The last of the Special Blends

I can't believe that I forgot this one.  The last of my Special Blend soaps that I made for Christmas.  I never got round to doing the blue.  I had intended that for my mom, with some sort of a fresh blend of oils (I'm sure I wrote that down somewhere) and Shea butter.

But back to this one.  I had to do a pink soap for Christmas and used... Yes Rumex oil.  I do love the stuff.  But as all my Special Blends, this one had to have that one different ingredient and I found Lanolin.  Lanolin is wonderful stuff.  It is the oil that is on sheep's wool, so it couldn't be more local.  We have more sheep than people here and I love them.

I know that some people are allergic to Lanolin, but for the rest of us, it's a wonderful moisturizer.  So I used a bit in this soap.  I haven't tried it.  I can't believe that I admit that, but I have so many soaps to try.  I was thinking that I should start to pick out my all time favorite soaps.  I still remember the ones I particularly like and it would undoubtedly be interesting to see if there is a common denominator.  I have a feeling about he recipes that I live, but I use so many different one that I should do this in a more scientific way.  But back to the Rosewood Special Blend.  Because it had to be rose something and I can't use pure rose oil, it's just too expensive so I thought Rosewood would be nice.  The recipe was:

Olive oil  40% - 200g / 7 oz.
Coconut oil 30% - 150g / 5.3 oz.
Cocoa butter 15% - 75g / 2.6 oz.
Rapeseed oil 10% - 50g / 1.8 oz.
Lanolin 5% - 25g / 0.9 oz.

I used about 25 g. of Rumex oil.  Part of that was deducted from the Olive oil, but 5 g. were extra.  I guess I thought is wouldn't be dark enough, so the recipe really should be for 5 g. more of Olive oil.  But anyway, I also used both silk and sugar in the water.  

As the picture shows, the soap seized on me and the soap has that characteristic look of being pushed and shoved into the mold.  The scent was a nice blend of Rosewood, Sandalwood Amirys, Bensoin, Ylang Ylang.  It's quite nice, not oppressive at all but rather mild and feminine.  I actually am glad that I haven't tried it yet.  I have something to look forward to this spring.  I can't wait for spring.  This winter has been dark and oppressive and I want more light.  It's getting better.  I can always tell by my Ficus benjamin a who always has a tantrum at this time of the year, just before it starts to get light again, it's leaves turn yellow and trow themselves on the floor.  I feel the same, but I know from years of experience that just as the two of us are about to give up, the sun reappears and spring will be here eventually.

Soaps for grannies

The first soap that I sold at the Christmas market was to a woman slightly older than I, who was buying the soap for herself.  It was Lavender soap.  There is something special about Lavender soap.  It's the soap that the grandmothers in my family get for Christmas.  Since I sold all the Lavender soaps that I had at the market, I needed to make a new batch especially for the grannies.  And since there wasn't enough time to cure before Christmas, the soap were packed with a slip of paper that explained about curing soap and that the soap would have to be used for purely decorative purposes for about 10 more days.  Ready to be used in the new year.

I made this especially with the older women in mind.  I had just bought some Shea butter and wanted to try that in soap.  One of the grannies is a fan of Shea butter, so I thought I would make her happy.  Needless to say I used Alkanet infused oil to get the purple color, but I have to admit that I completely love the pretty blue that it turns at first and I would really like to get that color permanently.  I think I have to sacrifice some of my precious indigo soon to make some blue soap.  Blue soap with Shea butter would be just perfect.

But back to the Granny soap.  I made a small batch and tweaked the recipe a bit so the percentages are a bit strange.

Olive oil 50% - 270g / 9.5oz
Coconut oil 28% - 150g / 5.3oz
Shea butter 9% - 50g / 1.8oz
Cocoa butter 9% - 50 /1.8oz
Rice bran oil 4% - 20g / .7oz

I used sugar in the water and about 80g of the Olive oil was Alkanet infused.  Scent was pure Lavender, no mix this time and I sprinkled a few flowers on top.  Sea Mayweed, Achillea, Lavender and Calluna, the Sea Mayweed flowers turned a pretty lime green when the soap dried and I liked the effect.  There are alway surprises when working with natural materials and I do appreciate that.  I may use those flowers again and maybe arrange them a bit more carefully.  Tweezers work well for this fiddly work.

Speaking about fiddly work.  The eiderdown cleaning progresses at a snails pace.  I now have 114 grams cleaned, but I am going to make a harp (a tree frame with strings) to help with the cleaning.  Norwegians use this and I'm going to try to see if I can make one and clean faster that way.  I'm really excited about my eiderdown and I can't wait to get the cover.  It's being made in Germany right now and I think it will be fabulous.

Pink at last - Using fresh Rumex oil

Since I really wanted some pink soap, I kept making soap but this time I used the new Rumex oil.  Only 3 weeks of infusion.  I wasn't at all sure that it would produce any color at all since the oil had only taken on a little color.  With this light yellow oil I was excited to see what would happen.  I made this soap with the usual amount of Rumex oil, about 3% (20 g. to 700 g.)

It turned this lovely light pink.  There is alway a bit of yellow in it where it gells, but the color tends to veer towards pink as it gets exposed to air.  It is pretty amazing to me that the small brown balls and the soap and pink hearts are made with the same material, rumex oil, but just different batches.

I think the conclusion has to be that fresh oil will produce pink, but as it gets older the color will get darker and eventually turn brown.  It doesn't take a lot of oil to color the soap.  I've usually used 15-20 grams in one recipe of 500-700 grams, which is less than 5% of the Rumex oil to the amount of other oils used.  That is very different from the amount of oil that I use when I've used Alkanet oil.  But I really need to try to make soap using less of that.  Could be the next project.  There is always demand for Lavender soap.

For decoration, I used Heather (Calluna) and Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) on top.  Those two are actually very well suited as a decoration on top of soaps because they keep their color well and don't turn brown easily since they sit on top of the soap and don't really get wet.  It actually turned into a very pretty and girly soap.

Now I need to make yet another one, using this very Rumex oil, except it has now been infusing for something like 8-10 weeks.  In fact I just poured it into a jar to discard the Rumex root.  The oil is a lovely, lovely bright golden yellow and it smells lovely.  I have been using it on my face at night and I swear that it does make my skin feel and look better.  Of course my face looks a bit yellow.  The oil must be chock full of antioxidants.  But since my darling husband hasn't even commented yet (other than to tell me I'm beautiful) I'll keep using it.  And btw I'm almost up to 100 grams of cleaned Eiderdown.  Only 900 to go.