The Elusive Green

I love the colour green.  Didn't realize it until quite recently, well, a few years back.  If asked I would have said red was my favorite colour.  I don't wear green much, but when we bought our home eleven years ago all the windows, doors, fences and roof were a dark green colour.  I guess that's when I discovered that I like the colour.  Then I bought green drapes for the bedroom.  Mostly because they were on sale and that was the only colour available.  And I like those green drapes in the bedroom.  They give a nice green glow into the bedroom in summer.  With the nights so light, it's an advantage to tone the bright light down to a calming green.

I thought I had found the solution to the problem of getting a green colour naturally in soaps.  It is one of the most difficult one to get from plants, both in soap and as a textile dye.  Which is counterintuitive since most plants are green, so what happens to all the green?  Well, it turns either yellow or brown because the Chlorophyll is not water-soluble and therefore can't be extracted in a water bath.  And furthermore, as I understand it, it does fade even if it is used in it's oil soluble form as a soap colour.  Apparently Chlorophyll is a combination of Chlorophyll a and Chlorophyll b and the a is a good dye and can be bought and used in soap.

I thought I had found a shortcut when I was given some very green tablets that were to be used as a nutritional supplement.  No way was I going to eat those pretty green things.  I had to try them in a soap.  Well, you've guessed it.  It really was a nice, nice green for a little while and then it faded.  I knew that!  Of course it faded.  I really knew that was going to happen.  It always does.  I just have to give up this naive hope that somehow I will find a perfect green that says green and doesn't turn olive and brown, or disappears.

But the soap was the Rosemary shampoo bar, slightly changed.

Olive oil         40%     280g / 9.9 oz
Coconut oil    30%    210g / 7.4 oz
Castor oil       20% 140g / 4.9 oz
Sunflower oil 10% 70g / 2.5 oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz
3% SF.
 
I added a lot of Rosemary essential oil and shredded some soap on top to make it slightly more interesting, but it didn't really work.  I used too fine a grater and I like the look better without, but now I know that.  It has been curing for quite a while, actually 3 months now, but I finally tried it and it has a very strong and refreshing smell, a nice generous lather lather and my hair loved it.  I also really liked the first recipe, but this one may be an improvement, if only slight.  I probably needed more of the green tablets to give a strong lasting colour.  As it it the soap is a yellow green that's not really special.  But I'm getting ready to start dying yarn again.  I'm  going to do it very methodically this time and I'm starting with one of my favorite weeds, Rumex.

It's Rhubarb time again

I have been making everything Rhubarb in this past week.  My Rhubarb plants are doing so well, probably because I covered them in loads of well rotted manure last fall and gave them some seaweed as well.  They are growing like maniacs, which is nice because I didn't expect to be able to get any crop this year since it's only been two years since I got them and I even replanted them last summer.

Rhubarb rewards it's owner handsomely if treated properly.  It's not very complicated.  It should be divided every 10-15 years, or when it stops being productive.  It's a big plant and it needs plenty of nutrients.  Manure is perfect, or some other form of organic fertilizer like chicken manure and seaweed.

There are many cultivars of Rhubarb, some are completely red through the stalks, others have red on the outside of the stalks and then some are completely green.  The reds cultivars tend be give less crop than the others.  The taste is also different between the cultivars and apparently is is malic acid that determines the taste, if there is too little it tastes of little, and if there is too much it is too sour.  There is no correlation between the colour of the stalks and the amount of malic acid in the Rhubarb.

This year I have already made Rhubarb syrup, Rhubarb heels, Rhubarb drink and Rhubarb muffins.  And of course Rhubarb soap!  I wanted to try to make a gradient colour with Rhubarb oil.  Maybe an Ombré type effect. I didn't quite succeed, its more stripes than Ombré, but it's nice anyway and I had fun.

I just eyeballed the amounts of Rhubarb oil (chop up some pieces of root into oil of your choise and let it infuse until you see a good colour) into the soap, so it wasn't very scientific, but the recipe is here:

Olive oil 49% 360g / 13oz (out of this 20g was Rhubarb root infused)
Coconut oil 25% 190g / 6.7oz
Rapeseed oil 17% 107g / 3.7oz
Cocoa butter 9% 70g / 2.5oz
Castor oil 2% 14g / 0.5oz

Water 33% 250g / 8.7oz
Lye 106g / 3.7 oz

I divided the soap into four approx. 200g /7oz each and colored the first part with about 2 tablespoons of Rhubarb oil.  The second with just over one tablespoon.  The thirds with about half a tablespoon and the last with about a teaspoon.  I tried to pour very evenly, over a spatula, and slammed the mold down to even it, but there are still valleys in the colors bands.  I put the soap into a cold oven when it started to gel, because I wanted it to gel evenly and it seems to have done just that.

The intensity of the colour surprised me a little bit.  The darkest layer is really dark red.  Quite beautiful and a blueish tint to it.  The cut surfaces are more of a yellow red, but they turn more blue as the soap ages.  The scent was a combo of Rosewood and Rose Geranium and it smells lovely.  I still leave a lot of Rubarb left to harves and I just may need to try some of the hair colour recipes next.  On myself.  That could be interesting...

Gardening soap

I had decided to make a really pretty soap and I thought it would be such a great idea to use Cochineal to color it pink.  Enough of Rumex oil already.  Enough of subtle shades.  Lets go for gusto.  Cochineal is a bug that had been used for centuries to dye pink and red.  It gives vibrant colours and is soluble in water.  I've used it to dye wool and got a beautiful strong pink.  So I thought I'd try it because sometimes I would like to try some really strong colors for a change.  And I thought I would use the little aluminum tart forms that I have, but line them with cling film, even if it shows.  And then I thought I'd use some of the Poppy seeds that I collected last fall and make it this bright pink flower shaped gardeners soap.

Well, apparently the universe likes me to stick to soft and natural.  I prepared the Cochineal by grinding up a few bugs and adding them to water until the colors was really saturated and way too strong for what I intended.  When I added the lye the water turned to purple, as was to be expected, but when I added the oils and started to stir, the colour simply disappeared.  I had this happen once with Logwood, a beautiful purple that refused to participate in a soap making adventure.  Since I really didn't want as wishy-washy nondescript soap I grabbed my bottle of ... no not Rumex oil, but Rheum oil (that's Rhubarb to you and me).  As I poured it into the soap I could see great red color swirls and they soon turned the soap pink and I was quite happy.  Usually Rumex and Rheum oils turn a tan colour at first, changing overnight to pink.  But this was fine with me.  Immediately pink.  Great.  So I put some Lavender, Lemongrass and Rosewood essential oils into it and then my poppy seeds, poured it into the little moulds and went to bed.

I made a really small recipe, only 260 g. / 9.2 oz, the smallest batch I've ever tried.

Olive oil 33%  

Coconut oil 33% 

Soybean oil 10%

Sunflower oil 10%

Cocoa butter 14%

The next morning this surprising result waited for me.  Exactly what I hadn't wanted:  A rather insipid, undecided, plain, dull, nondescript, wishy-washy colour, if it even deserves that noun.  And to make matters worse, it had a really really thick layer of ash.  I don't mind some ash, but this was really thick.  I don't know how the colour managed to change from a lovely, and yes soft, pink to a really weird blueish-in-some-places-pinkish-in-others-and-no-real-colour-at-all-in-between.  But it did.  And after looking at it for a few weeks (and a hard day of gardening in the allotment garden) I used it and decided that it wasn't a miserable failure after all.  It was a nice size, it smelled lovely, it had a nice lather and the Poppy seeds gave it just the perfect scrub without being too rough.  Just perfectly natural and slightly irregular like the life I live, the vegetables I grow and the raised beds that I built.

The mysterious affair of the brown Rumex soap...

Puzzled by my brown soap, I thought that maybe I hadn't used enough Rumex oil.  I generally use about 15-20 grams (0.5 -0.7 oz) of the infused oil in one recipe.  My recipes are small, either 500g or more usually 700 g (about 25 oz.)  The obvious solution was to use more oil, maybe double it, and see if that would change the color to pink.

So I did.  But it didn't.  Still stuck in the thinking that yellow and pink somehow go together I threw on some dried calendula and calluna, with a bit of yarrow.  It probably looks better on the brown background than it would on the intended pink,  but I will not be repeating that combination any time soon.  I scented it with Bensoin, Sweet Orange and Geranium.  Tha was a nice combination, which I might repeat.  The Soap was Olive oil, Coconut oil, Soy bean oil and Cocoa Butter.

I love the brown color though.  It's just really nice.  I sometimes forget how nice brown can be, I tend to think of it as a dull color, but it is so useful.  And lots of things that I like are brown.  Linnen is mostly brown.  Most of the eyeshadows that I can use without looking ridiculous are brown and eiderdown id brown.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  I saw somewhere that the way to recognize Eiderdown is that it is always white.  That is nonsense.  The female Eiderducks are brown and therefore the down can only be brown.

I've been cleaning the Eiderdown myself.  I found out that if I have it cleaned by machine I will only get about 20% out of it.  That is an average number and it could be more or it could be less.  But I think that the process the down goes through in the machines is bound to waste some down.  It basically means that my 3 kilos would only yield 600 grams, and that isn't enough for a duvet for me.  I was hoping to get 40% by hand cleaning, but I think that is a bit optimistic.  I have now cleaned just over 70 grams.  So 7% of the duvet done.  Oh, well.  Some things are worth waiting for.

The Surprises of Nature

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.

My special blend - The Black

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

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 nice 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 gold 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.

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

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

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.

Lichen: Ochrolechia or Pertusaria - Obsession nr. 3

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

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.

Lichen: Peltigera canina - Obsession nr. 1

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:

1. Foliose - which means that they are leaf like in their structure.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Lupine soap - looking for lime green, but no such luck!

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

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

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

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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Dandelion dye

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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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.
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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.

Vanilla

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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