Soaping Sunday

 Delighted Hands sent me her soap recipe and I was more than surprised to find out it was a goat's milk soap. Her soap was so rich and creamy I swore there had to be lard or tallow in it. After scouring the entire county for goat's milk, I had to settle for powdered-and things got a little crazy. See that lovely creamy butter like substance in the photo? That's my lye water. Yikes.

 I followed all the rules for working with milk. First I ran the recipe through a lye calculator so I could make a small test batch. Then I froze my reconstituted milk. Since it was a hot and humid day, I put the frozen cubes in an ice bath so it wouldn't scorch and added the lye very slowly, practically flake by flake. I walked away to answer the phone for a minute or two and my lye water turned to butter. I ran to the internet and learned that I could save it by heating it up slowly in a warm water bath. At 100 degrees I added my oils and hoped for the best.

 It looked all right.

Then it started to heat up. It should heat up a bit during saponification (turning to soap) but I had learned my lesson earlier about what happens when it heats up too much. It's not pretty. I almost had a volcano on my hands once. I stuck it in the fridge for an hour or so until it calmed down.

 The next morning it popped out of the mold without a problem. It's a soaping miracle.

 I even did a better job with my stamps this time around.  This is going to be some awesome soap. You should smell the peppermint.  Waiting four weeks for it to cure is going to be tough.

A few days before this last adventure,  I made some Dead Sea clay and activated charcoal soap with snips of Tussah silk added to the lye water. I used a funnel to get those pretty swirls. This one smells like citrus essential oils. I used a mixture of orange, grapefruit and litsea cubeba which smells to me like lemon. I topped it with crushed pink Himalayan salt for some sparkle.

 In the category of "what was I thinking", I made some interestingly swirled hemp melt and pour soap......

 ....with this new fragrance oil. My house smells like a Grateful Dead concert. Why did I think this was a good idea?

VM

I've been washing a lot of fleece lately. The TdF is right around the corner.

 I'd like to confess that I have a very unusual opinion about vegetable matter (VM). I don't mind it.

I break all the rules when it comes to washing fleece. I don't prepare it for washing at all. I just grab a handful out of the bag it came in and let the bits of dried what nots fend for themselves.

 The vast majority of it disappears of it's own accord during the many stages it takes to become yarn.

 It makes me happy to think this sheep lived a normal sheep life.

This is Peanut and he or she obviously wasn't forced to wear a coat to stay clean and free of debris. Sheep eat vegetable matter, they hang out in vegetable matter and they sleep in it. That's how it ought to be.

Argh...

I had 20 inches of my latest towel project finished and everything was going along perfectly fine until....

 ...I had a reason to look at what I was doing from another angle. That blue is not right. Argh.....

 Here's the problem. I threaded two in the wrong heddle.  Argh.......

 There was no choice but to take it all out. Unweaving went pretty quickly and then there was pulling out all that tiny hem thread. Argh.....

 It was an easy fix since I had just mixed up two heddles. I just switched them and all was well until.....

...I noticed I had skipped a slot in the reed. Argh.....This was not a quick fix. I had to untie it all and then pull all that yarn through all those slots once again.

At the moment it is all back on track but I don't want to think about it. Let's just end with the pretty kitties. That's my blue-eyed sisters, Thelma and Louise, hiding under the eaves from the rain.

Housebound

 It's only early June and The Mister and I have cabin fever. It's muggy and buggy and going outside is no fun. Even Pup doesn't want to go out. I've even set up the carder inside and that's a desperate measure because it makes a giant mess.

 I had this Shetland that needed carding. It was quick work.

 This is the last of the Jacob that has been washed. There is more raw Jacob in the shed.

I hope it is enough to finish the Crepidula  vest. If not, I'm going to have a lot of washing and dyeing in my future.

Fun in the Sun

 So how hot has it been? Hot enough to dye wool on the deck.

Sort of. I did use the microwave to warm up the dye baths but I let the sun finish them off.

 It was 90 degrees and sunny on the day I did this.

 Not bad. The Texel X takes the dye in a weird way but it's kind of cool looking.

I've still got plenty of fiber and plenty of dye so now all I need are lots more hot, sunny days which are never in short supply around here in the summer. We are looking at 99 on Friday.

Mellow Yellow

 It was a real effort to get this project on the needles. I was all thumbs. That circular cast on is a bear with this weight of yarn.

Trying to wrangle that crazy cast on and those doublepoints was more than I could take. It went onto a circular as soon as I could manage it. It's going to look pretty bad from here on out. Pi shawls look like string bags while you are knitting them. You have to have faith that they will work out because you can't really see what's going on. It's definitely a Keep Calm and Knit On type of project.

Show Time

 Yesterday was positively the last time I would spend about four hours setting up and taking down this particular scenery in an ice rink.

 To end the season, we used the team money to buy an hour and a half of ice time and let out members perform an exhibition.

Daughter had a surprise in the locker room. Everyone had a certificate of achievement acknowledging their special contribution.

She taken a production team photo and had a copy made for each skater for collecting autographs.

The team parents surprised us with a brunch.

There was a photographer for a formal team portrait.

Afterwards everyone got to skate their individual program to an enthusiastic crowd. Daughter's hubby did a great job with the announcing.

We finished the show with the production number. My poor lampposts and trees had certainly seen better days. They are headed for the recycling bin along with most of the other scenery, I'm sad to say.

I never did get a photo of me actually in the number but I got a quick selfie of me and my knitting props right before we went on.  I wished someone had told me that my wig was sliding off in the front. Oh well. that wig is history too.

For all my hard work I got a team trophy plus a gift certificate to a spa (!) and a $50 Target gift card from the parents. We get a week off and then planning begins for next year. Oorah.