculine also, and that is good since I haven't done a masculine fragrance in a long time.

I did a very simple soap.

Coconut oil 30% 150 g / 5.3 oz

Olive oil 40% 200 g / 7 oz
Soybean oil 25% 125 g/ 4.4 oz
Cocoa butter 6% 30 g / 1 oz

Water 38% 190g / 6.8 oz
Lye 72g / 2.5 oz
5% SF.

So the soap wasn't particularly green at first, but when I cut it it was this beautiful grass green. Alas, it has now turned olive green. A nice olive, but that green was amazing. How I miss it! But these are perfect soaps to give as a gift to a few guys that I have been working with. There are a few women in that group also, so I now am thinking up a recipe for a pink soap using my Rumex oil for the colour.
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My Incredibly Green Cream

2010-09-18T17:23:00.004Z

I had dried herbs hanging all over the house in the autumn
and I am always looking out for suitable containers for dried
herbs, face creams, body lotions, lip balms and toners.

I have been making face creams for almost two years now. I really like that and I use no commercially made creams anymore. In fact, my cousin and I were talking and she was telling me how someone had given her a sample of a well known brand of face cream and she almost threw up because it smelled so artificial. I so agree. All those famous brand creams now are about as appealing to me as nuclear waste.

The creams I make are usually made with beeswax as an emulsifier. That makes a thick, very creamy and slightly oily cream that is very good for the night. It is concentrated and a little goes a long way. I tend to slather on lots and lots, probably I use too much, and I really shine in bed at night. But I have been searching for a lighter emulsifier as an option for daytime. I ordered some vegetable emulsifier and it came with an ingredients label that said: Sodium Lauryl Sulfate! That is very irritating to the skin and it is one of the ingredients that I want to avoid. So I haven't used it at all.

I was really please to read Texia's (at Sanga natural) post about homemade emulsifiers. She did two recipes and I have made them both and already used one in a cream. I have a lot of dried herbs and herbs macerated in oil and I figured that I should use all my herbal oils for something. So I decided to make an incredibly green cream.

The Incredibly Green Cream:

Oil phase - 70g of macerated oils: 20 g. each yarrow (Achillea) oil, chickweed (Stellaria) oil and Calendua oil. 10 g. mock orange (Philadelphus) oil. And additionally almost 1 tsp. Njóli (Rumex) oil.
Into the oil I added a pinch and a dash of AHA and A retinol. I don't have a scale that measures accurately in small increments so I eyeball the small stuff.

Water phase - 120 g. herbal tea: I made tea with the following herbs: Yarrow (Achillea), chickweed (Stellaria), shepherd's purse (Capsella), Comfrey and Viola. I let this steep for about an hour and then I added a bit of licorice extract and niacin as well as the preservative Natrium benzoat.

Making cream is just like making soap, minus the lye. I warm the ingredients in bain marie and then pour the water phase into the oil while whisking with a stick blender.
I forgot to write how much emulsifier I used, but I think it was somewhere between 10 and 20 g. and I put it into the water phase.

I like the cream very much, so thank you Texia. I've been using it for about 2 weeks now, both morning and night. It absorbs well so that my husband's goodnight kiss doesn't slide right off. It is chock full of goodies for the skin and smells a bit green and I am pretty sure that it has taken twenty years of my appearance already.
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