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.

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 last of the Special Blends

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pink at last - Using fresh Rumex oil

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Soap!

I've been making soaps again.  The Christmas soaps are pretty late this year, but I've been busy with many other things and so has my cousin.  Of course, I have made quite a few soaps this summer and autumn, but perhaps not as many as last year.  There are so many things that compete for my time.  There is gardening, visiting thrift shops, herbal stuff to make and of course the dying and then I have a few projects at home for some DIY.  But most time consuming has been Pinterest (www.pinterest.com).  It's completely addictive.  I even saw something that I almost pinned.  It was one of those clever sayings and it compared Pinterest to Crack.  Not that I would know for sure, but I can well believe it.

I just spent an hour and a half to add a Pinterest button to my blog.  I had to try it.  It looks slightly too big, but I've given up tweeking the size for now.  But I love Pinterest and wouldn't want to be without it now.  Just a great place to store interesting bookmarks and webpages. This is my Pinterest .  I've also started to use Evernote and an organizer/notes thing as well as something called Myfitnespal in an effort to get rid of those eternal extra 5 (or is it 10) pounds (and that's probably kilo's).  But at least I'm getting very, very organized.  And I have to mention that I finally cleared the clutter in the kitchen today.  It almost looks empty now with all that counter space.

But back to soaps.  I have been making soaps for Christmas lately.  Lavender was a given since my daughter needs it to give to the grandmothers.  They just adore Lavender.  So we (my cousin and I) made two soaps with Lavender EO and experimented with the colours a bit.  One of the soaps was Alkanet infused oil with a bit of Rhubarb oil and the other one was also Alkanet oil, but with more Rhubarb soap.  This was to make the purple look a bit more red, to celebrate Christmas.  My cousin suggested that and I love to do things a bit differently every time, so I was game.  The colours are really nice.  I'm not sure which one I like, especially since they change a bit with time as the soap cures, so I'll reserve my judgement for now.  The recipe was from last Christmas which I posted before, so I won't repeat it.  For decoration we used Sugar crystals to decorate the soaps and that looks pretty good.  I think it looks like jewels, but my sister asked if we were using broken glass!

We also did some little soaps to decorate other soaps.  We did pink hearts, using the Rhubarb oil from this summer.  It only takes a little I find.  I used IKEA ice cube molds for those.  And then we also did stars.  Those were just natural colourless soap that I poured into a tray and I used a cookie cutter to make.  Maybe they should have been yellow?  But I think I just may spend some of my precious Indigo to make blue soap with a star.  That would be really Christmas-y.

The Eggsperiment

My plastic eggs, from a few weeks ago.  Well I learned a lot!  So here it goes.

Small plastic items are very difficult to use as molds for soap.  And those eggs were really hard to keep steady.  I did try to put the halves together, but that was just a mess.  So I ended up pouring soap into the halves separately and tried to get those to sit somewhere without toppling over.  Of, course I hadn't really prepared anything, just jumped right in and then had all these halves of eggs, full of soap and nowhere to put them!  I'm pretty sure that the whole thing could be executed more successfully by somone with a bit more patience and forethought.

But the fun part about this was making all the different colours and scents and I did have some surprises there.  I made 7 different colours:

1.  The blue.  I made a lovely blue colour using indigo.  I love that colour to bits and I will absolutely make blue soap again.  The perfect scent had to be Peppermint.

2.  The pink.  I used Rumex oil for this and added Neroli essential oil.  The colour didn't turn out pink at all.  Just a beige.  So either I used too much Rumex oil or it doesn't work as well when added to traced soap.  This I need to try out again and find out for sure.

3.  The yellow.  Annatto oil, naturally, with Sweet Orange and Palmarosa scents.  I could have used Sea Buckthorn oil or possibly unrefined Palm oil.  The Annatto came out a slightly orange yellow, but has faded to a nice lighter one.  I'm not a fan of orange yellow.  So quite nice.  I've used Annatto before and I like that yellow and find that it keeps it's colour for at least 6 months (I used the soap up in that time).

4.  The green.  I used dried Parsley and Rosemary for this one.  I should have used a bit more Parsley since the colour was a little light, a yellow green.  I used the dried herb and added it to the traced soap.  I need to try to use it as a tea and see what colour it produces.  I pretty sure that Cocobong uses tea when she uses Nettles for green and she has great results.

5.  The lavender.  Well, no prices for guessing Alkanet infused oil and Lavender scent.  But the Alkanet failed to turn lavender.  It is a very strange shade of light brownish Aubergine.  I have no idea why, except to venture a guess that Alkanet probably wants to be in the oil mix when the lye is added.  So another thing to test.

6.  The orange.  Hah, I'm so stupid!  Just because I could get a lovely orange by adding Annatto and Alkanet to oils, it doesn't work when lye is in the mixture.  I knew that! Silly me!  I'm really quite ashamed.  But I added Lemongras and Ylang ylang to this tan colour.

7.  Uncoloured.  At the last minute I decided to leave the soap uncoloured and add Benzoin for scent.  That colour is just slightly beige and smells lovely.

I could have used vanilla and gotten more brown colours.  But I didn't use Madder root since I would have had to make a special batch of it because it needs to go into the lye.  Nor did I make a black egg, but charcoal soap is quite neat and aniseed would be perfect since it smells a bit like licorice.  So there were quite a few possibilities.  I wanted a bit more colour although I hadn't expected to get really bright colours.  I have to admit that really wanted a bit of pink in there.  Oh, well.  Next time.

But I had an adventure when trying to put the two halves together.  I had thought that it would be easy to just rebatch and whip some soap and use it with a cake decorating thingy (which I bought for use with soap).  Well, I was wrong.  It would probably have been easier with regular whipped soap because it has a stiffer consistency.  This was a fiasko on par with the original chaotic "making-of-the-eggs".  The halves were not even, so I had the hardest time putting them together.  And as is patently obvious from the photo, I've won no prizes for cake decorating.

But it was fun.  I really had a blast.  It's probably unnatural to enjoy ones own company so much, but I have to be honest.  I did.
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Confetti soap with Rape seed oil

The tiered cake stand is a part of our dinner service and gets
a lot of use. I pile cookies and candy on it at Christmas
and at other times it may store ginger, lemons or whatever.

I had planned to do this soap before New Years day.  I thought it would be so appropriate for the occasion, but I didn't do much soaping during the holidays.  Being the cheepskate... strike that... thrifty, the way I am, I have been saving my off cuts and putting them in a small bowl.  It was starting to look really pretty with all the colours, so I could just see how it would make a lovely looking soap.  It didn't quite turn out the way I wanted, but now I know what I should have done differently.  And that is what it's all about, isn't it?

There is nothing wrong with the soap of course, but I had envisioned it white with smaller speckles of colour.  So why exactly I used Orris root, lemongrass EO and large bits is beyond me!  Except of course I had just gotten the Orris root and had to try it, I hadn't really thought about the colours of the EO's until I poured them and I thought that if I used a grater it would get too small so I chopped it into pieces.  But I like the scent and I used lots of it.  Maybe too much, but that was an accident.

This is also the first soap that I do with Rape seed (Canola) oil.  I have always had this thing about it.  I mean, it's used as a motor oil and up till recently it wasn't edible.  I will still absolutely not use it as food although I might consider it's use as biodiesel.

I am rather pleased with the decoration.  I have gotten these curled bits of soap when trimming and then when I saw what pretty decorations some people used them for I decided to make them especially for decoration.  That was not successful and now I have no idea how I accidentally got the few that I had.  Life is just really strange that way sometimes.

The recipe I used (The soap was 5% superfatted):

30% Coconut oil
30% Olive oil
25% Rape seed oil
10% Cocoa butter
5% Castor oil

I used some sugar in the water which was 30% of the oils.  Maybe a little too much discount on the water, the soap was very quick to trace after I put the EO's in.

The soap bits are ends of soaps that have been coloured with Rumex oil (the pink), Annato (yellow) and Alkanet (lavender).  I used 1 tsp of Titanium dioxide to get the background a bit lighter.  The scent was a blend of Lavender, Rosewood, Lemongras and Ylang Ylang and I used 1 tsp of the Orris root powder to see if the fragrance lasts better.

I did try the of cuts of this soap to see what it is like and I have to say that this recipe has a very creamy lather.  Don't know if that is the Rape seed oil, the sugar or just this combination.  I'll get a better feel for it when it has cured.  One thing that I feel that this soap could have benefitted from is a few scaps of green soap.  It would have made the decoration on top a little bit more flower like.  So that has to be my next soap.  A green trial using dried parsley.

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Silk and Sorrel shampoo bar

Another weakness is glass. I found this carafe dirty
and full of spiders.  The candlesticks were favorites,
but I wasn't careful with the candle and one of them
broke when the candle burned down. I should throw
out, I know, but I can't bear to just yet.

Finally I made a shampoo bar with silk.  I've wanted to do one ever since Strenua Inertia gave me a tip to add silk to the lye.  That soap turned out really nice.  I liked it so much that I used it on my hair with very good results.  So I had to do a shampoo bar with it.  And since I really like Njóli oil, I decided to use the infused oil of it's close cousin Rumex acetosa (Sorrel) or as we here call it, Hundasúra.  I have had this one root infusing in oil since last fall when I pulled it from the garden where it had enjoyed a lovely summer.  The root of it just looked so jummy that I cleaned it and cut it up into oil.  The colour of the oil is a nice yellow with a slight orange tinge.  It's not quite the same colour as my previous Rumex oil (which is from the species longifolius) so I have been very curious to try it in soap and see what colour it gives.

So I did and obtained a beautiful, but rather strange colour.  At first it turned a pretty pink, but when I added the EO's they imparted a very yellow colour that changed the soap to a lovely peachy orange.  Now that I've cut it, I think it is perhaps a bit like is in vogue right now - those pale fleshy beige tones.  I'm used to Rumex oil changing overnight from beige to dusky pink.  But this one didn't.  It started out a fairly warm pink and turned into a salmon colour.  That may be because of the EO's that I used.  For scent I used a combination of Lavender, Sweet Orange and Vetiver.  It smells green and fresh.  It is the start of my blending experiments.

Olive oil 40% 240g / 8.5oz (out of this 15g was sorrel root infused)
Coconut oil 25% 150g / 5.3oz
Soybean oil 20% 120g / 4.2oz
Cocoa butter 10% 60g / 2.1oz
Castor oil 5% 30g / 1 oz

Water 30% 210g / 7.4 oz
Lye 99g / 3.5 oz

I used both sugar and silk in the lye water hoping to make the soap that lathers nicely and leaves my hair very silky.  Even if it hasn't cured long enough I did try it out and I think I achieved that.  It lathered exceptionally well and my hair felt very, very silky.
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New beginnings - or Sugar Scrub Cubes revisited

How cute is that lamp base. Someone has carved a garland
of flowers on it. And it's actually quite well done. I keep
wondering who didn't want it because I absolutely loved it.

I'm not one for New Years resolutions, it's all I can do to remember to write the new numbers for the year much less initiate a complete change of lifestyle.  Who on earth got this idea that the deepest, darkest winter is a great time for major upheavals in peoples lives?   But even so there is always a magical kind of feeling about the start of a new year.  It's a fresh start even if it's the most miserable time of year.  One of the only redeeming qualities of January is that it's the time to get a new yearly planner.  I love all sorts of calendars, planners, diaries and datebooks especially when they are new and pristine and virginal.  Digital doesn't have the magic at all.  Although I have to admit that I rarely find exactly what I'm looking for in the printed versions.  I have always thought  that one of these days I'll design my own system that will work perfectly for me.  Who knows, maybe one of these days I will.

I made more Sugar scrubs for Christmas presents.  This time I used an ice cube mold that I got in a junk shop so they are not dollops like before, but proper cubes.  I have to say that it is much easier to use a mold.  Just fill it up and put it in the freezer for a few minutes and they pop out easily, for the most part.

I have grown to really like the Sugar cubes.  They are a gentle way to scrub the skin, perfectly safe for the environment and leave the skin very soft with all the nice oils and lovely soap.  I made them to go with the bath bombs so I used Alkanet infused oil and got a pretty pink.  The Alkanet may also give a slightly lavender colour which probably happens if the soap is very alkaline.  I also used scents and the pink Sugar cubes got Lavender EO,  just a few drops are enough.  I also used Annatto seed infused oil to get a yellow colour that accompanied the Lemongras EO.  No colour for the Peppermint but a mix of Rumex/Njóli oil and Alkanet for the Palmarosa EO.   That produced a rather dusky pink which went well with the Njóli soap that I put the tiny rose buds on.

I experimented with using Coconut oil instead of Cocoa Butter and that works fine as well.  They were a bit softer, but that's all right.  The recipe is here and also a link to Mayren Abashed's blog which is where I found it originally.  I wrapped the Sugar cubes like hard candy, although my cellophane was a tad to stiff for that to work really well.  But it looked kinda cute and the recipients of the gifts were quite pleased.  And that does count.  There really is a lot of truth in the old saying that it is sweeter to give than to receive.

Palmarosa - Perfect for pre-Christmas tension

The cups and saucers were my grandmothers. I never
use them, they are too small. But I really love them.

This year is the first in many that I'm not thoroughly annoyed with stores for starting to advertise Christmas in October.  I realize that Christmas is in fact about fifteen minutes away!  So I've begun to make lists for Christmas.  It is very easy to do my Christmas lists because I write the lists in my Book and I have Christmases past in there too.  The Book is also where I write my soap and cream recipes.  It is a Moleskine unruled which I bought because I couldn't find a squared one.  I always write better on squared paper so I prefer that.  Then I got a squared one and I figured I would just finish the one I had started.  That was in 2007.  So now I have an overview of my lists of presents, people  and food for three Christmases past and a lot of recipes in between.

I have been cutting and wrapping a lot of soaps lately and one of the prettiest in the pink Palmarosa scented one.  Palmarosa smells a lot like roses but is a lot more affordable.  The essential oil comes from Cybopogon martini a grass that is related to Lemongrass.  The benefits of Palmarosa EO is said to be to balance the skin's production of sebum, stimulate cell regeneration and moisturize.  It is also antiseptic.  In aromatherapy it fights depression, anxiety and anger.  It is relaxing and uplifting for the mood.  What a great combination.  In fact absolutely perfect for the preparations for Christmas.

The soap is coloured with my favorite, Rumex oil, at about 20g per pound.  It never ceases to amaze me the way that starts out tan or beige and turns overnight into a pretty pink.  I got the idea to put the rosebuds on the top at the spur of the moment and crushed a few as well.  A friend gave them to me some time ago as a tea, but I couldn't bear to use them.  I really like the result, so I made a few other soaps with similar decorations, but different flower stuff.

I made this recipe with lard and grapeseed oil both of which I find to be very nice ingredients in soaps. The total weight is 741g, a whacky number, but...

Olive oil                34%     250g / 8.8oz   (25 gr of this was Rumex infused)
Coconut oil           24%     175g / 6.2oz
Lard                      18%     130g / 4.6oz
Grapeseed oil        16%     116g / 4.0oz
Cocoa butter          9.5%      70g / 2.5oz

Water 30% 222g / 7.8 oz
Lye 103g / 3.6 oz

I reduced the water from what I have used and I think that worked really well.  I cut it after a much shorter time and now I know why I have read warnings about soap getting to hard to cut.

The fragrance is lovely and I really look forward to using this soap.  I like the decoration.  I have been playing with that and I have gotten wise to the fact that you really, really need to plan the cut and decorate with that in mind especially when using larger pieces of flowers or buds.  These I had to be creative with to be able to cut them without ruining the decoration.

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Farewell gifts

I have a wall where I hang family photos so I am always
on the lookout for nice frames, preferably old.  The
three children are my grandmother and her siblings and
I think she also owned the pearl necklace. 

In a recent post I mentioned that I was making soaps as farewell gifts for a group of people that I have been meeting a few times a year.  I made a soap with Patchouli EO and decided to make a pink one for the women in the group.  I used Geranium and Lemongrass with Rumex oil to make it pink.  This one I used 15 g. to 500 g. of oil and I put the oil in at trace.  It still turned out a very light pink.  And the center, which gelled is a lot darker than the outside.  I don't mind that, but some may do.  The solution is to either wrap the soap to have it all gelled or put it in the fridge.  But anyway, I am pretty certain now that putting the Rumex oil in with all the others will produce a stronger pink colour than putting it in a trace.

I haven't been particularly involved in thinking about packaging and labels, although I've thought about it a lot.   Mostly I'm still thinking about some sort of stamp of a logo.  I have it in my head, waiting to jump out on a pice of paper.  I realize that to sell soap they must be packaged and that is also true for when they are given as gifts.  From what I see from others, they put as much effort (and money) into packaging as they do into the soaps.  I am in awe.

But I had to do something so I got some cellophane bags.  They were way to big (couldn't find small ones) but I solved that by cutting in half and using the bottom for the girl's and the top for they guy's.  So different soaps and different packages.  To make this a bit simple for myself I had cut little pieces of soap and made o hole in the corner, through which I tied a piece of raffia.  I then used the raffia on the outside as well.

Not terribly original, but fast and easy.  I did intended to photograph the packages, but I was finishing them at the last minute.  I made a few extra and figured that I would bring some back and snap a photo of those, but I ended up giving the staff all the extras for husbands or wives.  They were all delighted with their soaps and everyone of them put their gift up to their nose to have a sniff (and we are talking about a few very middle aged men here).  And even if I put all the ingredients on a label on front, the ones they were most interested in were the scents.  So much for unscented soaps!  

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Shaving soap - for my barber friend

I love the old fashioned look that this colour gives. The razor
and the leather strop came in a cabinet that I bought that
had a small sink and a mirror perfect for bachelors to shave.

This one had better be good.  I wrote about my encounter with the barber before last Christmas a few posts ago.  I guess that one of the reasons that I never went back to him with a shaving soap that he could try is because I wasn't really sure that it was any good.  But that would of course be the whole point of having him try it.  To tell me if it was any good.

So I decided to make another shaving soap and this time I thought a lot about the ingredients.  The first one I basically did a soap recipe and added some clay to it.  It was pretty early in my soap making days and I just thought it was cool that adding clay would make the soap into shaving soap.  And, don't get me wrong,  it was a fine shaving soap, but I always thought I could improve it.  So I sat down and thought long and hard and this is what I came up with:

I need good lather, not because that's so important for a good shave, but because most men think it is.  So this one will be with a good percentage of Coconut oil.  To make up for the rather drying qualities of the Coconut oil I have to have some Olive oil because that is really conditioning and and it makes the lather stable.  The same goes for lard, which I included because it's macho... well... and conditioning and makes a good stable lather as well.  And of course I also had to include Castor oil which has such nice lather and conditioning, but makes a soft soap.  So I added some Cocoa Butter for it's moisturizing and hardening.  So that was all my oils.  Except I thought that Njóli oil (Rumex) would be very good in a shaving soap since it is so good for skin disorder and some men experience a rash from shaving.   So that added a bit of Sunflower oil as I had infused the Rumex root in that.  And for the water I did a tea from Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris).  And then I added the clay.

I made the soap in the traditional way and I had intended to use 15 g. of Njóli oil, but as I was pouring it into the soap at trace I kind of lost control and ended up with a lot more than that.  Luckily I had placed the bowl on the scale so I just adjusted the recipe.  This means that I will be making another soap with 15 g of the oil because I need to see what the colour will look like.  I was a bit concerned that the soap would look too pink and that wouldn't be macho enough, but then I thought that maybe the green colour of the weed tea should make it a bit more brown.  I'll have to see what my barber friend says about the colour, but here is the recipe (always run it through a calculator, the oz. are approx.):

Coconut oil       33% 175 g / 6.2 oz
Olive oil            24% 125 g / 4.4 oz
Lard                   23% 120 g / 4.2 oz
Castor oil         9%      50 g / 1.8 oz
Sunflower oil    5%    26 g /  0.9 oz  (Rumex longifolius infused)
Cocoa butter      5%     5 g / 0.8 oz
Bentonite clay    1.5 tbs


Shepherds purse tea         38%  208g / 7.4 oz
Lye                                                     75g / 2.6 oz
6% SF.

I poured this into a tube and used silicone baking sheets to make sure I could get it out again.  That worked really well, except that I got a "seam" along the soap tube.  But I got it out really easily.

Now, I don't think I should be the judge of how this turned out.  I will simply take this to my barber friend along with my first shaving soap (which I have in a very macho brown coffee cup) and see what he has to say about them.  I'll be posting the result.

Pink shampoo bar - Yellow dock for itchy and flaky scalp

I really like the colour that Yellow Dock - Rumex crispus gives to soaps and I liked the dark raspberry colour of the soap that I recently made.  However I knew that I would want to use a bit less in another soap to see what type of light pink I would get.  I don't really use Yellow Dock, it doesn't grow here, but rather a local plant that is closely related to it, commonly called Njóli here,  but Northern Dock in English.

The benefits of the root of this plant has been known for centuries and it just seemed logical to me to make a soap that might carry some of the benefits.  As Yellow Dock (and Njóli) are known to be very good for skin troubles like eczema, psoriasis and itchy skin I thought it could make a great shampoo bar for people with dry scalp AND it would look pretty as a pink bar.  Since I wanted to get as many of the benefits of the herb as possible, I decided to use the infused oil at trace.  There is always some discussion going on about weather the benefits of the ingredients survive the lye and some say that the stuff that is added at trace is more likely to be the oils that are left over as superfat in the soap.  Well I can't say for sure, but I figured it was worth the try.

I made a shampoo recipe that has less castor oil than my previous shampoo bars.  I didn't have any olive oil so I used Sunflower oil which I like.  It's rather neutral in my mind.  To give the shampoo bar hardness I added some Cocoa Butter.  The resulting soap seems to have an acceptable hardness and still be quite moisturizing.

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

Sunflower oil    50% 250g / 8.8 oz
Coconut oil       25% 210g / 4.4 oz
Castor oil          13%  65g / 2.3 oz
Cocoa butter     10%  50g / 1.8 oz

Water 38% 190g / 6.7 oz
Lye 70g / 2.5 oz

5% SF.

Rumex infused olive oil     2%  10g / 0.4 oz.  Added at trace

I added the infused oil at trace and the soap turned a beige colour, although it really looked like it desperately wanted to be pink.  I was rather disappointed, but since I had used half the amount that I used before I kind of wasn't surprised.  But the next morning I looked at this lovely soft pink colour!  It resembles the other Rumex soap in that the center is a bit more yellow in colour so I might put them in the freezer next to stop gelling.  But I am very happy with the colour.  Now I just need to make a third soap with 15 g. of the infused oil and see what that looks like.

I can't wait to try this shampoo in a few weeks.  It should be good for hair that isn't particularly dry and hopefully the nice qualities of Rumex will sooth a dry, flaky and itchy scalp.
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Raspberry pink soap - Yellow Dock

We had a weed clearing day at the allotment the other day.  The target was "Njóli" a tall perennial weed that was growing in the periphery of the area in great quantities.  As I was pulling out the weeds which another woman had dug up with a shovel, I said to her:  "I just know I'm going to find a great use for this stuff as soon as we've hauled it all to the dump".  Well, guess what!

A few day later I was surfing the Internet and saw a chat thread that talked about colouring soap with the root of Yellow Dock.  Oh, another exotic plant, I thought, but I Googled it anyway, clicked "images" and... saw: Njóli!  I had to laugh.  See, this is why I hate to throw things out!  You just always find uses for stuff when you've given up on it.

Anyway, I put on my Wellies and headed down to the allotment armed with a shovel to find the few remaining plants.  I found quite a few and dug them up.  I cut the roots off and headed home.  Once there, I washed the roots, grated them in the food processor and chopped up the bits that had stubbornly refused the treatment.  Then I put the yellowish mush into a jar and poured Olive oil over it, careful to cover the whole lot in oil.  This is then shaken or stirred every day to make sure that it all stays covered and doesn't develop mold.

After a short time the oil takes on a lime green tinge.  I looked at that thought: Huh! pink, eh!  I had to try, so the other night I went ahead.  The recipe is a fairly regular one.  It is small only half a kilo, about a pound.  The oz. are approximate, I use metric measurements, so always check in a Soapcalculator:

Rumex soap:

30%  Coconut oil  -  150 g / 5.3 oz
20%  Olive oil  - 100 g / 3.5 oz
20%  Lard  -  100 g / 3.5 oz
10%   Sunflower oil  -  50 g / 1.8 oz
10%  Soybean oil   -  50 g / 1.8 oz
10%  Cocoa butter  - 10 g / 0.35 oz

72 g / 2.5 oz of lye.

175 g / 6.2 oz water

I measured 20 g / 0.7 oz of the Njóli oil.

When I added the lye water it turned orange-y, muddy kind of red or pink.  Quite a strong colour.  I was a bit disappointed because I had wanted a Raspberry colour that someone had talked about.  However I thought this was too good to be without a scent so I hastily added Orange and Clary Sage EO to it.  Smells nice and I hope it lasts.

But the colour was to surprise me.  After sitting for a few days it had turned this blue-ish Raspberry red.  The cut surfaces are a warmer tone which I suspect will turn the same as the surface.  I really, really like the colour, but next time I think I'll use half the amount of coloured oil to get a lighter pink colour, just to experiment a bit.  But what remains to be seen is how the colour holds up while curing.  I have witnessed many pretty soap colours turn to nothing while curing.  So I'll make sure that I post additional info.  I'm also waiting to hear about The Soap Sister's trial with Yellow Dock root and Jenora's Alkanet experiments.

The funny thing is that as it turns out, Yellow Dock isn't Njóli.  They look the same in photos, but this is where Latin names come in handy.  Yellow Dock is Rumex crispus, while my Njóli is Rumex longifolious or Dooryard Dock/Northern Dock.  These plants are closely related and Njóli has been used here as a medicinal plant for ages as has Yellow Dock where it grows.  But the roots of both are yellow and both work as a soap colourant.  I read somewhere that there is more colour in the roots of the plant if it is growing in poor soil.  So pick it where it is growing in sand and gravel rather than a grassy meadow if you have a choose.

The photo: This is the best colour I have gotten with the Rumex oil. And it lasts well. One of the cake dishes I picked up for the wedding. This one a bit retro with a 60's flower pattern. 

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