I really like this one

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.