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.

Soap!

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.

The Eggsperiment

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.
...

Rebatching using a plastic bag.

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.
...

Lip balm - a perfect Summergift

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.

Confetti soap with Rape seed oil

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.

.

New beginnings - or Sugar Scrub Cubes revisited

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.

Purple is (also) the colour of Christmas - Alkanet and lavender soap

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.

Alkanet and eggshell

I love that little dish. It's not silver, I don't even know if it's
silver plated, but the design is just lovely. It's another one
dollar find at the Good S...

I used Alkenet in a soap the other day.  I have used it before with no great results.  It has turned beautifully blue as I add the lye to the oils, but during curing it has all but disappeared.  I now know that I need to use more of it than I have been doing.  I think I have only been putting a tablespoon or two into a batch of 5-800 g. / 17-28 oz which is my usual batch size, but I am not quite sure.  So this time I was careful to measure everything.

This time I figured that if I used yoghurt I should get a nice colour, since it is acid.  But just to make sure I had some lemon on hand to add to the soap as well.  The experience was really strange and I thought I was losing it when the whole thing turned a greeny-yellow with a blue frame around it.  I didn't take photo's of that because:

1. I thought it looked really, really ugly  - and 
2. I  was convinced that the soap would stay that way and I would get a chance to snap a photo should I develop a desire to do so.  

But instead it changed colour and first turned gray and then it started to turn lavender.  Not a strong purply lavender, but a soft shadowy kind.  So I haven't cracked the Alkanet mystery yet althought I like this soap.

The colour isn't perfect, in fact it looks better in the photo than it really is.  The white flecks in it are egg shell.  I read about that and had to try it.  I amassed a large quality of egg shells when I was baking for the wedding.  As I used the eggs I washed the shells out and let them dry.  Then I put them into a mortal and pounded with a pestle.  It was quite hard work to get them to be very small, but I got there in the end.  Now the thing that I read said that the egg shells would sink to the bottom and make a layer on the bottom, which I thought was quite a good idea.  But in this soap it didn't do that but is dispersed throughout the soap.  I think I will try this again and add the egg shell to a very thin soap to see if I can get it to sink to the bottom.  I think that is quite cool.

The recipe is for 500 g. of oils / 17.6 oz (the oz are approximate):

Olive oil            30% 150g / 5.3 oz
Coconut oil       25% 125g / 4.4 oz
Lard                  25% 125g / 4.4 oz
Sunflower oil    15%  75g /  0.9 oz  (60 g of this was Alkanet infused oil - I didn't have any more)
Cocoa butter      5%   25g / 2.4 oz

Yoghurt            38%  190g / 6.7 oz
Lye                              71g / 2.5 oz
5% SF.

I used frozen yoghurt for the water.  I dissolved the lye VERY slowly since I didn't want to burn the milk proteins in the heat.  The liquid turned a pretty yellow once I had dissolved the lye.  When I had added the liquid to the oils the whole thing turned a gray colour with blue around the edges and as I stirred the thing it turned this greeny-yellow.  At that point I added 2 tbs. of crushed egg shells and some lavender and bergamot EO.  I also added 1 tbsp. corn starch to see if I can get the scent to stay a little longer than usual.  I have just tried out the off cuts, a bit early, but it produced a nice lather and the egg shells were great for exfoliation.  But then again I can never find bath brushes that are scratchy enough, but it may not be to everyones liking.
.

Rebatching again.

Grated soap. I use my stainless steel Eva trio pots for
absolutely everything. They can go in the oven, lid and all.

I'm rebatching my Sea Buckthorn soap.  It has been sitting on the curing rack for a while and it is still too soft.  It's a lovely yellow colour though!  So I want to keep that.  I also have these white soaps that I made to be whipped soaps from hard fats only.  I originally piped them into muffin forms and they were supposed to be very light and fluffy and float on water, but these would make pretty good dwarf bread (this is for Terry Pratchet fans only).  So I thought the two together would average out to a great soap.

I have grated 400 grams of the yellow soap and 200 grams of the white, mixed that in a pot and added about 4 tablespoons of yoghurt and the same of cream.  I stirred it a bit and put it in the oven with a lid on and turned the oven to 95C / 200F.  I stir it every now and again and it is looking good.  Still haven't decided if I'm going to whip it and make muffin soaps or just pour it into a mold.

Adding alkanet infused oil to the grated soap. I use my
kitchenalia, it's not just for show.

Now I have nothing to do but wait and I thought that this might be a good time to grate some more rock hard white soap and experiment with Alkanet.  I have tried that before and didn't have much success.  I was looking for lavender, but it turned a sickly shade of nothing.  Becky at The Soap Sister is doing an Alkanet experiment and I really look forward to reading about the results.  And Jen at Jenora Soaps has also been doing a series of experiments and is now on her third.  It's really interesting to try to crack this Alkanet mystery.

But, anyway, I went to look for a soap to rebatch and found some that looks quite boring, is a bit soft, but has a lot of nice things in it.  So here I go again grating.  This time I'm making a smaller batch and I think I'll grate it smaller.  That is supposed to give better results.  This is turning into a real test!

The alkanet colour in the rebatched soap. It was very grainy.

I have 235 grams of the nice, boring soap and 66 grams of the hard soap.   I have grated that finely and put it into the pot.  I decided to use yoghurt again (I'm out of milk), but no cream, and put about 1/2 cup into the pot and then I poured 4-5 tablespoons of infused Alkanet oil (sunflower) into the pot.  I have had Alkanet root sitting in Sunflower oil for some weeks now.  I just put a tablespoon of the root into a small bottle and filled up with oil.  I figured that if I had it handy I would be able to use it when I wanted, in full strength.

I tried to stir it but it was easier to just put my hands in there and squish it.  It looks and feels like wet rice.  Oh! Magic!  It's turned lavender already.  Maybe it's a little too dark?  Oh well, we'll see.  It's in the oven now on 85C / 185F.  I lowered the heat a bit, thinking that it might be too hot.  But the lid is a definite must.  It keeps the moisture in.  It takes over an hour, maybe two to get it to melt to the consistency I want.  I stir it a bit every now and again as I check it.  It doesn't froth at all.  I had read somewhere that that could be a problem.

The yellow one, on the other hand was very smooth.

The yellow has melted together pretty well and looks gelled so I have poured it into a log mold.  It's a bit lumpy like rebatch tends to be, but the colour is an even yellow, so I'm pretty happy with that.  I decided not to bother with a piping bag this time.  I've never done a rebatch without whipping it, so doing it this way is new to me.  I didn't add any scent to this as I can still smell the Sea Buckthorn and I like that scent.

I just found some lavender EO to put into the smaller batch and I picked out a silicone mould to use for it.  It's like half spheres.  I've never used it, but...  Now I just wait for the soap to melt...  I'm really tempted to whip the small batch...  I just don't want to bother with the mess of the piping bag, so maybe I should just put it into the molds as is...  Yep, finally it's done.  It looks a bit darker than I wanted.  I should have measured the amount that I used more carefully.  I add the EO by putting some in a bit of Sunflower oil and stir it into to the gelled soap when it has cooled a little bit.  And then I put it into the silicone mould.  The soap is gelled and a funny consistency.  Squishy.  The lavender somehow doesn't look as good a the yellow one.  Maybe rebatched soap looks better when it is a light colour.

As far as I can tell the yellow soap is lovely, but the lavender is too dark and b... ugly.  I'll have to rebatch them again and whip them into shape :)
.

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.