Sunday Soap: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

 I was on a mission this week to fill up the drying racks. First I made this simple crockpot soap. It's full of hemp, alfalfa and soymilk. I got what I expected so this was considered a win.

Next I wanted to practice my rusty swirling skills with some lavender and lemon verbena. Don't see any swirls, you say? That's because the whole mess separated into an oily mess and had to be thrown into the crockpot to save it. I added some buttermilk and kaolin clay. It's not what I wanted but it's not terrible.

 Fresh off my swirling failure I tried my hand at another recipe I got from the Soap Queen. She knows her stuff because this one behaved. If I hadn't been so timid with my colors and fragrance this would have been a wild success. Next time.

 Not even trying to be fancy, I made some unscented and uncolored dog soap in the crockpot using goat's milk, lanolin, colloidal oatmeal, wheat germ oil and kokum butter. The Mister's Maltese has very dry, itchy skin so I am hoping this atomic bomb of moisturizers will give her some relief from itching. This particular recipe scared me half to death. During the cook, it turned from a lovely cream colored, pudding-like consistency to an oily watery soup in the blink of an eye. Only by stirring like crazy did I get it all back into solid form. Whew. I've tested this every which way and at least it seems safe, thank goodness.

Now we come to the ugly. Ewwww....I was trying to make an all natural bar for the kitchen using turmeric, alkanet root and olive leaf powder for color combined with citrus essential oils. I'm sure it's going to work just fine for yucky hand washing but it's certainly nothing to look at. With that, I put away the soap stuff for a while. It's time to do some homework before I go wasting anymore expensive supplies.