Yay New soap stuff!

I recently placed an order with Bramble Berry, and my order came in!  I subscribe to the Bramble berry mailing list, so I see the updates on new products all the time.   They also had a booth and taught classes at the HSMG conference last May, so I wanted to try some of the techniques I learned, and buy some cool stuff!  

I got some Sweet Almond oil, a mold with knitting,(how could I resist that!) a Lucky sheep silicone mold, a mold to make spheres and the Brambleberry 36 bar birch wood mold with plastic inserts.  

I have been saving up for this mold, I think it will make the edges of my soap nice and crisp, and all an equal size.  I've been having size issues...  At the conference, they demo'd a bunch of swirling techniques that use this mold, I can't wait to try them out.  

My order came with a free sample of Midnight Pomegranate fragrance oil, it smells great.  

The silicone mold is from Kudos, a company that also had a booth at the conference two years running, I really wanted to try them out.  They are so cute and detailed!  

I just Love the knitting mold!  I had never seem it before, and I thought it was just perfect for me, "crossing the streams" it would seem, but in a good way.  I have some soap paint, so I am thinking of making a white soap and painting the yarn different colours.  

I had seem other soap makers add spheres to their soaps, and had no idea how they did it, this mold should be perfect for that.  

I can't wait to try some of these items out!  

More Book Reviews

My book reading continues.  I finished reading Pamela Ribon’s book,  You take if from Here.  I had read her previous book, Going inCircles and enjoyed it, so I picked up this one while we were at the bookstore. 

The book is about a woman who is dying of cancer and asks her best friend to take over her life when she passes.  So, this is a pretty sad topic, but I knew that Pamela Ribon is known for her humor, so I wanted to see where she would go with it.  The book was written as if the main character, Daneille, was writing to the daughter of her best friend, Smidge, who has died.  Very interesting writing technique, as I was reading I would forget that it was a letter, then she would explain something in the present tense, then go back to telling the story in the past.

I would say the majority of the book was not sad, it was funny.  It was about the relationship between two women when something unexcpected, like death, happens.  How do you move on, how do you go forward when Smidge, the more dominate one, is dying.  Her expectations are too high, and how do you deal with that.  Danielle wants to give her everything because she feels guilty, but where do you draw the line?

The book is based in a small town in Lousianna, so this provided for some of the humor.  How people say things, how they treat each other, which is not the same other places.  It makes one long for that kind of community but glad that one doesn’t have it at the same time.  Smidge was the queen bee in this town, it was interesting to see how she manipulated people into getting what she wanted. 

I liked the book, I would recommend reading it. 

I have read the Barbara Bretton, Sugar Maple series of books as well.  I bought the first one, CastingSpells, on my Kobo, after hearing Dawn talk about how much she loved it on her podcast, Wolfe Farms.  This book was excellent, I loved it!  It’s everything I like in a novel, romance, knitting, and magic!  The book is about Chloe Hobbs, the owner of the local knit shop.  She lives in a town that is filled with all sorts of magical people, vampires, witches, fairies, werewolves, the list goes on.  One day, a non-magical policeman comes into town on an investigation, and we can tell that he is going to be the romantic interest of Chloe.  The town has to keep the police man from figuring out their secret, while Chloe has a fight of her own. 

I loved the book so much, I bought the second one right away, then did the same with the third and the short story.  I really recommend this series for anyone who loves magic and knitting! 

I’m now reading the new Richard Castle book, Frozen Heat.  I am a fan of the TV series, Castle, the book is very similar to the show.  In the TV show, a writer, Richard Castle does a ride a long with a detective.  The ride alongs lead to Castle writing a book, Heat Rises, so they turned it into a real book, instead of just a book talked about on the show.  

 I read the previous Castle books over the summer while the show was off.  Because the characters in the book are similar, but not exactly the same as the show, now that Castle is back on TV with new episodes, I’m getting the stories mixed up.  I want to follow Nikki and Rook solving the mystery, so I will finish it quickly and just watch the show by itself from now on. 

I really liked the Desden Files, I bought the second one, Fool Moon, and the 3^rd, Grave Peril,  on my Kobo, and I’m looking forward to reading the 4^th book,  Summer Knight.  I have learned that the titles kind of give a hint to what the book is about, I love knights, so this should be good!  

Tri-colour swirl

The next weekend, I tried the swirl technique again.  i made the classic, Olive, Coconut and Palm oil base for the oils, and I used rain water for the lye mixture.  I divided the batch of soap equally into 3 Pyrex measuring cups.  

I coloured one blue, one purple, and left the last one uncoloured.  The scent I chose was Dreamweaver fragrance oil, one that I won as a prize at the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild conference.  I thought the colours would make it dream like.  I also had blue left over from last weeks blueberry soap, so I used it here.  

I poured the soap into the juice cans, alternating the colour each time. 

I got some interesting results.  

I poured until all the measuring cups were empty.  

The next day I cut the soaps, and was very pleased with the results.  

I love how this is turning out, only one problem, I'm running out of orange juice cans!  

Blueberry swirl

Our house has been undergoing some computer and cable reorganization, my blogging time was compromised. 

I have been making soap lately.  I’m going to be in a Christmas craft sale in November.  It’s being held by HandmadeHarvest at the Old town hall in Almonte November 3&4, I will be there November 4, the Sunday.  Should be good!  I’m going to apply for a few more shows, we will see what happens. 

I have been experimenting with soap trying out some techniques that I learned in at the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild conference last May.  There are a bunch of things I want to try, so watch this space. 

I have made mistakes in the past by making a huge batch of soap, only to find out I needed more practice with colour, the colour didn’t turn out the way I wanted or the recipe I used didn’t turn out the way I wanted, amongst other things, so I am now making smaller batches.  I am trying to document what I am doing, so if it turns out, I can recreate the batch and get the same results. 

I made a blueberry scented swirled soap, I think it turned out pretty well.  I make round soaps in recycled orange juice containers, I just peel them off the next day. 

I modified a technique that I saw on Bramble Berries’ website.  I poured the uncoloured soap in the mold first, then poured the colour into it, from a height.

I peeled the cans off the next day to see if i was successful.  I got some cool, circular patterns after I cut the soap into pieces. 

Unfortunately, the blue mica colour didn’t reach the bottom of the can, but it still smells good! 

I had wanted to do get this effect before, I thought I had to do something way more complicated.  I had made an orange and clove soap, and I wanted a circular, orange dot in the center of each round soap.  I had thought that the soap could only be poured into the mold when it acheived pudding consistency, this makes it very difficult to do any kind of colour techniques.  I had taken a spoon with the orange and shoved it down the juice can, the colour not reaching the bottom.  The I bought some flexible tubing, I was going to put that in the center of the soap and pour the orange down it.  Pudding does not pour well, poruing the soap into the tube was impossible, let along pulling the tube out and leaving the orange soap behind.  I did end up with some pretty neat soaps though.  

I am really happy with my results, more experimentation to come!  

Shampoo soap

Last weekend I made a batch of soap.  I haven’t made soap in a while, and I decided that there is a bunch of things I want to try, so it was time to start.  I think I haven’t been making as much as in the past because I get nervous making soap with other people in the house. 

 I’m always afraid that while I’m waiting for the lye to cool down, they will accidentally throw a glass in the sink or run the water into the lye, and then we will be in a world of trouble.  I think part of it is because I make soap in the kitchen, a place where people go without thinking there is Danger.  Now Tim and I have a system, he asks if it’s OK if he enters the kitchen, I say as long as you don’t stick your finger in the glass bowl in the sink.  Then he says, “Oh?  I’m not supposed to drink this mixture?”  No, no you are not.  I think the other thing that makes me nervous about the lye, is that it looks like an innocent bowl of water, but it is a bowl full of DANGER! 

I have been collecting rain water to use in soapmaking.  I decide to do this on the driest summer we have had in forever, but what can you do.  I don’t have access to the rain gutter downspout, so I have just been putting containers on the balcony and hoping for the best.  When it rained, I would get so excited to see what my water yield was, it doesn’t take much to keep me entertained sometimes.  Now, it’s raining much more often, making this a lot easier.  Whenever you follow a soap recipe, they usually call for distilled water.  I toyed with making my own, then I read that rain water is naturally distilled!  It is evaporated water!  One just has to let it sit so all the debris sinks to the bottom and it is good to go.  I am sending it through a coffee filter, then sticking it in the fridge for a bit, then mixing in the lye. 

I decided to make a shampoo soap, something I have been meaning to try and haven’t gotten around to doing.  I want to use up some of the items I have been hording collecting for while, I came across some rosewater.  So I added that to the lye water to see what would happen.  

I was expecting the rose scent to dissipate after the lye was added, because it gets so hot, but it didn’t at all!  It was very exciting.  The oils were coconut, and olive, the old standards, but this recipe called for Jojoba and Castor oils.  I knew that castor oil was good for hair conditioning, so it seemed perfect.  I love using Jojoba in products, it has such great moisturizing properties and a nice clear colour. 

Since the rose water was keeping it’s scent, I decided to add a pink colour, but I didn’t add enough, the soap stayed white.  I was OK with that, it might be weird to have pink lather on your hair.  I started saving small glass jars to mix colour in.  I can add the olive oil and the oxide, then screw the lid on and shake.   I also added some rosewood essential oil, I didn’t add very much, maybe half a teaspoon because the rose water was giving off so much scent. 

As I mixed the lye into the oils, I usually have time to wash the bowl, collect the molds, and maybe a few other things as I’m waiting for it to come to trace, this batch went so fast!  I added the lye to the oils, mixed with the hand blender, went to get the molds, looked in the pot, and it almost seized in the pot!  I have never had that happen to be before, and I’m hoping it never does.  It would be awful to have a whole batch of soap ruined and stuck in the pot.  So I hurriedly poured the soap, which at this point was like think pudding into the orange juice containers I was using as molds. 

The next day, I peeled off the orange juice cans and cut them into bars.  

I used a crinkle cutter, hoping that this would help me differentiate that this batch was shampoo.  The soap was a nice white colour, we will see if that changes when the soap cures.  

It is really hard already!  I’m really interested to see how it works as shampoo.  This soap is supposed to remove build up that other shampoos leave behind.  I will give this soap my usual 4 weeks of curing time then tell you how it works.  Tim is excited to try it too.