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First Craft show, 2012

My first craft show in a very long while was a success!  I was a vendor in the Handmade Harvest  craft show in the lovely town of Almonte.  It was in the Old Town Hall, it's a gorgeous building, a great venue for a craft show.  

This was my booth, the aisles weren't very wide, so it's kind of a close up shot.  

I brought some of my new soaps that you saw in previous blog posts, I got creative with the names on some.  I would say the top seller was Soap crayons, I will have to make more for the next show on Nov 17, Glisten.  

The show was great!  Usually, in my experience shows start off slow, then get busier, then slow down again by the end.  This show was very well advertised, and the draw for customers were the swag bags to the first 50 customers.  There were customers lined up, starting 1 1/2 hours before the show opened!  Then they just kept coming, they were lined up all around the block.  It was very cool!  These swag bags were great though, all the vendors were asked to donate items, I donated 4 pieces of soap, but others donated earrings, full size products!  I would have loved to get a bag!  

The other thing that was different about this show was they had different vendors on the Saturday than the Sunday.  So people came both days an saw different things.  The vendors were all unique, a nice variation on hand made items.  And food!  We had a smore's whoopie pie that was delicious!  

I have to get making things for the next show.  I want to make all the things!  

Apple Cider soap

During the HMSG conference, I took a class on using alternative liquids to water in soap making.  Traditionally, water is mixed with the lye flakes, the mixture heats up, I wait for it to cool, then mix it with the oils.  The class presented the option that the lye flakes don't have to be mixed with water, it can be any liquid, like beer, wine, anything.  We went to the Manotick farmers market and bought some apple cider, I thought i would try making a batch of soap with that.  

I kept the cider in the fridge, the mixed it with the lye.  

The cider-lye mixture got darker as I added more lye, and it started to heat up. 

It got darker still.  

I used a simple oil mixture, Coconut, Palm and olive oil, then mixed the two together.  

The colour got lighter.  For extra applyness, I added Apple Pie fragrance oil.  

Through the whole process, I was surprised at the colour changes.  I thought with the lye mixture being so dark, it would make the whole batch a dark brown, but it didn't at all.  I poured the soap into orange juice cans.  

I just made a small batch, I wasn't sure how it would turn out.  the next day I peeled off the can, the soap was still a lighter colour than I expected.  

I cut the logs into 1" thick circles.

I have set them out on the curing rack, I'm curious to see if they change colour. 

Peach soap, wasn't so peachy

Last weekend I decided to try out my new mold from Bramble berry.  

This is the 36 bar birch mold with plastic dividers.  I also bought the plastic bottom, I thought it would be a good idea.  This mold would hold a lot of soap, I had to make sure the recipe I used would fill it.  I picked a recipe that had apricot kernel, canola, olive, palm and coconut oil.  I doubled it and off I went.  I am trying to make all the recipes that I have all the supplies for, but never get around to making.  I love all the swirling techniques Brambel Berry does in this mold, so I decided I would make a peach scented soap with yellow and pink swirls.

  

I added the lye to the oils and mixed with the electric stick blender.  The soap is a liquid consistency at this point.  

I mixed the soap some more, the mixture got thicker.  You can see the ridges forming along the sides of the pot, also known as light trace.  

More mixing, now it's thick enough, I am now at full trace.  When the soap is dragged across the top of the soap, a line forms that doesn't immediately sink back into the soap.   

Since I wanted to swirl, I didn't want the soap to trace too much, its much harder to swirl when the soap is a thick pudding consistency.  I put some of the soap into 2 measuring cups and mixed in the colour.  Sometimes adding colour will speed up the trace, or slow it down, so I had to move quickly.  

I pored the rest of the pot into the mold.  The I poured the colours over top.  As you can see, the soap got too thick.  Very hard to drizzle and swirl soap that is thicker than pudding.  

I tried my best to swirl it, I ran my spatula from side to side, then up and down, without taking the spatula out of the soap.  

Another problem with the soap being to thick, the colour wouldn't reach down to the bottom of the soap, so all the colour would stay on top.  You can see the divots the spatual made, the soap was so thick it didn't shift back into place and stayed bumpy.  I then put in the dividers.  

The next day, I couldn't get the dividers out, the soap was too soft.  So I left it for another day, the soap was still too soft, the soap wasn't coming away from the dividers, I was cutting it out of each space.  This was leaving marks on the soap. 

So I put the whole tray in the fridge.  My trick for getting the soap to release from the molds is to put it in the freezer for a few hours, but this tray was way too big for the freezer.  I figured in the fridge for an evening would help.  This did help, it made the soap harder, it still took me forever to undo all the soap. 

The colours didn't turn out the way I wanted,  I wanted a soft pink and yellow, like a peach.   I'm hoping they will mellow as the soap cures.  If not, I have 36 bars of this.  

I then had to clean all the soap off the dividers. 

The soap stuck to the bottom as well.  I can see why using the bottom is an option, if I had just used freezer paper to line the mold, I could just tear off the paper, rather than slide off each soap from the plastic.  

This is a lesson learned, I think many things can be improved on.  I need a recipe that makes a harder bar, I need to grease the dividers so they come out more easily, and not wait that long to pour the soap so I can get a better swirl.  All things to try next time.  

Dentist

My dentist retired recently.  I have had the same dentist, working out of the same office, my whole life.  I was trying to figure out how old my dentist must be, if I started seeing him when I was 5 years old, and I’m 36 now…How old are you when you graduate dental school?   He must have had patients before me, I can’t have been his first one…  It’s crazy when you think about how long my dentist has been a dentist.  I remember playing with the toys in the waiting room, talking though the little window, waiting for my name to get called. 

I chose a new dentist closer to home, the office is so nice and modern!  There was a window in the exam room!  I was asked what would I like to watch?  The TV was hung from the ceiling, I watched Friends as the dental hygienist gave me my cleaning.  My old dentist only had an airplane mobile.  Sometimes the radio. 

She tool digital x-rays and pulled them up on her computer in the exam room and showed them to me.  Very cool!  Then, she gave me the bad news.  I had a cavity.  My very first cavity.  I had never had any major teeth issues, no braces, nothing like that.  I thought it would go on forever, me not having a cavity, but alas, I booked an appointment to get it filled.  They had had a cancelation, so I got an appointment 2 days later to get the cavity filled.  This was great!  I didn’t have time to think about it, or have people tell me horror stories for months and months and scare me. 

My dentist was a riot!  She was very sorry that it was her that had to give me my first filling, but the whole process was so painless, I wasn’t upset at all.  Again, I got to pick a movie, but the dentist made jokes the whole time, so I didn’t really watch it.  I just laughed the whole time, as much as you can when people have their hands in your mouth.  Everything was numbed up, then she drilled it and filled it, and I was done!  She explained each part as if I was a kid, so that was funny.  She put on the sleepy juice, then the rain coat, the she collected the sugar bugs.  All very painless.  Since I was such a good patient, I got to pick something from the toy chest. 

I will definitely try to be more diligent with flossing so I don’t get more cavities, but all in all, the experience was great!  Not bad for my first cavity.  

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.