Dandelion dye

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are such a welcome sight when they appear.  That wonderful sunny yellow is one of the first signs of summer up here in the north.  This year we are having the coldest spring for a long time.  But the dandelions don't mind.  They cheerfully flower absolutely everywhere.  Of course many people dislike this weed, but I don't.  It's very easy to get rid of should one want to.  Just dig it out.  Although it is a very useful plant so it's good to have around.  But perhaps not in the lawn.

Some people eat it in salads, the leaves that is.  I've never done that, probably because it's best to pick them young and in May when they start to flower it can be pretty cold and therefore I am not in the mood to go on foraging trips.

The dandelion is a medicinal plant.  There is a clue in the name.  If a plant is called Something officinale it is a plant that is known for it's medicinal properties.  Dandelion leaves are nutritious and a good diuretic. The root of the plant is considered a good detoxifier and a tonic for the liver.  But that isn't what I was going to say at all.  What this is all about is dying.

It had to happen sooner or later.  With my interest in the medicinal properties of plants and in using them to colour and scent soaps and oils as well as to pretty up my garden, I had develop an interest in dyeing with plants sooner or later.  I have been collecting supplies for that for quite some time.  I have lots of foreign dyestuff like Logwood, Madder, Alkanet, Annatto, Indigo and the vibrantly pink Cochineal - Dactylopius coccus.  I have been reading about it for over a year and have some fantastic books about dying with plants.  And I have read them all, again and again.  And then I finally did it.  I couldn't resist those lovely yellow flowers and picked quite a few flowers that were fully open in a rare moment of sunshine in this cold spring weather.

Dying isn't at all complicated.  Most of the time you need about equal amounts of plant material to yarn (or whatever you want to dye).  You put the plants into a pot with some water and simmer or boil it for about an hour and then strain it.  This will work for most plants.  Then you pour the dye solution into a pot and fill it up with water and put the yarn (or whatever) into the pot.  This is then simmered for an hour or so and often you let it cool in the pot.  Then you rinse and dry.  And that is it.  Apart from the mordanting and modifying.  Mordants are important.  Without them the dye will not attach itself to the fibers.  The most common mordants are metal salts, like aluminium, iron and copper and they do affect the colour.  As will changing the PH balance.  So there is a lot to play with.  And it can get complicated, but mostly it's easy and fun.

I used Icelandic wool called Lopi, which is hardly spun and pulls apart really easily.  It also felts really easily, so I didn't exactly make things too easy for me.  I used this wool because I thought it would be fun to use local plants to dye and then knit me an Icelandic sweater using many different colours.  I haven't had a sweater since my last one fell apart, but they are nice to own and most people have them to use in summer.  Because it's cold in summer.  Lopi is what is used in the sweaters, so I had to use that.  But it was quite a challenge to dye it because of the felting.  But I managed to wind it into two small balls.

The colour was a very light yellow, not a touch of the brassy colour of the flowers, but a surprisingly light, greeny yellow, quite delicate and pretty.  So now I have started this journey.  I haven't given up soap but if I am to ever finish that sweater I have a busy time ahead of me gathering flowers.
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Heavenly duo - Vanilla and Neroli

I love vanilla scent and I have used up all my vanilla soap so I had to make another one.  This time I thought I should combine it with some flowery scent (Neroli is my favorite) because Vanilla can be a tad too sweet on it's own.

For those lovely scents I thought I should try Madder root again.  I have used it a few times and of course the challenge with Madder is to get the blueish red dyes to appear.  Apparently Madder has five different dyes ranging from yellow through warm red and brown to blueish red.  The dyes are sensitive to PH, blue reds appearing in an alkaline environment and the warm reds in acidic solutions.

Since Madder root is water soluble I decided to give it a long time in the caustic soda to try to extract the maximum amount of dye.  I have read that one should rinse the root in cold water to wash away the more yellow dyes, so I did that.  I also decided that I would add it quickly to the lye solution while it was still quite hot to see what effect heat had on the Madder, hoping that it would extract more colour.  I let the madder sit overnight and soaped at room temperature.  When I combined the lye and the oils the Madder showed it's lovely blue reds, but very quickly turned to peachy coral.  I think that colour is fashionable right now, so I didn't mind.  Madder seems to want to be warm coloured in soaps and that's the way it is.

The idea was to take a part of the Madder coloured soap and add Vanilla to it and that part would turn brown and cover the Madder colour.  I had also planned to attempt a fancy swirl, and use a cardboard separator in the middle and all.

The reality was that I had started to make the soap without setting up the molds first and it took a while to line them and cut the cardboard and then the soap started to seize.  So much for my ambitious plans.  I used Neroli essential oil with a touch of Benzoin, ylang ylang and a small splash of Cubea Litsea.  I was a bit surprised since I was soaping at room temperature, but soaping is unpredictable and I think that is what makes it so fascinating for me.

But it smells devinely and I love the feel of it on my skin.  I used the last of my Almond oil, so I need to order some more.  It is really nice in soap.

The recipe I used this time is:

Coconut oil 25% 125g / 4.4oz
Olive oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Almond oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Rapeseed oil 20% 100g / 3.5oz
Cocoa butter 15% 75g / 2.6oz


Water 30% 150g / 5.3oz infused with dried and chopped madder root which is then strained
Lye 70g / 2.5oz

My fascination with natural colour has taken me a step further and I am now in the process of using plants to dye wool and a tiny bit of silk, just to see what colours I can get. I'm having loads fun and have learned a lot, some of which may be helpful in colouring soap. I have for example learned that when extracting dye from roots, heat will bring out more of the yellow tints.  So next time I used Madder I will use less heat and see if I can coax it to a slightly pinker shade.
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The Eggsperiment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it was fun.  I really had a blast.  It's probably unnatural to enjoy ones own company so much, but I have to be honest.  I did.
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Sourdough starter - the making of Grumpy

Making my own sourdough starter was just way cool.  Each starter is unique to it's location.  I was fascinated by that.  That my sourdough starter would really be mine, uniquely.  In addition sourdough bread is considered to be much more nutritious, easier to digest and have a lower glycemic index than other types of bread.  It has long been my favorite bread, especially if it has rye in it.  But I never really knew all that about sourdough.  Just that it tasted good.   I have learned a lot from various websites, but especially www.thefreshloaf.com, but it took a while for me to grasp it all.  I wanted to write it down so that I could repeat the experience should I need to at some point.  Here is how he started his life.

To mix together flour and water and expect it somehow to come to life almost seems to defy logic and science.  It is of course the magic of life and I am thoroughly in awe of my beloved Grumpy.  Sourdough starter is simply made by mixing flour and water and the yeast that is naturally on the flour and lactobacillus bacteria that is mostly on our skin will take residence and start to ferment.   Since there is a lot of micro organisms all around us, it is possible that some of them will try to take over the starter.  You will know that your starter is fine if it has a pleasant tangy smell.  Somewhere between beer and fruit.  The yeast likes an acid environment, oxygen and a temperature between 18 and 29 C (65 and 85 F), the middle being optimal.  I saw somewhere that some people put a tablespoon or so of pineapple or orange juice in the starter to increase the acidity.  I tried this once when I felt that the starter was a bit sluggish and it only improved.

But back to the birth of Grumpy.  I had made a starter previously.  That time I "cheated" a bit and put in some dried yeast.  That was fine, but I wanted to make it without any help.  So I took a straight sided jar and put about 50 g. /1.8 oz of Rye flour into it.  Then I added the same amount (50 ml /1.7 fl.oz) of room temperature water.  I used water from the kettle that has been boiled and cooled to room temp only because the cold water is really, really cold.  We have very good tap water here, no fluoride or chlorine added to it.  I would consider using bottled water if I lived where water quality is questionable.  Then I stirred the flour and water to make a smooth paste and get some air in there.  Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini suggest that one should have a wooden spoon dedicated to this and avoid using metal.  She didn't explain why, but I liked the idea and I now have one.  I also read somewhere that in Finland (the Finn people are renowned for their excellent rye bread) they had a special wooden bowl for the dough and it is scraped clean rather than washed.  That way the yeast culture simply dries and is easily refreshed with water and a feed next time.  I will consider buying a wooden bowl next time I go to Helsinki.  But for now I use a glazed earthenware bowl that my mother in law gave me.

Since I love rye bread I really wanted to make a rye starter.  Which is fortunate because it is one of the easiest flours to use to make a starter.  Even if one doesn't intend to bake a rye bread one can use a rye starter.  Or, alternatively, one can start with a rye starter and turn it into a wheat starter by feeding with increasing amounts of wheat once the starter gets going.

But back to Grumpy.  I placed the jar on the kitchen counter and waited.  Now, this was in February and even if I usually keep the house at 23-25 C (72-77 F), it will be cooler close to the windows in very cold weather.  Therefore it makes a bit more sense to start a starter in spring or summer.  It didn't take more than about 2 days for bubbles to appear.  Then I threw away some of it and added water and then some more rye.  This I repeated every day.  I discovered later that it is better to feed the starter twice a day and be sure to pour away half of it, feed it with equal amounts of flour and water.  Now I throw out all but 1-2 tablespoons and then add about 35 g. /1 oz of water and the same amount of rye flour.  I first add the water and make sure that it is at room temperature.  The water that is standing in the kettle is perfect for that.  Then feed the starter twice a day for a week.  That way you should get a very lively starter.

Being the miser that I am, I really suffered when throwing away half of the starter.  But you have to do it.  It is much less wasteful.  When the starter gets going it will double in a few hours.  Since you need to feed it an equal amount twice a day you would soon end up with a bathtubful of starter and the next day, two tubfuls, then four!  You get the drift.  It's exponential growth.  So throw away half!  Some people use what they throw away in waffles, pancakes, cookies or pizza dough, but I don't bake those, so I weep and waste.

Now the test of the starter isn't only the smell (which should be pleasantly sour) but the rate at which it rises.  You should not attempt to bake a bread with it unless it doubles in about 6-10 hours.  It won't be strong enough to raise the dough sufficiently if it doesn't.  Believe me, I tried!

Now, I wrote another post about baking a bread with the starter, but I want to finish this by discussing how to take care of the starter.  I had to try a few places for my starter and I used a thermometer to check temperatures.  I found the perfect place for Grumpy to feed in my living room on a shelf below my faithful November cactus (Schlumbergera truncata).  That cactus dates from 1977 when my husband gave me this little baby plant with one bud on it.  The bud promptly fell off and I, being young and childish, was offended and shamelessly tried to kill it.  I pushed it behind the curtains and didn't water it, hoping it would die.  But by spring it just started to grow vigorously.  So I began to take care of it and was rewarded by profuse flowering the following November.  Every year after that it would be like a ball of fire on the window sill.  When I moved to the States it got left behind, as did my other worldly possessions.  Years later my great aunt, who had lived on the floor below me, told me that she had stolen a cutting of it (because as everyone knows, cuttings take better if they are stolen, rather than given) and that her very large and robust cactus, that boomed like crazy every year, was that cutting.  When she died at the age of 96 my father came home with her cactus and gave it to me.  The cactus thrived, but to my great disappointment, it didn't flower.  I kept it in the best location, took good care of it but... nothing.  Until my father died.  That Christmas it started to bloom again.  And it kept going until the spring.  And bloomed again in the fall.  And it has been going ever since, blooming twice a year.  I can't think of a better place for Grumpy to rest while he feeds.

But back to him.  I  have been baking one bread a week and I store him in the fridge in the days between baking.  What now works for me is this:  I take him out early on Friday, measure about 70 g. of Grumpy, add 70 g. of water and 70 g of flour and stir.  I put him on his shelf and keep an eye on him.  If he doubles I make a sponge in the evening.  If he doesn't double I feed him once more and make the bread in the morning.   For the bread I use anywhere from 100 g to 200 g of the starter. I use double the amount of water and triple the amount of flour in any mixture I like (so 1-2-3) and then I add nuts and seeds as I fancy.  What is left of Grumpy gets a feeding and goes into the fridge until the next time.  And I just want to say that is is way easier than I ever thought baking bread would be.
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Rebatching using a plastic bag.

Quite some time ago I rebatched soap and used Alkanet infused oil to colour it and Lavender essential oil to scent it.  The colour was wonderful and it smelled lovely, but the texture left something to be desired.  Since I had read somewhere about rebatching using a plastic bag, I decided to try that.

I used the type of bag that is used for oven frying.  I figured it could stand the heat.  I wouldn't use a regular plastic bag for this, I'm pretty sure it would just melt.  I put the lumpy lavender coloured soap in the plastic bag, tied it close and put the bag in a pot with hot water.  With the top of the bag sticking out I let the water come to an almost boil and then turned it down to very low heat, left the soap there for a while and forgot about it, accidentally.   When I came back (I think it was 2-3 hours later) the soap was very nicely melted, but it had turned brown.   Hm.  Not what I intended.  I was sad to loose the nice lavender colour, but at least the scent was still there.  I couldn't do anything about the colour so I figured I would go with the flow and make cup cake soap.  I squeezed the soap from the plastic bag into a bowl and used my electric whipper to whip it up.   I then spooned it into a cake decorating bag and piped it into muffin forms.  The rebatched soap was very smooth with this method, but not really quite firm enough to make a great whipped soap.  It is better to do that from scratch.  I haven't done that in a long time, but might just give it a go again soon.  Especially since I need some way to rescue my rather dull rebatched soapmuffins.  They might look ok if I could get a nice fluffy white top on them.

But anyway, there are two lessons in there.  The first is that Alkanet doesn't like heat.  This actually corresponds with my experience that it is better not to heat the Alkanet infused oil, but add it to the other oils.  The second lesson learned is that the plastic bag method workes great.  It's easy to get the soap into a bag, it doesn't have to be finely grated, just not in big chunks and there is no need to sit and watch the pot, the soap will just melt nicely in it's own good time.  There were no lumps or bumps and I'm sure that the soap would have been fine poured into a mold.  So this might just be the easiest way to rebatch.
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The call of the Muse - It's not a destination

It took me a while as a young student of art and design to realize that the purpose of my school projects wasn't always to produce something incredibly beautiful for my teachers to admire.  Sometimes the whole purpose was to go through a process.  A process that tested my technical capabilities, challenged my mind and stretched the physical qualities of my medium.  Thus I gradually learned to expand my self imposed limits of creativity.  The outcome or final product was part of the process and interesting as such, but it wasn't the beginning or end of all.  This is not to say that everything I did as a student was very ugly.  Some was, but some was quite good (if I say so myself, I even won a few awards in student shows - sorry, I just had to brag a bit).

The freedom that one gets from adopting this mindset when creating is wonderful and it makes life so much fun.  I love to do.  I love to do things.  In the sense of doing something to make something.  Some thing.  The whole process is joyous.  I feel good while I do it and I love every step of the way.  The beginning of an idea.  It can be like a tiny sprouting seed that takes days to emerge, a little bit at a time.  Almost shy to expose itself.  Or sometimes it gushes forth like a waterfall, screaming for immediate execution.  I respond to the call of the muse when I can, but some ideas have been germinating for years and decades and are still abiding their time.  I tend to be a bit spontaneous, but even so there is always a preparation stage, during which the idea will mature, change, evolve.  And then there is the execution.  That is bliss.  It's the culmination. It's full of excitement and unexpected happenings, some happy and some disastrous.  But almost without fail there is the birth of the next idea.  Oh, what fun!  And then it's all over and I'm left with something.  Some physical thing that somehow became the product of the process.  But it is not the whole point.

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoy it if people genuinely like something I did for it's face value.  But they will never be able to experience it the way I have.  And I don't particularly have a need to explain.  Which is why I tended to be reluctant to put a title to my work in the old days.  I'm not a practicing artist so this isn't a big issue anymore.  These days I make whatever strikes my fancy.  Soap, mostly.  Creams, lotions, herbal remedies, bread and yoghurt.  I'll grow plants and knit, crochet, sew and maybe dye fabric and even bind a book one day soon.  And I do it for me.  Precisely to experience the joy of the process.  Except it is sometimes an issue.  It annoys me tremendously when people foster on me their preconceived notion that everything is supposed to be pretty or good or nice.  And then proceed to tell me so, when it obviously isn't.  Or the opposite.  Sometimes that just isn't the point.

If I ask you to taste something I made.  Share with me the laughter, when it tastes revolting.  Make that memory with me.  When I make something that would be considered hideous in any culture on this planet, don't insult my intelligence by admiring it.  Maybe that experiment wasn't about beauty.  Ask me what I learned.  And please don't tell me that my work in progress is ugly.  How do you know?  Why would you want me to know that?  What if I care?  And what if I don't care?  What if I'm having fun?  I'm playing. I am learning.  And I am living.  May I suggest you do that too.
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Happy Easter

"Sweet is a small gift" was on the little slip of paper that was inside my Easter egg.  I like that a lot better than the slightly insulting admonitions of my youth like: "Money turns many into apes".  But I think they have started to make up new ones rather than use the fairly well known traditional sayings and adages.  My egg is the dark one in the middle, I don't like milk chocolate.  The others are for my daughters.

The small gifts that I had made for The first Day of Summer were appreciated.  I gave the lip balms, some face cream, a few soaps, some beautiful blue yarn that I picked up at a thrift shop and a book.  My mom also brought gifts.  She had picked up some old books, an old (1950's or 60's) German Encyclopedia about crochet and knitting and another on games and card playing which found appreciative new owners.  We really like to go treasure hunting in thrift shops.  There are so many interesting things to find and I also really like old books.  They are often much more current than one would think.  And if they are not, they can be really funny.

My mom gave me "Hlín, the yearbook of Icelandic women", 40 years worth, unbound.  So I guess she approves of my plans to start to dabble in bookbinding.  They date from 1917 to 1957 which was the last year it was published.  It fascinating to read.  I've found 2 soap recipes and quite a few tidbits about dyeing with plants.  Not to mention a few recipes for traditional food.  I have been taking a peep at them, but need to cut up the pages of some of them to get a decent look.  The paper is pretty yellow and I should probably photocopy the oldest onto acid free paper before it crumbles to dust.  I look forward to attempting to bind them.  I think they deserve some nice girly book cloth.  I may have to make my own.  But I can do that :)

But I forget, the point of this post was to say: Happy Easter.  Eat lots of chocolate!

The First Day of Summer

Well, the good new is that summer and winter froze together last night.  That signals a very good summer, which is comforting since the weather gods are throwing a spectacle of every variety they can think of at the moment:  Sleet, rain, wind and short (very short) sunny spells. The First Day of Summer is the first day of the year, according to the old Icelandic calendar and the beginning of the month of Harpa.  The Old calendar had two seasons, summer and winter, and people would count their age in winters.  We have been giving gifts on this day for five centuries, which is a lot longer than the tradition of Christmas gifts.  This day was also a special day for courting and romance.

I am having the closest family over for dinner and I made more lip balms.  I realized that the choice of a pink with peppermint or an orange with a flowery scent wasn't really for the boys, so I made a third lipbalm with Annatto oil to give a yellow colour and used Sweet orange oil.  I also have a few junk shop finds for presents (only for those who like that kind of thing) and I made some face cream which I put into new containers which I like very much, airless pumps.  So there will be a few gifts, but nothing expensive.  

Today is also the start of Easter, so this year it gets a bit jumbled with Easter decorations.  Of course they are all about spring and summer so that's fine.  And I am most definitely putting on some white clothes and a bright lipstick to greet summer and the new month of Harpa with a smile on my face. 

Lip balm - a perfect Summergift

I have been planning to start to celebrate the First day of summer in a more formal way than before.  It is the oldest holiday in Iceland and unique to this country, I think.  It's funny how I have gotten more interested in old people and traditions as I grow older.  It just seems that older people can teach me something about the world they knew.  With younger people, it's more like: Jep! Been there!  Done that!  Oh yeah!  That too!  No surprises there, really, so it's all a bit repetitious and slightly boring.  But older people are very interesting, they know stuff I never knew, lived in a time that's long gone and they aren't hanging around that much longer either.

I'm still a bit frustrated that missed some good opportunities to question my great aunt, Anna.  I just didn't appreciate soon enough how much she had lived through and how much I would learn if only I had figured out what to ask.  She always had an open house on the First day of Summer.  She didn't really invite anyone, we were just supposed to know and show up.  And we did.  It was an old fashioned coffee and cakes gathering of the most boring relatives.  But my father made sure we showed up.  I have been thinking that I should revive this tradition, except to do it with my closest family and do dinner.  I also want to give everyone a small present, like is customary to do on that day.  I'm not thinking of another mammon-fest, but just an occasion where I, as the matriarch (my mom is there, obviously, but she doesn't do family meals.  It's just not on her radar), give small summer presents.  And I thought of lip balm.  I have given people lip balm before and they like it very much.  I do too.  I think home made is the best and it literally takes minutes to do.

I have been looking for these sliding tins for some time in Europe and I found them at a British web page: Of a Simple Nature.  I bought a few (too few) and went ahead the other day.  I made two recipes, one pink and one orange.  I think they look so cute.  The red one has Peppermint essential oil, wonderfully fresh and traditional.  The orange was a first for me.  I mixed Alkanet and Annatto seed oils to get the colour.  It's very pretty, although it doesn't really show on the lips that much.  The scent for the orange lip balm was a combination of Vanilla and Rose.  It smells wonderful.  I figured I should do something sophisticated for those who are not fans of peppermint.

I have never written down my lib balm recipes, but this time I did.  So here it is.  It is a very small recipe, I did one for each colour and filled 6 tins each.  It's pretty standard, no glycerin or honey, but it is a consistency that I like.  I can be made softer by adding more oil.  Anyone can do it and I don't really know why everybody doesn't.

Just melt together in a waterbath or use the microwave (just use short bursts so it doesn't burn):

10 g / 0.35 oz.  Beeswax
10 g / 0.35 oz.  Coconut oil
17 g / 0.6  oz.  Castor oil

Pour into small jars or lip balm tubes.

For a pink colour: add some Alkanet infused oil and Peppermint essential oil
For an orange colour: Add Annatto infused oil and Alkanet infused oil about half and half or adjust to get the orange shade you like.  Add Vanilla and Rose essential oil.

Another colour might be yellow, with just Annatto infused oil.  That would probably make a very pretty lipbalm.  It is tempting to use the citrus oils for yellow and orange colours.  Some of them are photo toxic, but not all.  For example, Sweet Orange is not considered photo toxic, but Bitter Orange is.

From what I can gather the following citrus based oils would be safe to use in lip balm and creams and lotions:

Essential oils of:
Mandarin (Citrus reticulata)
Sweet Orange (Citrus sinensis)
Tangelo (Citrus x hybrida)
Tangerine (Citrus nobilis)
Neroli oil (Citrus aurantium)

Also the DISTLLED essential oils (NOT expressed essential oils) of:
Lemon (Citrus limon)
Lime (Citrus aurantifolia)
Grapefruit (Citrus paradisi)
It may be better to shy away from those if the method of production is unknown.

So maybe I'll add a yellow lip balm with Orange scent and that will be a perfect summer gift.

Colour... please

After the miserable months of January, February and March it really is time for some colour.  While winter has some lovely moments, the absence of colour is what makes it so difficult.  Absoluely everything turns gray and brown.  Spring brings back colour and makes the heart sing with happiness.  Just seeing colours can make one happy and I had to smile when I saw these multicoloured plastic eggs in the Good S some time ago.  I actually thought that someone with a terrible taste had dreamed these up as Easter decoration, but my husband said they are for Easter egg hunts.  Silly me.  But I bought them anyway, thinking that they might be used as molds for bathbombs or soaps or something.

I have been feeling a bit under the weather for the last couple of weeks.  I had a minor surgery and haven't been able to go to the gym.  As a result I have spent two weeks with the remote control firmly clutched in one hand while munching sweets with the other and generally experiencing the weariness that accompanies the end of winter.  I had lots of things that I wanted to do, but just couldn't bring myself to actually do any of them (except make fresh yoghurt, I did do that).  But then one evening I just got my butt off the sofa, got out my Grumpy, fed him and put him on his shelf, I made lip balm in two colours and flavors/scents and I used those funny little plastic eggs as molds for soaps.  So three projects in one evening.  Boy, did that feel good.

I just realized that easter isn't far off and now I need to start to prepare for that.  My mom used to decorate for Easter almost as much as she did for Christmas.  She embroidered little tablecloths, pillow cases and runners and we always collected the little chicks that decorate the chocolate Easter eggs that are customary here.  When my sister and I got up on Easter Sunday we would go to the living room where my mom had put our almost identical eggs on this runner that was embroidered with yellow chicks, easter lilies, tulips and eggs.  And there would be the chicks of Easters past and yellow candles.  We would rip the cellophane off the eggs, see whose egg was the prettiest and then start to breake it up to get at the sweets it contained as well as the most important: The saying.  There was always an old saying or adage inside.   And back then it could be anything.  I sometimes got the most horrid sounding things ("The stupid usually have a large head" springs to mind (it really sounds more poetic in Icelandic) and felt miserable, especially if the chick on my sisters egg had a prettier face than mine.  Nowadays they only put the nicest sayings in the eggs.

The egg soaps were a fun little project that I still haven't completed.  Getting the soap out has been interesting, to say the least.  So I will have to see if I can make them presentable or if they are heading for the rebatch bin.  This is all a bit fiddly and perhaps a little frou-frou, but they could be fun.  The colours did turn out differently than I had anticipated.  That means I learned something new.  Which is great.  I'll share the new knowledge in another post.

But I realized that I needed some retail therapy when I  saw photo's of Lilacs on a blog and it almost brought tears to my eyes.  Lilacs bloom in the middle of June in my world!  So I went out and got this big garish pink Hydrangea to brighten up my life. Just to tide me over until nature starts it's annual show.

I finally won!

The-ugliest-soap-anyone-ever-made-reward has got to be mine.  I made this soap sometime before Christmas and I had high hopes for it.  I thought it would be perfect as a gift to old people as a soap for a foot bath.  I had just gotten some Ginger essential oil and wanted to try it.  I had read that it's warming so I had this brilliant idea to combine it with the eggshells that I so ardently collected during the big bake fest.

When I used finely crushed eggshells in my Alkanet and lavender soap I liked it, but I like very scratchy.  I did however suggested that normal people could use it on their feet.  So I thought it a brilliant idea to do a special foot soap?  That time I had thought that the eggshells would sink to the bottom and form a layer at the bottom with a pumice kind of surface.  But they were pretty suspended throughout the body of the soap.  This time I sprinkled a layer on the bottom, thinking that the soap would soak in and automatically embed the eggshell in the bottom layer.  Well that didn't really work.  The result was a completely dry layer of eggshells that just sat on the bottom of my mold when I lifted the soap up.  What little managed to stick to the bottom of the soap was uneven and not pretty at all.  Fortunately, I had also put some eggshells in the main soap, so it wasn't a total disaster.  I still had a ton of exfoliating power in that soap.

I thought carefully about this recipe, but I can't find the recipe file.  But I wrote down the ingredients so I know it contains: Olive oil, Coconut oil, Soybean oil, Cocoa butter, Honey, Ginger EO and Peppermint EO and then the eggshells.  I think it might be 30% of the first three oils and then 10% Cocoa butter.  I used honey for it's lovely humectant qualities and it also gives a nice lather.  The eggshells need to be very finely crushed, or one can use poppy seeds.

I thought that since the colour was a sort of beige from the honey, it would look good with brown accents so I used cocoa powder for a line and sprinkled a bit of it on top with some brown sugar.
It looked fine in the mold.  But when I took it out to cut it it was horrendously ugly.  Not only was the bottom uneven and ugly, but the line looked dirty and the sugar on top just plain uninteresting.  I quickly shoved it out of the way so that no one would see it and puke.  And promptly forgot all about it.

Until today, I had cold feet, literally, so I went and found it and used it as foot soap.  I guess appearances aren't everything, because it works fine.  For feet.  Not for the body.  I tried it.  The eggshells are just a bit coarser than when I used them before (pounding them with a pestle in a mortar is a lot of work) and they did scratch my legs quite severely.   But that is very good for hard skin on the feet.  The scent of ginger with the peppermint is very nice, not too strong and maybe I should have used more.  Although I can't say that the soap alone made my feet feel warm, I'm sure it helped.  So all in all , not a bad soap.  But boy is it ugly.
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