Lavender - Last One of the Year

I just had to make a Lavender soap if only for the Grandmothers.  I don't dislike Lavender, but it's not a great personal favorite, but I know that many people really love it.  That includes the family's grandmothers.

I continued with a similar recipe to the ones I had already made, determined to use both Lanolin and Jojoba, but this time I also remembered the Cocoa Butter that is sitting on a shelf in kitchen.  Since I don't have steady supply of lard, I thought it would be a great addition to the recipe to make the soap harder.  I also had some Shea butter that I added to it.  One of the grandmothers loves that.

For colour I turned to the Alkanet infused oil that I have, lovely and dark red, ready to give it's blue to purple colour as soon as it comes in touch with the alkaline caustic soda. I never tire of the colour magic that soap making is.

I made these big generous chunks of soaps and the recipe turned out to be:

Olive Oil - 40% - 7oz / 200g (80g of that was Alkanet infused)
Coconut Oil - 30% - 5.3oz / 150g
Cocoa Butter - 10% - 1.8oz / 50g
Shea Butter - 10% 1.8oz / 50g
Sunflower Oil - 5% - 0.9ox / 25g
Lanolin - 2.5% - 0.45oz / 12.5g
Jojoba Oil - 2.5% - 0.45oz / 12.5g

I used water with a teaspoon of sugar.  And to continue the theme I decorated with Achillea flowers, Lavender flowers and Birch leaves.

The grandmothers got their soaps for Christmas. One of them remarked that the saves hers for special occasions and was just running out.  It pleased me that she would get a new one.  But this year, rather than give soaps as presents for christmas, I had people choose some to take with them when they left the Christmas dinner.  I still have enough left for me and plenty of soaps begging to be created in the New Year, among them a Vanilla soap and there is is definitely a Yellow one on the horizon.

Happy New Year and very best thanks for the one about to pass.

The Cream of the Crop

I had a vision of the lightest creamiest soap since I knew I had some whipping cream in the freezer. I had put it there a long time ago, anticipating a soap making session in a distant future.  When making milk soaps one needs the milk/cream/yoghurt to be frozen, so when I had some cream that I didn't need, I threw it in the freezer knowing that one day I would be grateful for my foresight.

I decided that it would smell soft and gentle.  The inspiration was a soap that I made some time ago, but that was unscented and now I had vanilla in mind.  Since vanilla makes soap brown I couldn't use that. Bensoin resin is a favorite of mine and an acceptable substitute because it is quite a sweet scent.  I also thought of Ylang Ylang.

I have used Titanium Dioxide in my milk soaps before, but decided to do without that this time and take my chances with the colour.  I was careful to mix just a little bit of the Caustic Soda with the frozen cream, using a quarter at a time, and throwing the whole thing into the freezer in-between.  As expected the whole thing turned a strong yellow colour and that made me reach for the dried yellow rose petals to use for decoration.
This was a pretty complicated mixture of oils and waxes. I'm still intrigued by lanolin in soap and wanted to test that better.  I also really like to have some castor oil so that it doubles as a shampoo bar.  And the Jojoba... Well, I had some.

Olive Oil            40% - 7oz / 200 g.
Coconut Oil       35% - 6.2oz / 175 g.
Cocoa Butter     10% - 1.8oz / 50 g.
Sunflower Oil    10% - 1.8oz / 50 g.
Jojoba Oil            2% - 0.35oz / 10 g.
Castor Oil            2% -  0.35oz / 10 g.
Lanolin                1% - 0.18oz / 5 g.

Water  5.8oz / 200 g.
Caustic soda 2.4oz / 68 g.
10% superfat

I mixed Bensoin, Neroli and Ylang Ylang with a little bit of Sweet Orange and Sandalwood Amyris. Decorated with yellow Rose petals, Chamomile, Achilla and Birch leaves.  The soap started to seize pretty quickly so I jammed it into the mold and then I put it in the freezer to prevent it from overheating.  I smells wonderful.  It doesn't look as good, some strange thing going on in the middle, but I look forward to testing.  This one will probably also only be for me.

This One's Just for Me

I made this very strange recipe.  I have no idea how it will turn out at all.  I knew I wanted to use lard.  I don't use palm oil mostly because I can't find it here and lard makes for very good hard soaps.

I also wanted to use up some oils that I had a little bit left of. Additonally I wanted to make soap just for myself.   Something luxurious and pretty.   A soap that I would use on my face, and therefore I wanted all those exotic oils that I normally would use in face creams rather than soap.

So it became quite a cocktail.  I'm still waiting to see how it will turn out.  It just might be an almighty flop.  But it could also become my new favorite soap.

I know this is a crazy recipe. It's not supposed to be very conditioning, but since I used both jojoba oil and lanolin, both of which really are waxes rather that oils, I'm counting on them to do the job. Plus this is more superfatted than I usually do.

The thought with this soap (if there was any, I did this pretty instinctively) was to make something similar to my old facial soap that I did ages ago. That soap seemed to take forever to cure, but turned out to be one of my all time favorite soaps. And that one aged quite well too.

Coconut Oil - 36% - 5 oz / 160 g
Lard - 30% - 4.7 oz / 134g
Almond Oil - 17% - 2.6oz / 73g
Avocado Oil - 10% - 1.6oz - 45g
Olive oil (Rubarb root infused) - 3.5% - 0.5oz / 15g
Castor Oil - 1.8% - 0.3oz / 8g
Jojoba Oil - 1.6%% - 0.25oz / 7g
Lanoline - 0.5% - 0.1oz / 2g

Water - 5.2oz / 66g

Lye - 2oz / 58g which makes it 15% super fatted, but always check a lye calculator (I always use Soapcalc myself).

For fragrance I used Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Benzoin, with a dash of Rosewood, Sweet Orange and a dash of Geranium, Vetiver, Sandalwood Amyris and Cubea Litsea.   I put it in this silicone cake form that I got in a thrift store (and have never used for cake) as well as my heart shaped ice cube mold from Ikea.   I like to have small soaps for the bathrooms.

The scent is nice and fresh and the colour also turned out to be a very nicely pink.   But this soap is also going to take a lot of curing.   Oh, well. Patience is the mother of all virtues, as they say.   I need more of that, and as they also say: Practice makes perfect.  So it's all good.

Update: Like I expected, this soap took some time to cure, but once it did it does make for a nice very creamy lathered soap that feels quite gentle on my skin.  I have also used it as a shampoo bar and my hair likes it.  The fragrance didn't hold up as well as I hoped.  It turned into a kind of indistinct something.  So even if I like that Neroli, Ylang Ylang and Benzoin combination I should probably have skipped the others or made one of them dominant.

Making Soap My Way - A Tutorial Of Sorts

I made soap again.  Just suddenly got the urge and then I thought I should document my process.  I never did a tutorial before.  Mostly because when I started this blog I was a complete beginner in soap making and I was reading other peoples tutorial to learn from them, not ready to teach others.  But now that I have become pretty seasoned in soap making, I thought I should write down my steps.

I have always made soap in the kitchen using my regular pots and kitchen stuff.  I have read a lot of books about making soaps and most of them are very good and thorough, but sometimes I feel that they make it sound so difficult and complicated.  I like things to be easy and simple.  So my favorite book about making soap is by Anne Watson "Smart Soapmaking" (even if the subtitle is a bit more complicated: "The simple guide to Making Traditional Handmade Soap Quickly, Safely, and Reliably, or How to Make Luxurious Handcrafted Soaps for Family, Friends, and Yourself".  I love the humor in that).  She gave me the courage to go ahead and try it.

Over time I have developed my own way to do things and I have gotten pretty set in my ways.  I always use the same equipment: same pot, same glass measuring jugs, same spoons, same everything.   Except the recipes.  I just can't make the same recipes again and again.  I always need to tweak them a little bit, at least.  And now suddenly, I have a need to make soaps.  There are a few that are asking to be made.  I have sometimes wondered what kind of soap I would make first.  Once I started again.  It was Rhubarb oil soap.  A very strange recipe, if I'm honest.  I have no idea how it will turn out.  Might be a total failure, although I thought of it as a luxurious face soap.  But that is another post.  This one is about the process.

My equipment consists of:

• A pot - I use that for the water/liquid and to dissolve the caustic soda
• A large pyrex class measuring jug with a handle - That is for the oils
• A small pyrex class measuring jug with a handle - This one is for the caustic soda
• ---I do not use the measuring jugs to measure, just as containers---
• A slotted spoon - to stir the caustic soda solution
• Two thermometers - one for the soda and one for the oils
• A digital scale - to measure everything
• A stick blender - to mix everything
• Moulds
• And the most important equipment of all is my computer... and SoapCalc www.soapcalc.net/.  I use that for every single recipe and save them as pdf.  
• And then there is the camera, or the phone these days.  (Which I know isn't good because the photos are not nearly as good as on a proper camera.  But I have gotten a bit lazy.  I need to change that.)

I put my recipes straight into SoapCalc as I work.  I usually make either 500g or 700g depending on which mould I'm using.  I put in the total weight and my preferred water ratio (usually about 33% these days) and super fat % (varies from 5-10% usually).  I would recommend that beginners stick to the default setting in the beginning.

I would also recommend goggles and gloves and an apron.  Lye is very caustic and it does burn.  The raw soap is also very caustic and it does burn.  You do not want to splash this stuff on yourself and definitely not get it into your eyes.  Having said that, I have to admit that the hazmat-like outfit that I wore in the beginning has given way to a bit lighter safety gear.

Before I do anything else I get my mould ready.  I like the wooden moulds with freezer paper. But one can use silicone moulds (for baking) and just about anything that has a shape resembling soap.  In the beginning I used milk cartons and yoghurt pots.
Then I start measuring the oils one by one, resetting the scale after each time. Sometimes I pour a little bit more than I intended and then I go back to SoapCalc and adjust accordingly. I melt the oils in the microwave.  About a minute at a time and I stir in-between.
Next I measure the caustic soda. I prefer not to store it among the foodstuff in the kitchen so I keep it in the garage. I take the small pyrex jug and the scale and measure out there and bring it back to the kitchen.
I then measure out the liquid into the pot.  I usually just put the pot on the scale and pour in whatever liquid I'm using. Then I put the pot on the stove and turn the exhaust on full while I slowly pour the caustic soda into the liquid. The liquid gets very hot so I let it sit and cool down. If I need to hasten the cooling I'll simply let some cold water run on the outside of the stainless steel pot.  That cools it pretty quickly.
Once everything is the same temperature I pour the liquid into the oils. I try not to heat the oils too much and often leave a little bit of the solid oils to melt on their own while the oils cool down to the correct soaping temperature.  Or even have some solid bits still floating like here.  The stick blender takes care of it. I prefer to soap at about 40°C / 100°F, so I let both oils and water cool to around that temperature.
Here is why I love to make soaps.  The Rhubarb oil is yellow with a strange greenish, almost iridescent cast to it.  But once the lye hits it, it turns red. I love that. I use an old Bamix stick blender that I got in a thrift shop.  I really like it.  It's very sold and rather quiet.
Next is the fun bit: Turn on the stick blender and watch the swirls.
I don't really mix for very long.  I'm not too bothered about trace.  The soap mixture will reach trace on it's own if it is properly blended.  At least I have never had any problems with that.
I then pour in my essential oils, which I have already poured into a small bowl.  I do not have a scale that is sensitive enough to measure essential oil blends. Since my recipes are small, I may use only a few drops of this and a dash of that.  My scale can measure down to +/- 2 g (that's around 0.07 oz) and that isn't enough accuracy to use it for fragrance.  So I just make my fragrance blends on instinct. I usually try to avoid using the stick blender too much for the essential oils, since they are so volatile.
Once all the ingredients are blended, I pour the soap into moulds.  I have wooden log moulds and I like those. I'm usually not concerned if they gel or not.  I just let it happen. But, if I do not want them to gel I'll put the moulds into the fridge or even freezer overnight. Or sometimes I use smaller mould to avoid gelling, but that doesn't always work.

I always use a small pin (knitting needle, the end of a thermometer or a chopstick) to make swirls in my soaps to decorate the tops.  I studied the way other peoples soaps look like and I tried to get different looks.  But mine always looked the same.  The funny thing is that when my cousin and I were doing this together and she would use the same implement and the same type of movement we could easily tell our soaps apart.  So I guess this is my look.

I added dried flowers.  That may be too cutesy for some, but when I was looking through my old photos as I uploaded them to Flickr I really loved the look of them.  So even if they get spoiled when they get wet I still like them like that.

Peachy - Liquid Soap

The other day I wrote down all the ideas that I had for my next soaps.  I wanted to do a liquid soap by rebatching and I wanted to do a peach coloured soap, among other  things.  The peach colour came from the colour I got from a Woad exhaust, a really nice pale peachy colour.  It's so strange how that works.

But anyway, I dyed a long silk scarf and got this colour, instead of the blue that I hoped for.  But I loved the colour and it reminded me of some elastic that I picked up the the Good Shepherd, purely because I loved the colour, not because I had any use for a lot of elastic.  I have no idea what I want to do with it.  Although it probably could be designed as a very funky-something-to-wear if I were a bit younger and could carry off some funky clothing.

But back to the soap.  I had one soap left of one of my favorites, the Madder soap with Neroli that I rather selfishly made just for myself.  The colour was long gone and the scent wasn't really noticeable any longer either, but it was white and hard.  I had loved the feel of it, the smell of it and I remember that the lather was really nice.  So I grated it into a pot and poured some fresh cream on top, as well as a bit of coconut milk and some water.  I heated it gently and stirred to melt the soap.  Then I thought: Wouldn't it be nice to have a bit of colour?  So I went to my stash shelf and picked op a jar of Rhubarb oil.  Pink liquid soap!   I've made a quite a few nice pink soaps using both Rhubarb oil and Rumex oil and I always really like the nice pinks I get.  So I poured it in and magic:  It turned this nice peachy orange.  I was delighted.

With that colour the scent just had to be Ylang Ylang, Sweet Orange and a bit of Sandalwood, for depth and a tiny dash of Cubea Litsea for a fresh top note.  I added a little bit of Natrium benzoate a a preservative and some glycerin to help to keep it from clumping up.  Now I just have to wait and see how it ages.

Since I don't have it in a pump, it won't really matter if it thickens a bit, but I would like to be able to make liquid soap that can survive in a pump without having to use KOH.  The kids have been asking for that and I've been meaning to do some experiments.  Although one of these day I'm sure that I will treat myself to 25 kg. of KOH and start to really experiment with liquid soap.  But in the meantime I'm perfectly happy to compromise and rebatch my leftovers to get some liquid soap.  It's so important to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect.  That's the beauty of making stuff oneself.  It's not only just fine if it is slightly imperfect, it's actually better.  It's more human.  It's more me.

Blue Facial Soap

My all time favorite soap that I made myself, is the facial soap that I made over two years ago.  I used Almond oil in it, an oil that I don't normally use because it is difficult to find here and it's expensive.  I also used all sorts of other oils that I normally reserve for making facial creams like Avocado and Rose hip oil.  I think I have some of that soap left, but my soaps are stored haphazardly all over the house, and I haven't stumbled across them recently.

I had quite a bit of indigo blue left in the mortar from making my blue tooth soap and my frugal self decided that I couldn't simply wash it away.  So came up with a blue facial soap, again using my pastry molds that I love and lining them with cling film, because they are aluminum which would otherwise react with the alkaline soap.  I also decided to gather all my yummiest ingredient for this soap, although I did forget a few.  Like shea butter, and scent.  So it's unscented.  Which is really better for facial soap.  The blue colour is so light that it is almost a jade green.  The colour depends on the light, but I love it.  It's delicate and feminine.

I only made a very small batch, probably the smallest batch one can get away with easily, (7oz) 200g of soap.

Almond Oil - 10%     - 0.7oz /  20g
Peach Kernel Oil - 10%     - 0.7oz / 20g
Coconut Oil -  28%      2 oz / 56g
Castor Oil - 5%     0.35oz / 10g
Avocado Oil - 15%     1oz - 30g
Argan Oil - 10%     0.7oz / 20g
Jojoba Oil - 10%     0.7oz / 20g
Cocoa Butter - 10%     0.7oz / 20g
Borage Oil - 2%     0.14 / 4g

Water - 2.3oz / 66g
Lye - 0.9oz / 25g which makes it 10% super fatted, but always check a lye calculator (I use Soapcalc myself).

I used water with the leftover indigo and I had hoped that I could pour the soap quite runny.  It however thickened quite quickly, hence the scentlessness.  I simply didn't have enough time to grab some EOs.  But I did manage to get the soap into the molds and bang them down a little bit to get the soap to iron out the plastic film.  It was semi successful, some soaps have a very good impression from the mold, others more from the cling film.  But it's for me, not for gifts, and I never mind handmade irregularities.  I'm waiting for it to cure completely, its very, very soft as I remember the old facial soaps to be.  But those did haden very well and I'm expecting these to do the same.  Of course I have already tried it although I can still smell the lye.  It looks promising, nice lather.  But I keeep sniffing it.

The Blues - Tooth soap recipe

I'm not a blue person.  My colours are the warm tones, especially red.  It's not that I dislike blue, in fact I think blue is a very nice colour.  It's just not me.  So I tend to buy things that are not blue, except jeans.  And since I really like the blue of jeans, I guess it could be said that indigo blue is a favorite colour after all, even if I'm not a blue person.  I have been experimenting with dyeing from Woad and Japanese indigo.  It really is an amazing process to turn green leaves into a clear blue colour.  Just like magic.

I haven't made any blue soaps, although I did try once.  I used indigo powder, but not enough, so the colour disappeared.  Sometimes it doesn't pay to skimp on ingredients.  so when I got the idea for this soap I decided to be generous with the Indigo powder.  I somehow thought it would be appropriate to make a blue tooth soap.  I made tooth soap a long time ago and I still have most of it.  Not because I haven't used it.  It's just that it lasts forever.  But I started to feel a little deprived of the fresh minty taste of conventional toothpaste.  My old tooth soap had baking soda in it and baking soda just doesn't taste very good.  So I have been wanting to do a new tooth soap.  And then I thought about the old blueing agents.  Since i'm quite old, I remember when it was possible to buy a blueing agent to make white laundry appear whiter.  Admittedly, I just barely remember the stuff, but it was sold in the olden days and used.  Now they have something that works in a similar, but in a more sophisticated way, called optical brighteners.  But I thought it might be a great idea to make a blue tooth soap, maybe it would make teeth appear whiter, or it would just look nice.

I have mint growing in the garden and I harvested all of it when it was starting to get cold.  I made some mint jelly, but decided that it really is just too weird to eat that with lamb.  Even if British people do that.  It tastes just like toothpaste.  I guess one has to be reared on that to appreciate it.  But I used part of the mint for a tea that I used as the water phase in my soap.  So the genius me didn't quite think things through.  The art major should have known that mixing the yellow mint tea and the blue indigo would produce a magnificent green.  But I just didn't think.  So here is my "blue" tooth soap:

It's a small recipe (200g/7oz), but it'll last for a long time.

Olive oil 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Cocoa butter 30% 60g / 2.1oz
Coconut oil  22% 44g / 1.6oz
Soybean oil 15% 30g / 1.0oz
Neem Tree oil 3% 6g / 0.2oz

Mint tea 38% 76g / 2.7oz
Xylitol 2 tsp

Lye 28g / 1oz

Peppermint eo
Ginger eo
Licorice extract

Since I don't want the tooth soap to produce too many suds, I used much less coconut oil than usual and much more of the cocoa butter.  The neem oil has anti bacterial properties, so I added some of that.  I also added 1 tsp licorice extract, which is supposed to be good for the gums,  to the essential oil blend. I used 1/4 tsp ginger (again that is supposed to be good for the gums) and 1 tsp peppermint for that fresh minty taste that I had been craving.  I also ground up 1 tsp zink oxide and 4 capsules of magnesium citrate (good for teeth) with about 1/4 tsp indigo powder.

I made these into little hearts since I think they look kind of cute.  I have tried the soap already although it needs some more time to cure.  Well I can't say that it whitens the teeth, but it has a minty taste and it cleans well without sudsing too much.  I might add some more xylitol next time and even some more peppermint eo.  Just to get that really, really fresh minty taste.  And I might even skip the mint tea and go for a truly blue soap.

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.

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.

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 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.

Cut!

The yellow soap turned out a very dark yellow and to be truthful I like yellow when it's mellow.  But I still like this one very much.  The smell is heavenly and although I tend to think that soaps look their best just poured into the mold and freshly decorated, I still love the way it looks.  A bit frou frou and old lady.  It is going to look absolutely horrible once it gets wet, but who cares?  It'll look very good as a gift and then it'll still smell really nice.

I have been on a roll, making more of these, but in different colours with different fragrance blends and I plant to make a few more.  I've already done one white and one black and I want to do one blue and another pink.  I'm just waiting for a fresh shipment of oils so that I can mix the fragrances that I've imagined for those.

I've also lost it!  I'm going to be in a Christmas market next weekend with my soaps and some jewelry that my sister-in-law makes.  The market idea just happened and I have no idea how it's going to go.  I won't be selling the special blend soaps, but I've made some lavender and lemongrass ones with flower decorations.  We have been selling soaps to friends and last week one friend took some samples with her to work and we got an order for about 25 soaps.  That is a lot for us and we were thrilled.  I guess it went to our heads and therefore the market seemed like a good idea.

I went today to scout out the territory.  It's quite cute actually and since we've just had the first snow it looked really nice.  It's this place where people can cut their own Christmas trees and then buy some coffe and waffles with cream and jam and also some crafts.  Everything that is sold in this market has to be made or designed by Icelanders, so we fit right in.

I've been so busy printing labels and getting myself organized for the market that I didn't have time to do the Advent wreath today.  Oh, well I'll get in done tomorrow, or the next day.  There's plenty of time...  isn't there?

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.

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.

Peltigera soap

I had to use the lichen infusions in soaps.  That's just obvious.  If one can get colour from something one has to try it in soap.  I was very curious to see what I would get from the lichens in terms of colour.  So I made a few soap with the different lichen decoctions that I had.

After some thought, I decided that they would all share the fragrance of Vetiver, but I would add other essential oils that I felt would match the colour or character of the specific lichen I was using.  Vetiver is a masculine kind of scent, rather dry and I thought it was a great base scent.  I knew that there was no hope of the lichen scent to come through the soaping process on it's own.

One lichen, Evernia prunastri (Oak moss) is extensively used in the perfume industry as a fixative and base scent.  The method of extraction is a trade secret and anyway, I couldn't get hold of that, it doesn't grow here, so Vetiver had to suffice.  But other lichens also have this very distinct and generally pleasant smell and one of the benefits of using lichen as a dye is that the wonderful scent stays with the yarn or cloth through it's lifetime and every time the garment is washed the scent is very noticeable.

I started with Peltigera canina and used a recipe for the soap that I think is going to be a good one.  It contains lard which I find gives a lovely hardness to soaps in the absence of palm oil, which I have a hard time getting without even getting into the ethical issues.  I didn't expect any colour from the Peltigera and I didn't really get any.  I'm pretty sure that whatever slight colour there is, is as much a function of the essential oils as the lichen itself.  So why bother?  Well, besides satisfying my own curiosity, I thought they might be cool to try out.  The Cetraria islandica soap that we made some time ago turned out to be very popular.  And lichens have many unique components and they are still being researched for all sorts of medicinal uses.  Many have anti bacterial, anti viral and anti fungal properties.  Peltigera canina has been used as a liver tonic and cough medicine, as well as to treat urinary disorders, thrush, tuberculosis, and rabies. I wouldn't count on it as a rabies cure, though!
The recipe for the lichen soap was:

30% Olive oil
25% Lard
25% Coconut oil
15% Soybean oil
5% Cocoa butter

The water phase was Peltigera canina decoction and I scented with Vetiver, Orange and Cubea litsea.  I put some dried plant material on top of it just to make it a little bit interesting.  I didn't have the dried lichen so I used Gallium verum, Ladys bedstraw, which I had handy.  Peppermint and Lemongras. (I made a mistake, the soap in the picture is indeed scented with Vetiver, Orange and Cubea litsea, but the water phase isn't Peltigera canina.  I got my soaps a little bit mixed up, sorry about that.  The right picture of this soap is in a post dated Nov. 7 2011.)

I made four soaps with the different lichen decoctions that I had and I had a blast.  They didn't give any spectacular colours, but there was one surprise.  But I like the Vetiver scent with the variations and I think these soaps just might be the coolest gift to the biologists in the family.

Will the lichen do anything for the skin?  I don't know, but I decided to use some of the decoction in a face cream.  It's quite nice and since I have been reading some magazines with cosmetics ads I'm pretending it's one of those 100$ miracle night creams that will make me beautiful overnight.  And guess what!  It seems to work.  Overnight!  I just love the placebo effect.

Seaweed salt soap - and my icy cold hands

I went to pick seaweed with my cousin and mother the other day.  We timed it carefully since we wanted to pick a particular kind of seaweed, Pamaria palmata.  Dulce is the common name in English, but we call it Söl in Icelandic.  Dulce has been used for ages here as food.  They are very nutritious and are sold as snacks and some people used them in green drinks.  This is why we were going to collect some, because my cousin uses them in her nutritious morning drink and it is rather expensive at the shops.  Self sufficiency appeals to me, even if I don't really eat that much of the stuff.

Dulce grows at the very lowest point of the beach where there is movement of the sea most of the time and in order to pick it we had to wait for the lowest tide of the month and we were fortunate that this month it happened to be a Sunday.

We only had to drive about an hour from the city to find a nice place to collect seaweed.  There are these two really cute tiny villages with tongue twisting names (Stokkseyri and Eyrarbakki) and old houses made of timber, clad in corrugated iron and painted in vivid colours with white windows.  I really love those old houses, no matter how impractical they are in the modern world with their low ceilings and tiny rooms.  They have some really nice restaurants in those villages, but we didn't stop this time.

We had to walk pretty far out on the beach to find Söl, the species we were chiefly interested in.  We could hardly sea land by the time we found some and had almost given up and turned back.  It was really hard to walk on those round seaweed covered boulders and we had had to leave my mother behind pretty early on.  I left her, bless her heart, sitting on a rock, hoping she would make it back on land without braking any bones.  I had made sure to take some refreshments with us but unfortunately I had the car keys in my pocket, so she was left stranded alone on the beach with nothing to eat and no phone (that was is the car with the food).  She wasn't upset at all, but started to collect plants to show us when we returned.  Still teaching me about plants, like she did when I was little.  So I learned all about the few plants that grow by the sea.

Even if the sun was shining it was pretty windy and cold and we could hardly see land anymore.  But all that was forgotten when we started seeing the Söl.  We managed to collected three bucketfuls before we started to work our way back to safety, with the tide rising steadily.  I was beginning to get a bit worried that we would need to be rescued, but we made it back safely, if a bit tired and cold (did I already say that?).

We didn't just collect dulce. We also saw these really pretty green seaweeds that I now know are Ulva lactuca, or Laver.  I collected some because I wanted to use them in soap to see if I could get the lovely green colour.

That soap just had to be salt soap, I mean how could it not be.  Sea. Salt.  No brainer!  It did turn out green and a nice green at that.  The photo doesn't do it justice.  It will probably not last too long, but I'm enjoying it all the same.

I had decided to make about 2/3's of it non-salt and have the rest a salt soap.  So I poured quite a lot of soap into the mold and them dumped some salt into the soap batter I had left.  It turned out to be the exact opposite.  More salt soap than not.  I should have tried to get some fancy blending of the two.  But I thought it was going to be a straight line.  Oh well!


I used a lot of coconut oil to see if it lathers.  So the recipe is quite simple:

Cocoanut oil      50%     250g / 8.8oz
Olive oil            40%     200g /  7.0oz
Cocoa butter     10%       50g /  1.8oz

Seaweed blended with 200g / 7.0oz of water.

I scented it with a blend of Peppermint and a hint of Vetiver.  It's quite nice and appropriate for this sea inspired soap.  I used fine sea salt.  I like that a lot better than coarse salt.  It makes a smooth rock hard surface that doesn't scratch.   I look forward to trying it.  I kind of like salt soaps.  They are so different and this one is very authentic with real-live-seaweed that I picked myself from the sea with my icy cold hands.  Did I already say it was cold?