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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Hmmm... Bread?

I have a few cross stitch pieces that my great aunt made.
She gave many of them to my daughter but I have still to
put them in a frame yet. Love the tureen with the
vegetable decoration. It came from my mother in law.

I have been thinking that I may be suffering from a serious midlife crisis.  Like the middle aged men who run out and buy motorcycles, trade in their wife for a younger model and so on.  Except my symptoms are an obsessive interest in making things.  All sorts of things.  And one obsessive interest seems to breed another and snowball into a collection of unfulfilled areas of interest that manifests in a stack of books.

The other day I suddenly got an urge to bake a sourdough rye bread.  I honestly do not know where I got that idea from.  Most often my interests seem to evolve naturally from one area to another:  Soap to creams and lotions and back to soap on to essential oils and medicinal plants with a detour to crocheting borders for duvet covers and from there to dyeing with natural materials to bookbinding (yes! Bookbinding is fascinating), but this had no connection to anything else and surprised me.  I love to bake cakes and cookies, but that is just selfish, indulgent greed.  Bread?  No!  Tried it once.  Killed the yeast.  Decided it was not for me.  But then I got this strong urge.  One problem with a sudden urge to make sourdough bread is that one has to have a starter to make it.  Making a starter takes at least a week if successful.  So I have been having a close relationship with Grumpy, my starter, for a few weeks.  It wasn't successful at first.  He seems to be in good shape now and I have high hopes for his longevity.

It was a bumpy ride that started with an innocent mix of rye flour and water in equal amounts.  I used a glass jar.  Then I waited for it to start to bubble.  I stirred it every day, twice a day, until it did.  Then I fed it.  Also every day.  This involves discarding half of it and adding more flour.  It soon started to ferment and bubble quite happily.  It was a bit like magic.  Life from nothing, it seemed.  But getting from there to bread is only a part of the way.  My first attempts went into the trash with an loud bang.  I could have killed a man with that heavy blunt instrument.  This last one I baked in a cast iron pot that was too big, so it looks flat, but it tastes very, very good.  I also think that I may be starving my starter.  But I'm getting there.  I used a recipe from The Fresh Loaf site.  The recipe for the first bread is:

300 g. Whole wheat
150 g. Spelt
50 g. Rye
50 g. Whole grain starter

375 g. Water
10 g. Salt

I used my rye starter which is a bit wet.  If the starter is very  dry then use less, about 40 g.
This recipe is very simple and it worked fine for me.  I dissolved the starter in the water.  Added the salt.  Then the flour, which I had mixed well with a whisk.  I use my Kitchen aid mixer with a dough hook to mix the dry and wet ingredients.  Then I put the dough (it's sticky) into an oiled bowl and covered it with a plastic bag and a towel.  Placed it somewhere warm and draft free,  I let it rise overnight on the kitchen counter, for 10- 12 hours.

There is the wet finger test to see if it has risen fully.  You poke a wet finger into the dough up to the first knuckle.  If the hole remains and doesn't spring back then the dough is fully risen.  Then the dough is taken out, stretched a bit and folded, this should be done gently to preserve the gas bubbles that the rising has produced.  Then the dough is shaped into a ball.  It then needs to sit for another 2-3 hours and should rise again.  I put mine into a cast iron pot that had been heated in the oven at 230 C / 450 F.  I put a lid on and let it bake for 40 - 50 minutes, the last 10-15 without the lid.  To test for doneness one can apparently knock on the bottom of the bread and it should sound hollow.  This process is beyond my comprehension so I prefer to stick an instant read thermometer into the center of the bread.  The internal temperature should be about 99 C / 210 F.

I will continue to work on my bread until I get the perfect loaf.  I still have some way to go and taking good care of Grumpy is a high priority now.

Tooth Soap - or perhaps I just need a vacation

And did I mention that I love old tools? They just don't make
them like they used to.  Those toothbrushes have real boar
bristles, but they are way too big and scratchy to be used for
anything other than cleaning. And, yes, I use them for that.

I made tooth soap, oh! probably about a year ago.  I actually got quite absorbed by the subject and experimented with different recipes and forms.  I made one that actually (quite by accident) had the consistency of toothpaste and I really liked it.  It had a mild and nice taste and a lovely green colour but it oxidized very quickly and turned an ugly brown colour.  I used it for the longest time by wiping off the oxidized surface and using the fresh lovely green paste, but in the end I gave up and threw it out.  My current tooth soap is a white bar soap.

My interest in tooth soap started a few years ago when I started to look at toothpaste in the "natural" section of the grocery store.  I had tried Tom's and found that to be quite nice, but then I tried Weleda toothpaste and that had no fluoride.  Now I'm not going to say anything to discourage anyone from using toothpaste with fluoride, but I decided for myself that the health of my gums was a higher priority than cavities.  So I used the red Weleda toothpaste for a while and liked it a lot.  But it started me wondering what toothpaste was anyway.  And after reading labels and researching I discovered that people have used a lot of different stuff to clean their teeth and soap is certainly one of them and modern day toothpaste contains SLS.

Now, I need to say that my dentist hasn't noticed any change in my oral health since I gave up commercial toothpaste, but I would not want to interfere with anyones use of the commercial stuff.  I just gag if I use it after all this time.  Nuclear waste springs to mind.

But I am very interested to hear if anyone has done experiments with tooth soap.  The soap that I have used for the last few months is very simple and I have to admit that it has a horrible taste.  But only in the beginning, you get used to it.  It's a basic 70% olive and 30% coconut.  To that I added calcium and magnesium tablets that I crushed and some bicarbonate as well.  The bicarb is what gives it an unpleasant taste.  In an effort to counteract that I added some Xylitol, but I cant's say that I taste any sweetness.

If I were to do another one (which I will eventually although tooth soap seems to lasts forever) I would probably try to dig up the recipe for the green paste and use some parts of that and use 100% olive oil.  Suds really are unnecessary.  But I have to say that my favorite recipe is the one that I read that Benjamin Franklin used. It was honey and charcoal.  My son-in-law agreed to try it out with me and I think I have to hold him to it.

But, having confessed to this strangeness, I also have to admit that I just really need a vacation.  I think I have mentioned once or twice that I don't like cold weather at all.  So even if we have had a fairly mild winter so far I am jumping ship and heading for the southern seas to bask in sunshine for two weeks.
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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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Essential oils and fragrance blends

I can always use more bottles and jar. Although I probably
need a bigger house soon.

I love my stuff.  I don't feel quite comfortable to be so materialistic, but I really, really love my stuff.  To the point of having to fight a wish to hoard.  I often feel a slight reluctance to use my precious essential oils.  I almost act like Gollum in Lord of the Ring whispering: "Mine, all mine" in a half crazed voice as I clutch them to my bosom.  Ok, maybe not that.  But I look at them, sniff them and Google in order to get inspiration for combinations that are to die for.  I also dread the day that I have an empty bottle.

Last year I made many soaps and usually a different recipe each time.  I have learned a lot from that and have formed what I would call an intuitive sense of what combination of oils and fats I like in soaps.  All that means is that I couldn't write down "the perfect soap recipe", but would have no problem to put together a recipe that I really, really like at a particular moment.  My preferences still change a bit from day to day.  One thing that I feel I still have to do is a series of single oil experiments.  I have read the results of other's experiments (in particular Helen at Strenua Inertia blog), but feel that there is nothing that replaces hands on experience.  I have even started to think about doing a series of two oil combinations  and three...  Somehow I get a feeling that things could get a bit difficult quite quickly.

But one thing I am certain of and that is that this year will be devoted to colour and scent trials.  I want to start to blend EO's to get some more sophisticated scents.  I have been reading about scents and I have a few ideas of my own, that probably are a bit crazy since I haven't seen them anywhere else, but that only means that I simply have to try them out.

I did find an interesting website about EO blends.  It's a company called Rainbow Meadow and they have a section where it is possible to tick individual EO's and get suggestions of blends.  They even give ratio's and have a calculator to give amounts according to soap batch size.  It's fun and I thank whoever did that.  Another blending guide is at About.com where cotton swabs are put in a jar.  Another even more economical way is to use toothpicks.  This way if the recipe is for 2 drops of one oil you dip two cotton swabs/toothpicks in the oil and put in a jar or plastic bag, three drops = three swabs/toothpicks.  Then you close the jar and sniff it a bit later.  Very simple and clever.

Fragrances are frequently classified into top, middle and base notes.  The top notes being the smallest molecules, the ones that are most volatile, reach the nose first and last for the shortest time.  Citrus is typical of these.   The base notes are the heavy scents like sandalwood, vetiver and oak moss.  And the middle notes are in between the two and serve to marry the scents together.  I read somewhere that it makes sense to always start with the base note when blending oils.  I am going to follow that advise since I've read in several places that the order that the fragrances are mixed matters to the outcome.  The proportion of base, middle and top notes also matters.  The base note needs to be about 55% in order for the fragrance to last.  The middle notes should be around 20% and the top note 25%.  So in numbers of drops, that would be 11 of base, 4 of middle and 5 of top.  Obviously each note can be made of different fragrances and most commercial perfumes are very complex blends of a lot of ingredients.  Very few are made of natural flower essences or absolutes, but two that I know of are Joy and Chanel no. 5.  I love the former and am starting to like the latter.  But of course this is about perfumes and those rules may not necessarily apply to soap fragrances, but it's good to have a starting point.  Now all I need to do is to classify my EO's into base, middle and top and start blending.

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.

Bombs away! - Happy New Year :D

The little hens were a present from my daughter. She found
them in the Good S. but they are more my thing. The
heartshaped candle holders are Danish and were still in
the box. I like this type of simple Christmas decoration.

I finally made bath bombs.  I've wanted to do them for the longest time, but somehow it seemed too complicated.  It isn't.  It's really easy.  In fact it's almost too easy.  I used a very simple recipe from The Excellent Living Guide.  There are many guides and tutorials on the Internet and most of them are good.  Now I am not the greatest bath bomb fan, but my sisters really like them, so I thought I'd have a go at making them as presents.

I had managed to get myself some Citric acid and I found that to be the hardest part of the whole thing.  I am now the proud owner of 25 kilos of the stuff, so I can make them for years to come.  The most wonderful thing about the bath bombs is that they don't swallow up all my EO's.  The recipe that I used is:
1 cup Citric acid
2 cups Baking soda
2 tsp. oil (like Olive or Grapeseed)
1 tsp. EO

The real trick to this is to blend the oils with the dry ingredients and then have some water in a spray bottle and carefully spray a bit of water and stir well with a wire whisk.  It doesn't take much to moisten the mixture enough to be able to make the bombs.  And that is fairly easy.  Just scoop a lot of mixture into both parts of the mold, squeeze together very hard and gently release the bomb from the mold.  Tapping the mold can help with this.  Let dry for about a day.  Store in a dry place and use.  I read that they don't keep very well.

Now I have one of those plastic Christmas ornament types that I've seen used as a mold and I tried that.  I didn't like it.  Firstly it makes a very large bath bomb.  Some may like that, but I don't.  So I came up with using some plastic packaging from a type of coffee.  I don't use it myself (strictly Nescafé in this household) but my cousin has been collecting these as small soap molds, for which they also work well.  The resulting bombs are smaller than those traditional ones and they look a lot like the French Macarones that I like so much.

From this recipe I can make 8-9 bombs of that size.  I made a few batches, one with Lemongras and Annatto infused oil, one with Lavender and Alkanet infused oil, one with uncoloured oil and Peppermint EO.  The fourth was my failure, it had Palmarosa EO and a mix of Annatto and Njoli oil.  The mixture was a bit too wet, so that the bombs had sort of semi-fizzed after a day.  I haven't tried them in the bath yet, I think they'll work for me at home, but they are not pretty.

I threw in a bit of corn starch, maybe half a cup, into one recipe.  It can apparently aggravate yeast infections, so beware of that.  I have also read that milk powder can be used and I have that somewhere so I may try it one of these days.  In another batch I used about the same amount of Epsom salt which is good for sore muscles.

Those candleholders are very typically Danish and
are most likely from the 40's or 50's judging from
the box. I don't dare to have living lights on the tree
so I decided to hang them up on a thin wire circle and
hang them in the window. 

I thought it appropriate to end this year with a bang.  We do that here in this country.  On New Years Eve the population goes completely insane.  Everyone can buy fireworks and almost everyone does.  There are  several tons of fireworks fired up around midnight.  The noise is unbelievable, there are fireworks absolutely everywhere and finally a thick smoke envelops the city.  We have a fantastic view over the city, so we prefer to participate in the madness only as spectators with our closest relatives.

I wish everyone a happy New Year.  I am thankful for the year that is almost at an end and I thank you all for a most wonderful year of getting to know you, so many people all over the world who share an interest in making soaps.
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In the spirit of Christmas

The cookies jar is another find at the Good S, but the
candle thing (what is that called) is German, but bought
in York, UK when I was a student. My uncle has one that
is white and big. He must have bought it in Prague where
he studied, but this was the biggest I could afford.

Bluegras is the Icelandic common name for Geranium sylvaticum.  It alludes to the fact that it was used for centuries to dye cloth blue.  Sometime after 1780 an old woman died in Iceland and with her the knowledge.  She didn't share it with anyone and the art was lost.  Just before 1980 another woman in Iceland was the only one left who knew her craft.  She had just been diagnosed with cancer when she told me that she was going to teach me how to wash, starch and iron the traditional priest's collars.  It wasn't a request.  All priests in Iceland prayed for her partly, I'm sure, because they feared that the knowledge would die with her.  I also prayed fervently because I wasn't at all sure that I would be able to supply the collars as perfectly as my aunt had done for decades.  My great aunt lived another good twenty years and by the time she died in her 90's she had taught others.

Knowledge and passing it on is what keeps civilizations going.  Traditions, recipes, ways of doing things, stories and wisdom is passed from one generation to the next.  I have a feeling that grandmothers have passed along the majority of the knowledge until there was printing and books.  Now the internet is this wonderful source of knowledge that one couldn't even have dreamt about before.

I am very grateful to the many women (and few men) who make soap and blog about it.  The knowledge that they share so generously has become a constant source of delight for me.  I eagerly wait for every new post and photo and I try to find new blogs every now and then.  And new countries.  I am also grateful for Google translate.   I know that the translation isn't perfect, in fact at times it makes foreigners speak the weirdest English, but how else would I have an inkling what bloggers in countries like Russia, Japan, Chile, Turkey and Spain are talking about.  As it is I have learned so much from so many people that I have never met, nor am I ever likely to.  I love that and I am grateful to every one of them.

I have a favorite recipe that I have never given to anyone (well, no one has ever asked so it's not like I said no, even if I would have wanted to).  It is my German grandmother's Christmas cookies.  My mother has made them every Christmas for as long as I remember and so have I ever since I had a home myself.  I usually make a double recipe because they are quick to go.  In the spirit of Christmas I would like to share it.

150 g. /5.3 oz. Hazelnuts (or Almonds if you prefer)
125 g. /4.4 oz. Dark chocolate
175 g. /6.0 oz. Icing sugar
2 egg whites

Grind the nuts and the chocolate in an almond grinder.  Blend the dry ingredients, siv the sugar if it is lumpy.  Whisk the egg whites stiff.  Fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites.  Don't stir.  It will look like it is impossible to do but it will get there.  Make little tops with a teaspoon onto a baking paper and bake for 7-10 minutes at 175 degrees C.  Let cool on the baking paper.  Store in a cake tin.
The cookies sometimes keep their shape, but sometimes they go flat.  Either way they taste wonderful.  Crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside and they are of course absolutely essential for reading comprehension during the holidays.
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Purple is (also) the colour of Christmas - Alkanet and lavender soap

The goblet is a favorite find that I got for less than a dollar.
The other mercury glass pieces are modern and not as nice,
but I felt it needed company. Mercury glass is called poor
mans silver in Danish. I think that is so neat.

The pretty purple or lavender colour that should come from Alkanet infused oil has eluded me until now.  I am very happy with this colour.  I used a lot of infused oil and I also used a decent amount of lavender, having recently received a large shipment of EO's.

I have had Alkanet root infusing in Olive oil for a few weeks now.  I figured it would be convenient to have it in a 1 liter bottle, ready to go when I feel like it.  I then just top it up since the Alkanet still has a lot of colour in it and keeps turning the oil a dark red.  I learned this from someone in fabric/yarn dyeing, just to give some credit to whose who deserve it.  I just can't remember exactly who to thank.

Lavender is a classic scent.  It's not one that is at the top of my list of favorites, but many people seem to like it a lot.  And "vive la différance".  I love the colour though.  The colour that the church uses for this time of the year is purple, so in a way it is a very Christmas-y colour and a very sophisticated one.  I have to admit that I stick to the traditional red, green, gold myself although I used to be more adventurous, way back in the olden days when I was hip and cool.

The recipe is similar to my recent ones, but with a little bit of soybean oil.  The oz are approximate and I did discount the water quite a bit.

Olive oil 40% 280g / 9.9oz   (out of this 75g/100g was Alkanet infused)
Coconut oil 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Lard 25% 175g / 6.2oz
Cocoa butter 5%  35g / 1.2oz
Soybean oil 5% 35g / 1.2oz

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

I did two batches, one with 75g and one with 100g of Alkanet oil.  I can't tell the difference between them.  I put Lavender EO in this and sprinkled some buds on top.  The soap turned a very pretty blue and seemed to stay that way for the longest time.  Then it started to turn lavender and a really nice one at that.  I'm very pleased.   I don't know if I can repeat that, but I'll be sure to brag about it if I do.

Now I need to stop making soap and start to bake the cookies for Christmas.  Eating cookies is necessary for me at Christmas, especially when reading the Christmas books.  I practically loose my ability to read if there are no cookies.  Books are a very common gift in Iceland and the bulk of all books that are published here come out in the month before Christmas.  We have plenty of time to read since our Christmas starts at six o'clock on the 24th and we then have two more day off.  The 24th is the main holiday.  It is when we light candles, all the church bells ring and we sit down to dinner in our finest clothes.  After dinner we open presents and there is always a book or two in there.  In addition I cheat a little bit and usually have a stash of my own that I have gathered just in case I don't get any for Christmas.

For this year I have 6 volumes of an old magazine, dating from 1907-1912.  I found them in a black plastic bag, sitting in the rain destined for the trash (what is wrong with people?).  I also have two books my husband gave me, one about medicinal herbs and one about dyeing with herbs.  I got hold of a book about kitchen cosmetics from the seventies and three volumes by Regine Deforge starting with "La bicyclette bleu", not in French though.  But now I think I'd better start baking those cookies.

Simple soap

That little enamel jar with a lid has holes in it, but someone
had put a sticky bandage on it.  I thought that was so sweet.

Simple soap is what got me started in the first place and here is one.  I wanted to do another milk soap and this time a soap that I could recommend for pregnant women and babies.  So no fragrance.  Kind of silly since I have been getting more fragrance and now have a lot.  But that is what I suddenly wanted to get back to.  A simple soap.  Very simple.

It is the kind of soap that I like to think my paternal grandmother would and could have made.  The ingredients would have been readily available to her even if they lived on an isolated farm in the north.  I like the thought that she made soap.  They had to be pretty self sufficient and it would fit with what I know of my grandfather who was very innovative in his farming.  In those days it was considered strange to have goats, pigs and ducks in addition to the traditional sheep and cattle.  But my grandfather was a very strong  character, intelligent and ambitious for himself and his family.  My grandmother... I wish I had known her.

I really think that it is such a shame that we don't get to know our grandparents when we ourselves finally reach an age where we start to be truly interested in our forefathers and mothers.  Or am I the only one?  Now I have so many questions!  I am fascinated by the past and how people lived then.  I know a little bit, but not the every day little things that interest me.

I love that photo of my dad and his mother and siblings.
She obviously sewed the dresses and probably the pants
as well. The sweaters of Icelandic wool were knitted
by her, but the kids probably knitted their own socks.

I never got the chance to know her.  She died ten years before I was born with her two youngest daughters.  She was thirty five and they were two and seven.  On December 12th 1948 an avalanche hit their farmhouse and buried it.  With my grandmother and her little daughters died also an old aunt, her daughter and the daughters son.  In all, six people died and one survived.  My grandfather was buried for four days in the snow.  The three older children were away at school.  My father was the oldest at fifteen, his brother one year younger and their sister was ten at the time.  The photo of the three of them with their mother is the only photo that exists of her.

So I made this soap to be simple and pure.  Something that she might even have made and passed the recipe on to me if things had turned out differently.
It is a small recipe, 500 g:

Olive oil        45% 225g / 7.9oz
Coconut oil   30% 150g / 5.3oz
Cocoa butter 10%   50g / 1.8oz
Sunflower oil 10% 50g / 1.8oz
Castor oil         5% 25g / 0.9oz

Milk 38% 190g / 5.3 oz  infused with M. maritime/chamomile
Lye 72g / 2.5 oz

I wanted to use some gentle herbs that won't harm a babies delicate skin so I put a few tablespoons of the Icelandic substitute for chamomile, Matricaria maritima in the milk and warmed it.  I then froze the milk and carefully put the lye in, a little at a time.   It turned a beautiful yellow colour.  I also added a bit of sugar water to the milk.  I like the way it increases bubbles.  I then put the soap into the freezer to prevent heating.  The result is a very softly coloured yellow soap that has no scent whatsoever.  There is a lovely simplicity in an unscented soap.  The absence of scent is the ultimate clean.  Pure like the country air and the bubbling trout river that runs through my grandparents land.

My father would have been 77 today had he lived.  He died on December 10th 2006.  I still think of him every day.

I like to remember them all at this time of the year.  I wish I had had the chance to know them.  But since that is not possible I like to give my thoughts to them around this time in an attempt to honor and celebrate their lives.  Not only my grandmother and her daughters, but also the little branch of the family that died with them.  My great aunt and her daughter and her brave nineteen year old grandson, who died after three days in the snow with the two year old in his arms.

December

This wonderful reindeer that I got from my colleagues. The
small candlesticks are so typically scandinavia. They
ended up in Afrika with some other stuff so our older
daughter she could get some Christmas spirit from home.

I love this time of year.   Or more specifically I really, really like December and Christmas time.  Not because I like cold weather.  On the contrary I dislike being cold intensely and am of the firm belief that being born here was a terrible misunderstanding in high places because I like sun and warmth and lush plants and animals running around and all that summer stuff.  So if it wasn't for Christmas I would wither away and die in the intense darkness that surrounds us at this time of the year.

December is a special month.  My birthday is today and my father had his birthday exactly one week later and a week after that it is my husband's birthday.  My husband and I had our first date in December and we always celebrate that much more than our wedding anniversary.  And then we have Christmas which is a three day holiday here and New Years is two.  And we always try to take the week between the two off if we possbly can to really get time to read and enjoy the holidays as much as we can.

I have one rule about Christmas preparation, to do only the things that I take pleasure in.  It used to be customary here to do a complete cleaning of everything before Christmas.  That included the closets and top of the kitchen cabinets and basically every nook and cranny.  I am blessed in that my mother wasn't much of a housewife and neither am I.  So this never made much sense to me.  When I was about twenty I had girlfriends who said that the scent of Ajax was necessary for them to get into the spirit of Christmas to which I replied that they should put some in a bowl, put it on the radiator, turn off the lights and light some candles.  Who is to see dirt in the dark of winter.  For those not in the know, Ajax is a particularly nasty smelling cleaning product.

I couldn't resist drying the leaves on the Japanese maple.
They were really bright red, but the colour didn't last.  I
used them anyway with the pretty larch cones I picked.

Like in many Nordic and European countries we start celebrating on the first Sunday of Advent which was last Sunday.  I always make an Advent wreath which has four candles that are lit on consecutive Sundays until Christmas when all four a are lit.  I think that tradition is German in origin.  I wasn't brought up with that, but started to make my own the first year I had my own home.  I always make a fresh one each year.  The look can vary, but this years is very simple.  I have learned one thing about making those and that is to get big and thick Church candles for my wreaths because they burn for a long time.  I have had two catch on fire, which probably isn't much for over thirty years.

This is always my first Christmas decoration.  Following that I put a green (fake) pine garland in the kitchen window and decorate it with lights and bits and bobs.  All sorts of strange stuff that has accumulated and doesn't fit anywhere else.  Some of it is my daughters handiwork from kindergarten, some is little gifts from people I care about, a lot of it is something that has been there for ever and I have no idea where I got it from.

I was going to write: But the point is..., but there really is not point to this post other than to get an excuse to sit down in our conservatory and watch the birds as they fly from one tree to another.   We have pond in the garden that we keep unfrozen so they can take a bath, something that is essential to their survival in winter.  The sun is about to set, exhausted after a five hour stint and I have lit a lot of candles.  I sit with my computer in my lap, one dog to my side and the other warming my legs, my husband in his easy chair reading.  I have a cup of coffee and some cookies and a stack of magazines that I didn't have time to read on my last business trip.  Perfect!  And of course this is the point.  To enjoy life.

Oh, and the soap!  But of course peppermint EO and crushed candy canes on a milk soap with a teaspoon of TD.  I just had to do it.  Christmas has to be full of clichés and a little bit corny.
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