Soapy Sunday

Been blogging for 2 and 1/2 years and still terribly unstructured in my posts. But not anymore. From here on out SUNDAY will be Soapy Sunday. No, it will not include bathing of farm animals, nor is it a reference to cleaning my house. That project is so past saving, why bother ? Today I noticed a toothbrush on the floor of our bathroom, in the corner, under a protective cover of spider webs. This means that not only is the house dirty...but someone has not bothered to brush their teeth for awhile. You think YOU are grossed out ?!?

Thus Soapy Sunday can only refer to the act of saponification. Oh how I love that word. If you want to love that word too then you must memorize the following definition. Or not. Just skip to the pictures if you refuse to expand your medulla oblongata.

Saponification is a process that produces soap, usually from fats and lye. In technical terms, saponification involves base (usually caustic soda NaOH) hydrolysis of triglycerides, which are esters of fatty acids, to form the sodium salt of a carboxylate. In addition to soap, such traditional saponification processes produces glycerol. "Saponifiable substances" are those that can be converted into soap.^[1]

^{With Christmas rapidly approaching and several requests for soaps to give as gifts I have turned to hot process to beef up my store stock. The main reason I like HP is you have to really SLAM the mold on the counter very hard to get the soap well packed. I can't help it. It just feels good to SLAM something once in awhile. I was going to call this soap "Christmas Tree" as I used wheat grass powder for the green color and thought I'd get this nice snow on a Evergreen Effect with some titanium dioxide for the top layer.}

^{Apparently I was too stingy with the wheat grass powder. But then I saw something else. A lovely sea green effect. And those waves ! In one bar I swear I saw the image of a sailboat. Maybe you'll see it too. Look closely, its a little hard to make out.}

Did you see it ? Cool huh ?

After studying these bars more closely...

Its obvious that "Christmas Tree" doesn't work even though I scented with a fun combo of Pine, Cedar wood, Blood Orange and Eucalyptus essential oils. Instead I'm thinking of something more like "Celtic Sea Waves of  a Benumbing Winter Morn Crashing onto the Shores of Kinvara Bay"

What do you think?

A Sidetrip to Soapville

Later today I will post more about our raw milk brigade but right now its Bubble Time ! I made some soap yesterday as both a distraction and a joy. I do love making soap and since all your clean freaks keep buying whatever I make (Thank you K.E and D.R.) I had to make more.

Still playing with all the natural colors via root powders, clays, charcoal, plant leaves, it makes me feel so...earthy. I have pretty much decided, after 10 months, on a basic cold process recipe but experimenting with scents as well as colors. My favorite EO combo is now Lavender-Lemongrass-Blood Orange in a 1:2:1 concentration. Very fresh and sexy smelling. Yes, SEXY. Even though I've been married forever, have 4 kids and 3 GK's I can still talk about sexy if I want to

SEXY
SEXY
SEXY

"Jeez, what was that all about?"
"Heck, if I know, you know how she gets sometimes"
"Tell, me about it"

So, if the voices are done I'll continue. I made up 3 batches and was most happy with this one. Colors were done with wheat grass powder (the greens), indigo powder (the blues), orange peel powder (the yellow) and Titanium dioxide (the white).

The soap got very thick as I mixed in the powder but since this is the second time I used these colorants I was ready for it. I slapped the soaps into the mold and SLAMMED it hard on the counter. So very therapeutic. I still got a few air bubbles but that's the fun about about handcrafted, its imperfect. Just like moi.

Kit Kat Soap



Its a temporary name, until I can think of something more artistic or dare I say it , sculptural ?
Anyway, its soap. You probably thought I'd given up my saponifaction habit since I've been yakking about non-sudsing topics so much of late, but taint true. I've just slowed a little due to all the other details of my life. But I must get cracking again as our farm store customers are buying up my soap faster and faster each week. Yesterday one fabulous chick bought SEVEN bars ! (Thank you DN. Thank you very much!)

I have this feeling that one day Keith will die and I will find 3000 bars of my soap hidden away in the barn after he bought it all  back from the people he PAID to buy it from me. He's nice that way.

I love how natural powders, clays, roots, herbs, flowers never come out the same no matter
how many times you color with them. Or perhaps it has more to do with my "technique."

This here soap bar was great fun. Created with palm, coconut, olive, canola oils and mango butter the lighter orange/yellow color comes from Annato seed powder. Another wild experiment in the all natural coloring arena as well as the embed improvisations. I started pouring this soap AND THEN decided to cut up a hot process bar that smelled great (Cassia essential oil) but was so dull looking after being colored with Clove powder. Shoving two long bars of the HP soap into the cold process soap and then pouring more CP in the mold and I got this Kit Kat bar thingy.

Or maybe you are thinking piano keys...as they would look through the eyes of the totally inebriated. Either way I scented the CP with clove and blood orange essential oils and when mixed with the cassia of the HP embeds, the bar smells good enough to serve for dessert. Which is exactly what happened in my sons house.

I gave him a bar of this for his 30th birthday, just what every 30 year old man wants for that special day and  his little dog Abby became interested jumping up on my sons leg. So he lowered the soap bar down for her to smell and she of course BIT into the bar. So much for not testing my products on animals. Her face afterwards was pretty funny. Of course she suffered no ill effects as the bar was free of all chemicals and dyes. Funny dang dog..