May 31, 1999

Memorial Day! But it rained, so no cookouts here. :) I would like to take a minute (regardless of the rain) and say thank you to the veterans and servicemen and -women out there who dedicated themselves to service of our country. You folks walk the walk *and* talk the talk!

Well, making up for two months -- or however long it was -- that I didn't make any soap, I'm soaping this weekend. Yesterday I made about 10 lbs of soap, which is I think my largest single soapmaking run yet. I made a 2 lb batch of Monoi soap, my first attempt at that. I'm not quite sure how it's going to turn out yet. It took a while to trace, at least considering what I've heard about how fast it traces, and seemed pretty grainy. I put it in some individual molds. This afternoon I went to see if I could unmold it yet, and it's really soft, plus it's really grainy. It's almost like there are tiny beads of hard soap in a soft soap mush base. So I put the molds in the freezer to see if I can get the soap out that way, and maybe after a few days it'll be a nicer texture. We'll see. It was also my first attempt using Milky Way molds. I like the designs -- I have Chevron and Celtic Square -- but I'm not sure about the molds themselves. I actually cracked one just picking it up. Not a major crack and since it's not in the mold cavity -- just off the corner of one -- I should still be able to use it, but you'd think at $8 a pop the darn things would last through more than one use before breaking. Maybe I just got a bum mold. I do like the designs. Anyways, I also made a large batch of regular soap, and then I split it out into several batches. So I made up about 8 lbs. of this soap and after it traced, I filled two individual mold cavities and used those two to test two new FOs that I got samples of -- SweetCakes' Grapefruit (that I got a tiny sample of free with a recent order -- yay!), which smells just like a freshly cut grapefruit, and IFT's pear, which (also) smells just like a fresh pear. I never really thought I was "into" fruit scents but those two fragrances are really yummy. OK, so I have a bar each of Pear and Grapefruit. I split out about 2.5 lbs. worth of soap-mix and added lavender buds and lavender EO to make a batch of Classic Lavender soap. Then I split out about another 2.5 lbs and added red sandalwood powder and Bramble Berry's Jasmine FO. It turned maroon right away! As soon as I stirred the powder (which was this really ucky carmine red color) into the soap base it changed color. Pretty cool, actually. Then I split out the rest of the soap base and added SweetCakes Icicles FO. I don't know if it smells "cold" or not -- to me it's a green scent -- but I think it is just about the most delicious scent I've smelled in ages. I really, really like Icicles. I would probably have never bought it if I hadn't smelled it at the Illinois Soaper's Gathering. So anyways, today I cut up the plain Castile Soap I made a week ago (soft stuff!), test bars, and put those all out to dry. I'm not sure how far drying is going to get in this downpour though. :) The lavender batch is pretty soft still so I'm going to give it a little while to dry before I slice it up -- for some reason I get much nicer bars if I let the soap logs dry out a day or so before slicing them.

I think I'm going to go make some Vanilla soap now... I cleaned the kitchen up after I finished slicing and laying out those bars, and you know a clean kitchen can never stay that way very long in this house... :)