Laundry soap, this time with alkanet root

So I did the laundry soap. All sheep fat, like my paternal grandmother would have made. No olive oil in those days!

Well, maybe not 100% sheep fat but very close. I had steeped the alkanet root in sunflower oils, so I measured it (about 35 g.) and put it into the Soapcalc sheet and did the standard 38% water and a 0% discount. I had steeped about a tablespoon of alkanet root in a 1/4 cup, that seemed to be the consensus of my sources.  Then again, they said to used a tablespoon of the coloured oil to a pound of oil.  This recipe was for 500 gr., so just over a pound.  Having stirreed the soap I rather unceremoniously plonked it into a dairy carton, laundry soap is going to be grated anyway so no need for a fancy mold.

The alkanet root infused oil was a beautiful ruby red, so it was quite a surprise to see it turn a delicate baby blue when I started to blend.  I had expected a lavender or a pinkish tone!  But alkanet takes on a different colour depending on the PH of the solution.  It seems that a PH of 6 would give a red colour, 8 should produce a more purple tone and something like my laundry soap (probably very alkaline - I should test it!) will be blue.  The colour also depends on the amount of colourant used according to the many sources that I have read, but in what way is not clear.  So I shall have to continue to experiment, which is a good thing.  I thrive on novelty.

The soap was also very hard, almost crumbly right away.  I'm not used to that, my soaps tend to be on the soft side to start with.  I often don't cut them until a week or more after I pour them.  That is more down to lack of palm oil than by design.  Most often they cure to be very reasonably hard soaps that last well.

I have to say that I love the endless surprises of lye and how the soaps change with time.  I have been watching my laundry bars with excitement because they are beginning to turn in colour.  Going over to the pink side, maybe.  Or it's probably gray.  But anyway, a thoroughly gratifying experiment that will continue all the way to the washing machine.

The photo. The lovely blue of Alkanet. I would be nice if this colour could last, but it is only blue while the soap is very alkaline. Milk and cream cartons are perfect molds for beginners, one more use before it is thrown out.

The dreaded orange spots

When I saw the acronym "DOS" in a soapmaking article I was baffled.  Being a bit of a nerd I knew perfectly well that DOS is an operating system!  So what on earth were they talking about?

I soon discovered that it stood for "Dreaded Orange Spots" orange spots about the size of a pencil eraser that can appear on soaps.  The orange spots are oxidized oils.  They can appear in soap for a number of reasons, apparently.  Some say it's because of too much superfatting.  Others that soaps made with canola and sunflower oils are more prone to it. (Just a side note: I never use canola oil.  It is hybridized rape seed which is not fit for human consumption)Still other blame storage conditions and old or rancid oils.  Still someone attributed the spots to high iodine value in the recipe (over 70).

I had never had this happening so I was a bit surprised when I discovered some of my soaps had indeed developed those spots!  The soaps are very white in colour because I added titanium dioxide to them, so the spots are very noticeable.  I have racked my brain for an explanation, but have found none.  I thought I had a good system for tracking my soaps, but I'm not entirely sure exactly which recipe this is, although I suspect it is the one with about 20% soybean oils and 23% sunflower oil and an iodine level of 71.

What I do know is that is had been stored with all my other soaps, so that is unlikely to be the culprit.  I'm still using the 25 kilos of lye so that isn't to blame.  I usually superfat my soaps by 5%, although I once made a facial soap with 10% superfat at trace with Evening primrose oil.  That soap I used up quickly, so no spots on that.  I have not had the orange spots in any other soaps, so far, so this is an interesting problem.

Apparently it is safe to use the soap.  They just look bad.  And I don't think I'm going to use it on my skin.  I have this thing about oxidized fats.  Never eat butter that has turned yellow!  I might grate it down and use it as laundry soap... or I might just throw it out!

Speaking of laundry soap, I have been meaning to make an old fashioned soap using sheep fat, just the way they did in the old days.  The sheep's fat is white, but it does smell quite a bit.  It is traditionally used in food, but I thought it could make a nice old fashioned soap.  I intend to do the laundry soap with 0% discount as there is no need for oils in laundry detergent.  Since I have just received the alkanet root I also think I'm going to colour it with that to see what colour it turns in a zero discount soap.  Should be interesting.

The photo: I love these old wire baskets. I think they are made for eggs but I'm not sure.  I have a collection of 40's, 50's and 60's kitchenalia among them the wire whisks in different sizes.

Salt soap

I saw salt soap for the first time at the Happy Tiny Bubbles site and I knew I just had to make some.  Her salt soaps were just gorgeous, almost like natural rock or something... deliciously crumbly somehow.  I Googled a bit and found some more info and photos.   I gathered from reading that the salt both made the soap rock hard and therefore difficult to cut and also not lather very much.

Therefore most people seemed to use coconut oil as a majority oil.  So I had to try something different.
I decided to make my salt soaps in molds to avoid the cutting problem, although one can cut very hard soap with wire.  I have these... I guess they are some sort of cake molds or pastry molds?... I don't know, but I bought them because they are pretty.  I got them from a charity shop that got an old inventory of kitchen stuff from the 60's and 70's.  Wonderful stuff, I just love it.

Anyway, back to the salt soap, I decided to use those and then I thought: "Well, salt soap is kind of spa like so I don't want it to be too drying and therefore I won't use so much coconut oil.  And I'll have come cocoa butter in it and some other nice oils.  And the lather... ohhh, who cares?"

So I made a little batch and put some peppermint essential oil in there.  I've never really been a fan of mint as a smell (it tastes great though, especially with chocolate) until I made a soap with peppermint essential oil and peppermint tea brewed from the peppermint in my garden.  I loved that soap and the smell of it.  Not sickly, nauseating toothpaste smell at all.  Just pure and refreshing.

The soap was very thin at first so I was worried that this would be my first failure.  So I waited a bit with pouring into the molds.  Big mistake.  When I started to pour it it was setting rapidly so it didn't run into the mold properly.  I had lined them with cling wrap because most of them are aluminum and that reacts with the soap (what does that mean exactly? I need to try that out sometime).  The plastic kind of got in the way and it was a messy process to say the least.  But I got it in there and out on the drying rack.  Taking them out of the mold was not difficult, but they were not as crisply molded as I would have liked and they were very crumbly, but they still had some shelf time to do.

When I couldn't stand it any longer I took one out and used it in the bathtub.  It was truly a rather strange experience.  Virtually no lather to speak of, but it was very hard and it did clean well, smelled lovely and left my skin very soft.  I have to say I really liked it.  Although I must admit that I think I will up the coconut oil next time.

My recipe was very small only 200 g / 7 oz (I'm not really good at the Imperial measurement system):
Coconut oil         30%    - 60g / 2.1 oz
Olive oil              30%    - 60 g / 2.1 oz
Cocoa butter       20%    - 40 g / 1.4 oz
Avocado oil        20%    - 40 g / 1.4 oz

I used coconut milk for the liquid, for this recipe 70 g. and 28 g. lye.  This should make it 5% superfatted.  I added 200 g. salt and some peppermint essential oil before I poured it into the molds.

I gave my mother one of the soaps and am looking forward to hearing her reaction to it.  She doesn't like Castille soap because it doesn't lather much, but I told her to give this one a chance.

UPDATE:  I used the salt soap in the shower and I think I was too harsh in saying that there is no lather from it.  There is a lovely, soft and creamy lather and it feels very good on the skin.  It could be worth repeating, but probably using more coconut oil and less of the others.

The photo: The little shelf is really the only drawer that was in the kitchen of my first tiny apartment. I renovated it and kept the drawer.  As I tried to sand off old layers of paint I uncovered lovely colours of green and blue so I kept it as is. The angel I bought in an Italian street for pennies and the green glass tealightholders I got in Stockholm. They are made of recycled glass and I like their colour.

The first day of summer

Today is the first day of summer or Sumar-dagurinn-fyrsti (not as complicated as Eyja-fjalla-jökull :).  It is a traditional Icelandic holiday.  After a hard winter it was important to get a good summer.  People devised ways of predicting in the olden days and here the wisdom is:  If summer and winter freeze together, then summer will be good.  So children would put a plate with water outside the night before and check to see if the water was frozen the next morning.

Everyone would also get a present on that day and my father told me that Sumardagurinn fyrsti was a much more important holiday than Christmas or Easter.  On the farm where he lived as a boy they would celebrate with good food and gifts, the children would get clothing or toys.  Homemade of course since the farm was isolated and there wasn't a lot of money to go around.

When I was little there were parades with a band playing summer songs and we would sing along holding balloons and flags in our finest dresses.  This time of year in Iceland is hardly summer so we would generally be freezing cold so it was nice to go to my aunt Anna's for coffee and cakes where the relatives would always gather on this day.

For some reason this holiday doesn't have the same standing as it used to.  It is still a national holiday, so everyone gets the day off and the children still get gifts.  Nothing fancy: Balls, skipping rope, buckets and spades and maybe a bike if the old one is too little.  But people have stopped dressing up and there is less fuss made about this day than when I was younger.  That is a shame.  But I guess I am the only person in this country who still dresses up a bit to go to the movies! (I like to dress up, it's "playing dolls" for grown ups)

Last night we had a bit of frost so I'm confident that we will have a fantastic summer.  I have already sown the sweet peas, some lettuce and a few annuals and bought potatos for planting in the vegetable garden.  Now I need to prick out the small plants and sow some more seeds and today is perfect for that.  So the plan is to shower with my peppermint soap, dress in all white, bake a lovely cake and do some gardening.

Úpps, I just got "interupted" by my mother, bearing the gifts of an Anemone - "White splendour" and an old tool (I love old carpentry tools)...

... I gave her two soaps as a summer gift in return.  One of them is a gentle facial soap and the other is the salt soap that I made the other day, more about that experiment later.  We spent the day in the garden, sowing and prickling even if the temperature is only about 5C (50's F), but the sun kept us warm.  And, yes, I dressed in white!

The photos: The little green lamp was my fathers.  He used it on his tent trips to collect moss around the country. I love oil lamps and got the big Aladdin one for very little money. If the base glows in black light then it contains uranium and that dates it from 1938 to 1942.  If it doesn't glow then it is younger.  The other photo: My little seedlings anxiously waiting for weather that is warm enough for them to go outside a grow.

Coffee soap - for kitchen, thighs or garden?

I have a lot of soaps.  Lots of different soaps, that is.  Having made soaps almost every weekend since September, at least two recipes each time and practically never the same recipes I must have made somewhere between 40 and 50 recipes of soap.  That's a lot of soap!  And I haven't tried them all yet.

I know that sounds strange.  I intended to try them all, but I usually pick a soap that appeals to me and then I like it a lot and use it until its gone.  And then I pick another one.  I have finally learned to make little balls of soap out of the spills and use those, or off cuts to test the soaps for feel (and PH) but some I haven't tried at all.  Especially the first ones that I made.  So now I am spoilt for choise.

One that I haven't tried before, but just pulled out is the coffee soap.  I got the idea when I had made a coffee face cream.  I had originally thought that the caffein could be a great astringent and would work well in a cream.  Either a body lotion or a face cream and then... Eureka!  Coffee soap.  That must be great for cellulite, I thought.  Of course Google told me that everybody else had already made coffee soaps (so not that original - ok!) but I also found out that Coffee soap was considered a great neutralizer of odors and therefore best used in the kitchen.  I guess that is one of the reasons I haven't tried it already.  I have a steel soap (no! no lye in that) that I use in the kitchen and that works great!

The recipe is pretty simple.  Just use coffee as a liquid for the lye in your favorite recipe. It gives the soap a nice neutral brown colour and a wonderful smokey coffee scent.  I didn't add anything to it, not fragrance, not colour but some may want to embellish the coffee scent with some vanilla or orange or mint.  I think those would all go well with coffee.  I did put in some ground coffee (unused) to a part of the soap.  I intended that to work as a scrub on those thighs, but I guess they also serve to change my cellulite soap into a gritty gardeners soap too.

However I haven't given up the idea that Coffee soap should be a great wake up shower soap AND could do wonders for those lumpy thighs!  I have a lot to look forward to.

And I promise that if the thighs turn out to be photo worthy I'll post a picture :) - (I wouldn't hold your breath, though.  As much as I believe in my soaps I don't think they'll perform minor miracles (or should that be major?).)

Oh well, here is to hoping!

The photo: That metal dish is one of my flea market finds.  I usually pay about 1-3 dollars for each piece.  The pine cones I collect from the two large pines that grow in front of the house.

Essential oils or fragrance oils

I guess that my love of simple naked soaps is shared by some, but most people want to smell their soaps.  They pick up soaps and shove them up to their noses, inhaling deeply.  What a disappointment if there is no smell!

I can relate to that.  I tend to do it myself with soap... and with flowers.  I like fragrance a lot and in a way it's almost a wasted opportunity not to have a lovely smell (how can they breed roses that don't smell!).  But I like to have the option to use pure and unscented soap when that suits me and add scent with a perfume if I choose to.  I guess that the fact that there are so many allergies in the family contributes to my love of "no unnecessary stuff added" things.

I would not hesitate to fragrance almost all of my soaps with essential oils if they weren't so expensive.  I'm still looking for a wholesale supplier that sells them in bulk, although not huge bulk, at better prices than the teeny, tiny little bottles that are most common.  I have found some in the US and I buy a lot from there, but sometimes the shipping costs are so high that it doesn't make sense.  I would love to find suppliers in Europe.  France, Italy and Spain sound really exotic and I have thought about trying to find suppliers in India, but shipping costs are an issue there.  I may have found a supplier in the UK, I have their website bookmarked and am browsing their selection.  The natural colours that I am waiting for come from the UK - English is so easy).

I wrote before that I have a love/hate relationship with the colour issue and that is certainly also the case with fragrance oils.  They are less expensive and, if I understand correctly, they last longer that essential oils.  I use perfumes that are probably made with synthetic fragrances - I think Chanel no. 5 and Joy (a personal favorite for evening) are almost the only ones that still use real flower essences.  So why not fragrance the soaps similarly?  Fragrance oils are available in scents that are impossible to get naturally.  Delicious Sweet Pea is an example!  And honeysuckle!  Oh jummy!  And there are some suppliers that have such tempting descriptions to their fragrances that my credit card is dire danger!

Sometimes I long for a shedload of fragrance oils to play with, but then I wonder if they would be a turn off.  Artificial and insincere!  I just don't know!

The photos: Sweet Peas in a little glass vase.  I have a few of those and they are perfect for small flowers like Sweet peas, Violets and Lily of the valley.  My sewing machine is a 1928 Singer on a Husqvarna base.  It's missing the belt, but I expect it would work if I got the spare parts it needs.  I paid 8000kr. for it.  Rather expensive for a thrift shop find.  The other photo is ine of my three Honeysuckles.  Unfortunately it is not possible to make Essential oil from it, nor Sweet Peas so I sniff it every chance I get and also use it in honey for sore throat.  

Soap colour - natural or not

The catalyst that started me to make my own creams and soaps was primarily the chance to get products that were pure.  Pure in the sense of having only what is needed and then preferably natural ingredients.  I relished the thought of preservative free lotions and potions to smother all over my body in reckless abandonment... so to speak.

So, my first soaps were just completely naked: Pure vegetable oils, some lard sometimes, Icelandic spring water and lye.  And I truly loved them, so it came as a bit of a surprise to observe peoples reaction.  This is universal:  Everyone seems to pick up a soap and first smell it and then look at it closely.  My soaps weren't really sexy so people were less than enthusiastic.  They expected colour and scent.

Now the biggest problem that I had when I was starting out was getting ingredients.  Palm oils doesn't exist in this country.  I was lucky to discover coconut oil (almost in disguise) and but exotic oils (avocado, rose hip, borage, argan) are simply unavailable.  Some (almond, jojoba, evening primrose) are obtainable in tiny quantities at exorbitant prices. The same applied to colouring and fragrances.  Essential oils are sold in tiny bottles and are very expensive.  I found that I needed to use a whole bottle to scent a kilo of soap.  But stuff to colour the soaps - well forget it.  I searched high and low, but found pretty much nothing.  Admittedly I did find a seller of melt and pour bases (with a warning: Can cause itching and all sorts of other unplesantness!) and synthetic colour.  I did buy some of the colour since I was desperate and ready to experiment.

I have a love/hate relationship with synthetic colour in soaps.  I love colour, don't get me wrong.  When faced with having to choose between a selection of colours, I want them all!  I look at many of the soap that I see on all these blogs and my mouth waters at the sight of those yummy soaps.  And a part of me is desperate to get more colouring stuff to experiment.  The other part of me wants to make soaps with only natural ingredients.  I have Googled back and forth and tried some of the things that I have found to work as colourants.   I ordered alkanet root and some clays the other day.  Madder root is on my shopping list, as that seems to be almost the only thing that gives a red/pink that is natural.  Some things like spirulina /algae, charcoal, cocoa and coffee I have already tried, but colour continues to
be elusive.

This weekend I tried using hibiscus to colour soap.  I had seen it listed as a possible provider of red colour, although somewhere else someone said it didn't work any more than beet root juice/powder.  But I had to try it.  To make sure that I didn't miss anything I tried to infuse it in oil as well as make tea from it.  The tea was a beautiful bright red, but the oil infusion - nothing. Absolutely nothing!  I heated it and begged and pleaded, but NO.  So I made the soap with the colourless oil infusion and the bright red tea.  To try to fool the lye, I had decided that I would add the tea to the soap at trace rather than dissolve the lye into the tea.  But lye will not be fooled.  When I added the tea to the soap, it turned this gorgeous green!  I was thrilled!...but oops, it didn't last!  I watched in amazement as it simply disappeared into a light creamy yellow.  Not really a remarkable achievement considering that creamy yellow is the default colour of soaps.

So I now can't wait to experiment with natural colour.  Not that I think that everything natural is necessarily good and healthy.  Plenty of poisons are natural and plenty of synthetics are simply man made identical chemicals to the natural ones.  It's just that it somehow feels more naturals to use things that are natural.  Naturally!

The photos:  The soap I never tried with the artificial colour.  It's nice enough, but... The silk peonies are fairy lights, why I bought them I don't know... but they're decorative.  The other photo is my collection of micas.  I tried to use them in soap, but didn'tlike the results.  I've made eye shadow, but mostly I just like to admire their beauty.

Lemony shampoo bar for blondes

When I first started making soap I loved the idea of being able to make something pure.  Just soap, nothing added.  I didn't want scent or colour, I just wanted pure, naked soap.  And I got it.

Then, I wanted to make something more complicated and started to experiment.  Shampoo soap (or bar as most people call them) is one of them.  Shampoo bars are so easy to travel with and take to the gym.  No spilling!  I really love them and do not use any commercial shampoo anymore.  A bit of a shame since I had just asked my daughter to buy a rather expensive well known shampoo and conditioner in France!

It takes a bit getting used to using a shampoo bar.  For one it doesn't lather much, but that has nothing to do with it's cleansing ability.  I have a tendency to wash twice and it lathers much more the second time.  Also, don't use a conditoner!  The shampoo bar contains all you need.  It leaves the hair wonderfully soft and shiny.   In my experience adding conditioner makes it havy and almost greasy so I skip it, but then, I don't have dry hair.

I really have a hard time making the same recipe again because I keep getting ideas for new things.  Even if I start out with a definite idea to make something, I may end up with something completely different!  But I have made it a rule to religiously write my recipes down so that I have the option to make something again, if I really like it.  This is one of the ones that I really like.  It is the second recipe I made for a shampoo bar.  Basically shampoo bars have castor oil.  I had made a very basic one and this time I wanted to use Chamomile tea and do something good for the blondes in the family (my husband).

The recipe I came up with is this:
45%     315 g. / 11 oz    Olive oil
30%     210 g. / 7.4 oz   Coconut oil
25%     175 g. / 6.2 oz   Castor oil

The liquid I used was 266 g. Chamomile tea, just brewed the normal way and cooled.  I dissolved 98 g.  lye in the tea and dissolved 1 tbs. honey in it before pouring it into the oils.  This time I thought that a lemon scent would go well in a shampoo for blondes so scented it with lemongrass essential oil!  I find that to last a bit longer than lemon EO.

I put the whole thing into my log mold, that I lined with freezer paper (bought in the US).
The result is a very nice shampoo bar.  It is very soft at first and takes a long time to get to the stage that it can be cut.  But when it finally does, it is very nice.  My husband has used it quite a bit and I think it is his favorite now.  It is not as conditioning as the egg/beer/honey combination, but I find that I like to alternate the use of my shampoo bars.  I also make one that I think of as for brunettes (me) and that has rosemary extract and neem oil.  I find it hard to pick a favorite, so use them all.

The photo: This is a nice shampoo bar for normal hair.  That bottle I picked up at the Good S..., but it broke.  And I love my collection of natural sponges that I've bought in Florida.

Lovely lemon

Lemons are wonderful.  Their colour makes me smile, the smell of the rind is heavenly, not to mention the blossoms (hence my apprehension for my lemon tree), but the true marvel is the taste.  It's to die for.  When I was little my grandmother used to make a delicious drink that we called "sítrón" and everyone else knows as lemon aid.  I still love that.  But lemons can be used in so many things, both savory and sweet, and there is one thing that tops my list.  This lemon cake.

I found it in a wonderful book, by Molly Wizenberg, called "A homemade life".  The book is one of those books that feels good.  It has a quiet unassuming look, but somthing appealed to me when I pulled it out of the shelf at the book store.  I wasn't disappointed. It's just a lovely read and it's packed with all sorts of great recipes.

This has become an absolute favorite of mine.  And everyone who has tasted it has marvelled.  It's going to be the wedding cake at my daughters wedding. That's how good it is.  It's light and delicious and in my opinion it should be served with whipped cream.  I don't know what it is that happens when whipped cream is added, but the result is pure magic. And please use pure whipped cream - NO sugar added to it (I have never understood that) because it will loose the delicious delicate creamy taste.

The recipe is in three parts, batter, syrup and icing.
Batter:
1 1/2 cup of flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Put these into a bowl and whisk by hand to mix.  Add to this 2 tsp. of freshly grated lemon zest and mix well. 
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup yogurt
3 large eggs
Put all into the mixer and whisk it well.  Add the flour mixture from the bowl, slowly and stir it only so that it combines.  This batter should not be over mixed.
Now add 1/2 cup sunflower oil to the batter.
Molly warn about this, but I still wasn't prepared.  Don't freak out!  It will look VERY strange at first, but suddenly it will come together and look like proper cake batter.
I always use a Bundt form (that's the type with a hole in it) for this cake, it just looks so pretty.  So I grease it and pour in the batter.  
Bake at 175 celcius (350 F) for 25-35 minutes, but do a test with a pin because it shouldn't be too dry.
It usually falls easily out of the form and onto a wire rack to cool.
Syrup:
1/4 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
Whisk together and spoon evenly onto the cake.  This will mostly be absorbed by the cake.
The last part is the icing.  The recipe in the book calls for one cup of sugar.  My preference is to have the icing fairly opaque and thick so I use a lot more.
Icing:
2-3 cups icing sugar
3 tbs. lemon juice
Whisk together sugar and egg whites adding sugar until you like the consitency.  Spoon the icing onto the cake.
Et voilá!  
The decoration in the photo was my first attempt at making sugared flowers and of course I used lemon flowers from my little lemon tree and for the leaves I used Melissa.  I have since discovered that one should whisk the egg whites :)  before covering the flower with it and then roll it in the sugar.  I thought it was strangely lumpy!  Elementary, when one comes to think about it. 


I am looking for some more recipes for light delicious summery cakes for the wedding and would love suggestions.



The photo: Real lemon blossom from my very own Lemon tree that almost died, eaten alive my spider mites.  I've learned since that one is to beat the eggwhites before covering the flower.   Which makes sense to me now.

Natural pest control

I have this lovely lemon tree.  It cost a lot, but was so worth it with it's beautiful dark green foliage and abundance of sweetly scented flowers.  I put it in the conservatory where it should have thrived.  And it did.  For a while.  Then I noticed that the leaves were not a dark green and some were falling off and soon I could see the dreaded web of spider mites.  Bravely I Googled spider mites and horror of all horrors!  They are almost impossible to get rid of!

Undeterred I have waged a war since.  I have tried to use commercial pest poison (no good).  I cooked up a nasty concoction of my own with chili peppers and garlic (my mother swears by this).  I boiled rhubarb leaves to make a natural poison (that works pretty well against other pests).  And finally I  bought nematodes to eat the spider mites (cost almost as much as the lemon tree).  That seemed to work until this spring when I noticed that the lemon tree was looking unhappy, rapidly loosing it's leaves and on closer inspection I could see the dreaded fine web of the damn mites.

This time I took drastic measures.  I isolated the tree and cut it back drastically.  Still tiny webs and now my beloved had no leaves and the mites were quick to devour every sign of new leaves emerging.  So I have now moved my darling to the bathroom where I give it a spray of water every day (the mites don't like humidity) and it seems to be recovering.  Lots of tiny little leaves emerging.

To treat the beasts in the conservatory (who have now started to eat my grapevine and wisteria) I made a natural pesticide that I'm hopeful will get rid of them.  I found the recipe on the Our Scented Cottage  blog.  I made a smaller dose, to fit my little poison sprayer that had previously stored the rhubarb poison.

The recipe I used was:
1 tsp.  liquid soap (like Murphy's)
1 cup water
1/3 cup neem oil (an indian oil of many uses - more)

This is shaken or stirred and spayed on the plants once a week.
I drenched my plants in this solution yesterday and will continue with the treatment for the next few weeks.  I really need to rid the conservatory of this pest so that I can put my lemon tree back there and enjoy it's wonderfully scented flowers again.  I really enjoy using the flowers as decoration on the lemon cake that I bake (it's to die for).  That wonderful recipe I found on another blog, but that is a subject for another post.

Update:  That lovely little lemon tree finally died in March of 2011.  It will be sorely missed.  I have no idea why it died, it just lost it's leaves and even if I kept watering gently it just never came back.  Oh well. Another one of those mediterranean plants that I can't seem to keep alive.

Yet another update:  I've always known that one shouldn't throw stuff out too soon.  I never completely gave up on the lemon tree.  I removed it from the almost concrete-like soil it was in and litterally washed the roots and put it in fresh gritty compost.  The I decided that I would keep it through spring.  It now has some lovely fresh green growth and looks very healthy.  The same can not be said for the Wisteria which is covered in spider mite web.  The Citrus tree will not reside in the conservatory anymore.  At least not until I have eradicated the mites.

The photo: Grandmother Ellý's "Rulla" was something my mother remembers spending long hours at doing the linens.  Now it is purely for decoration, holding that silly little bird (200kr.) and a bottle of rhubarb poison.   

Egg shampoo

What could be more appropriate for Easter than egg shampoo soap?

This has become my favorite shampoo bar.  It came about when I was baking meringues with my daughter as a preparation for her wedding this summer.  All these egg yolks and what to do with them?

First I had decided to make coffee ice cream.   I love coffee ice cream and it can't be bought in stores here so I have occasionally made it for Christmas.

Just for me, the family hates it, thankfully!
But this time, for some reason, I got the idea that maybe I could use them in soap.  When I was a little girl I remember this egg shampoo, on the bottle it had said it contained egg yolks.  All those household remedies for split and dry and lackluster hair using egg yolks directly or even mayonnaise.  I mean that really is just egg yolks and oils.  So why not try it?  Of course I did what I alway do to check out my ideas, I Googled it and lo and behold!  Someone had thought of it already and it seemed to work!

So I started to make up a recipe.  I use Soapcalc's lye calculator for all my recipes.  Their website is really good for all sorts of instructions about soap making.  I had been using coconut milk in a facial soap and I thought that could go well with the eggs.  And Beer.  Beer is used as a hair rinse by people who can be bothered.  And honey,  I had used that in one shampoo recipe already and that looked promising.

So now I had the recipe in my head and started to put it into the calculator.  I try out the different oil combination and see what they do in the composition of the soap on Soapcalc.

The recipe that I used turned out to be:
Olive oil         45% / 315 g. / 11.1 oz.
Coconut oil    30% / 210 g. / 7.4 oz
Castor oil       15% / 105 g. / 3.7 oz
Sunflower      10% / 70 g. / 2.5 oz

Liquid            245 g. / 8.64 oz
Lye                100 g.  / 3.5 oz  *Do please check all recipes with a lye calculator, just to be sure!
Egg yolks          2
Honey               1 tsp.

This makes out to be 3% superfatted.

I started out by adding the Sunflower oil to the egg yolks by slowly pouring it in while whisking it with a fork.  Then added lye to the liquid.

I did 50/50 Coconut milk and beer first as I had planned.  Do NOT do that.  It curdled and looked truly awful so I threw it out and used only beer.  Then I added the honey and stirred until it dissolved.  This turned a bright orange-y red which made me really excited, but it didn't last, alas.   Lastly I measured the oils and melted them.  I usually only melt the Coconut oil with the major oils like Olive or Sunflower or Soya.  This time I added the Castor oil after the others had cooled a bit.  After mixing the lye and oils I stirred in the egg yolk mixture and the soap turned a beautiful bright yellow, but again it didn't last.  I used a lined wooden log mold and poured the soap.

The result is a very good shampoo bar.  It is very conditioning and made my daughter's brittle dry hair feel exceptionally smooth.  I like it because it makes my hair light and full of volume.  My husband also used it and liked it.  So much so that I think he has stopped using his rather expensive favorite shampoo!  The soap turned out to take on a brown hue that looks a lot like beer.  It smells slightly of honey, which I really like.  I have given it to my sister (the grumpy older one) and my mother and am waiting for feedback from them.

The photo: Honey, egg yolks and beer in a shampoo bar.  I think it's one of the best conditioning shampoo bars. My bowl is marked U.S.Q.M.C W-431-QM-4808 (Q.I 6059) April 26,1941 - it probably originates from the Air force base in Keflavik. It's one of my G.S. finds for 200kr.  There is just a glimpse of my Slovakian wooden comb, which I love and don't know why I didn't buy two or more.

The most boring day

When I was little, Long Friday was the loooongest day.  We were not allowed to play cards or dance and  any sign of a healthy cheerful disposition on that day was pretty much frowned upon.  This was the sad day of Jesus's crucifiction and we all had to suffer, or at least NOT have fun.  Not that my family was that terribly religious,  it just wasn't done in those days. We, the kids,  hated that day because we were soooo booored and also Jesus died!

I guess I still feel that Long Friday can't really be about too much fun because I tend to schedule chores that I have neglected on that day, just as a little punishment.  Although I'm sure my grandparents would have frowned upon me actually DOING something on that day.

So, anyway, today it was the garage that got my attention.  I am a bit of a hoarder and the garage tends to fill up with my treasures and my youngest daughter still has a lot of her teenage stuff in here too.  So today we went through boxes and boxes of books and clothes and stuff and got rid of at least half.  And we didn't really suffer that much.

But speaking about treasures, I am working on this little table that I found in a charity shop.  I knew I HAD to have it as soon as I saw it.  I fell in love even if it was painted in a sewage brown colour that should be banned by law!

It is a funny little thing, this table, it kind of looks like a desk except one can't really sit at it and it has a lot of small drawers (I love that!).  It came with hideous 70's drawer pulls that I'm taking off and I'm stripping it down to it's pine frame.  It was obviously built by an amateur, the dove tails are not very neat.  And it is old, I can tell from the dirt and grime and the look of the thing from the back as well as how it has warped.  I kind of like that.  It's not a really serious antique, but an honest piece of furniture that someone put a lot of work into.  There used to be locks in every drawe and those were expensive in the olden days.  So this was an important piece of furniture for someone.  I just can't believe that someone gave it away.   There is a bit of one leg missing, but I should be able to fix that.

I got a heat gun for my birthday (I dropped a very clear hint to my husband) to make it easy to scrape off all that brown paint and boy does that work a treat.  I work on bits at a time, but I can see how the pine used to be painted to look like a more expensive wood.  They used to do that back in the old days.  I can't save that paint effect so I just marvel at it as I remove it.

It's really hard to tell how old the thing is, but I love the photo of a boy that came with it in one of the drawers.  I'm almost done stripping it and will start to sand it down this weekend.  I'm going to sand it gently by hand (power tools are not always appropriate) and then just wax it and leave it in it's naked state!

The photos: Such a potentially handsome piece.  Hideous 70's handles, one leg is broken and whole thing is twisted, but I love it. I would date it around 1910-1930, undoubtedly homemade. Made of pine, painted to look like hardwood. It has a thick cos of paint, but the shape is nice.  Bought it at the Good Shepheard for 8000kr.