Sunday Soap

While I am waiting for the multi-talented Delighted Hands to send me her miracle working soap recipe (hint, hint), I've been getting into more saponification mischief all on my own. My latest soaping adventure involves a coat hanger. You use it for making fancy swirls in the batter. Your pour in several colors randomly, insert the hanger and roll it up and down to create waves of color.

See? The swirls are pretty. The color is not. It is supposed to be purple as this is lavender scented soap but the lye cooked the color right out of the mica.

The swirls on the top stayed purple. I had some trouble with the cutter so I have odd sized bars. It's always something. I'm still waiting for that soap project where everything goes right.

I've also got something else new. I've got glycerin rivers. Those light gray veins are what happen when you add a white oxide colorant and let it get too hot. I CPOPed this batch in the oven in hope of keeping the colors bright but what I got was little rivers of glycerin running through it. Glycerin is a natural by product of the soap making process and it's always in the soap but because of the oxide colorants you can see it. It's actually pretty cool isn't it? I couldn't have done that on purpose it I tried.

If you follow my Twitter feed I want to apologize for all of last night's crazy rants when I discovered that I couldn't see game two of the FIFAWWC because my cable company, Comcast, doesn't carry Fox2. I couldn't even stream it or find a radio station that was broadcasting it live. It seems I'm going to miss about a quarter of all the games.  I was NOT happy. Not. Happy. 

It's a Mystery

The Ladybug is empty. I hate when that happens. Especially when there is the women's World Cup to watch. The Bug sits right in front of the TV.

I went digging through the fiber stash to find something interesting. I found this braid that had no label. I have no idea where it came from or what it's made out of but I like its colors.

 All the quick color changes will make it fun to spin.

 I tore it into four long lengths and rolled them up in the same direction. The colors won't match up during plying because I'm not good at splitting roving evenly enough for that to happen but I don't care. I just want to see what happens.

 I am going to keep the rolls of fiber as long as I can while spinning so I jammed them into a bag to spin from. Now I need to keep the cats out of it. Everybody now: Good luck with that.

Pretty. This should keep me busy while I am watching all those amazing ladies kick the you know what out of a fancy ball for 90 minutes.

Purged

I have the very had habit of finishing a project and then leaving all the leftovers in the bag and moving on to a new bag. I had quite a collection that had to be cleaned out and sorted.

 Other containers held projects I was never going to finish. These mittens? Gone.

 Hexie Puffs? Gone.

 My very first practice toe up socks? Saved. They were too cute to go.

 Silk hankie what-nots? Gone. I hate working with silk.

 These misshapen, over felted and orphan FOs? All gone.

Plastic canvas? I hate the stuff. Gone.

That pile of old knitting magazines I swore I was going to go through one day and pull out patterns? Recycled.
You've got to be brutal.

Aubade

There's something new going on the needles.

 It's being made from some Fluffy Cat Lace.

Someday it will be this spectacular pi shawl if I can figure out that darn circular cast on. Three time has to be the charm or I'm giving up.

Out for a Spin

 Taking the fiber toys outside is always a pleasure.

 It's been hot and humid but here and there we get a cool morning that is just perfect for sitting on the deck.

I've been spinning the Jacob batts in hopes of finishing that Crepidula vest one day.

 You can see all the colors in the fiber fly by when you are outside.

It's potato chip spinning. You just can't stop.

Beat It

 I ordered a couple of soap stamps from a vendor on Etsy. They were dirt cheap and traveled here all the way from China in no time at all.

Learning to use them has been an adventure. You pound them in with a mallet. The soap has to be soft but not too soft. That should say Soap Handmade but as you can see, I don't quite have it down yet. This is my baby buttermilk soap with carrot puree that is almost all olive oil so it's still a bit on the soft side.

The little bird worked out a bit better but I can still see the edges of the stamp. Not good. All the tutorials say this is a matter of trial and error. I don't know about the trial but I sure have the error part down.

June

June is a blank page.

May didn't get very far. It was a busy month full of not so pleasant surprises. There wasn't much quiet time to curl up with an audiobook and my needlework. That's supposed to be a watering can btw. It will be one. Next May.

Good golly. Half the year is already gone. Where does the time go?