The Last of It

 

I know I said that yesterday's batch was the last of the soap making adventure but when I went to clean up the room I noticed that I had exactly 2.89 ounces of lye left in the container and that's just what I needed to make another 32 ounce loaf....so I did. 

It really is a kitchen sink batch because I tried to use up every thing I had that I was running low on. I call it Apple Butter because I used all those fancy butters up and a new apple fragrance that I was saving until fall. If I want to I can just keep these bars until fall-or not. Soap is soap. 

The Honey Butter soap looks promising. I'm actually kind of glad I have one more loaf to go. I really look forward to getting up in the morning and seeing what the soap did overnight.

In addition to making soap yesterday, I did get the placemat tops finished. I also made one little hot pad and will most likely make another one before I pack all the sewing stuff back in the soap room today. 

And......for those of you getting ready for Winter Storm Olive, here's what's going on down this way. We may even hit 80 this week. It's just so darn weird....I hate to think what March might bring.

Good Intentions

Since the sewing/soap room is still a mess and I need to be making March placemats, I had no choice but to cart the sewing stuff out into the dining room. Although it's a pain to carry it all out, it's so much easier to sew when you have room to move around. I'm really enjoying the space. I'm going to hate moving it back into that little room.

My intention was to work on the St Patrick's Day placemats but what I really needed was a spring grime catcher for the Patchwork Printemps project so it got finished first. I'll work on those placemats today. 

And.....I'm happy with Friday's Oatmilk and Vanilla soap. It doesn't smell like vanilla but it doesn't exactly smell unscented either. It's very intriguing. I do like the little flecks of vanilla bean. It looks like expensive vanilla ice cream. 

Yesterday's pour is a concoction of my own that I'm going to call Honey Butter. It's got four types of butters-cocoa, shea, kokum and olive butter plus a good dose of honey mixed with some yogurt. I used the tiniest splash of my favorite honey fragrance oil. This is the last of it I am very sad to say. I am out of lye even though I am not out of ideas for concoctions but I suppose I'll just save those for when the soap shelves are empty again-in about 6 weeks.

 

Good Golly...

 

The last time you saw these Static socks they looked like this. Notice anything strange with them? Look at the ribbing.

Well, now they look like this. When I went to turn the heels I realized with horror (and I mean HORROR) that I had cast on 56 stitches on one and 60 on the other. Can you believe it? Seriously. I wanted to kick myself all over the house. It's been a long time since I hated so hard on myself as I ripped it all out and started over. My punishment is that I can't touch any of my other knitting projects until I get the little one back up to the heel. Sigh....

On a happier note, Avalon came out as nice as I hoped. With my last two batches I seemed to have cracked the code. 

First, use the smallest of my measuring cups for adding color. Less is more.

Second,  add only 1/2 TBL of fragrance regardless of what the fragrance calculators call for. Again, less is more.  

Third, don't heat the incubator box if I want to avoid glycerin rivers and want a nice smooth bar. 

Yesterday's pour was back to basics with a simple oat milk soap. No color, no fragrance, no animal products-just some colloidal oatmeal and some oat milk I had made by soaking some raw oatmeal overnight. It's a very friendly soap for anyone with allergies. I added flecks of powdered vanilla pods because I saw someone do it on YouTube and thought it looked cool. It's supposed to make a natural vanilla smell but I didn't smell anything. Like always... we'll see tomorrow when I cut it. 

 

Friday Fluff

 

I've got two more skeins finished for the handspun Garter Squish project. 

I'm getting quite a collection of new colors to use when I start working on it again which will be when I finish the Musselburgh hat. I only need so many mindless projects on the go at a time. 

And........the Empress soap turned out exactly as I had hoped. That doesn't happen very often so it's a big win. It's the unpredictability of soap making that makes it so addictive but sometimes you just want what you want and I finally got it.

Yesterday's pour is the last of the smelly loaves. The next two loaves will be all natural unscented bars which are my favorites. When my box of new fragrances showed up I lined up all them all up and let The Mister pick out the ones he wanted me to make and this is the end of them. It's called Avalon and it smells like strawberries to me. I tried to do the same thing I did with Empress with this one but I might have botched the pour itself with the green but we'll see. It always something to look forward to in the morning.

A Ta Da Moment

 

The little downstairs bathroom re-do is almost done. We still have the thing to put around the light and some tile to put around the tub but for the most part it's finished. Pup's already had her first bath in it since it's pretty much her bathroom.

That means that I could finally get into the downstairs craft room and give it a good cleaning. It had been one of the many staging areas we have set up as we work through this mess of a house. 

After the cleaning I spent a wonderful afternoon playing with stamps and cleaning up my watercolors. I've been wanting to paint another mandala so I inked one out. 

In the big clean out I found this project in a cupboard covered in dust and cat hair. I had to wash every little yo yo by hand. Years ago Dad and I were making them for a pillow cover that never got made. 

I've always been intrigued by these cute little things so I tried to see if I could remember how to make them. It took a couple of tries but I got one. Ta da.

Tuesday's soap looks and smells pretty good. It's the one called Aroma Therapy.

Yesterday's pour doesn't look very promising but I'm excited about it. It's another one of the strong fragrances that I used just a tiny amount of. It's called Empress and I fancied it up with some silk and kokum butter. It's hard to tell here but I used very little color. Only a bit of gold and purple and then I dusted the top with some sparkly gold mica. I'm really looking forward to cutting this one today. Fingers crossed it's a win. 

Beep, Beep

 

We had quite the adventure last night. Around 7:00 just when we were just settling in, we heard a beeping. The Mister heard it downstairs and I heard it upstairs and we both swore it was the smoke detectors on our respective floors. We got out the ladders and examined each of them only making them beep more and more. It was a regular symphony of chirping and beeping all through the house. 

After trying everything we knew to stop the noise, The Mister got in the car and went down to the hardware store right before it closed to get new batteries. At $12 a pack it was a small fortune to change all the batteries in all the detectors but we were desperate to get that beeping stopped. It was driving us crazy. After changing the batteries we waited and.......THE BEEPING STARTED AGAIN. We searched the house with flashlights thinking we might have a smoke detector somewhere we had forgotten about. Then........

...I noticed the old carbon monoxide detector sitting on the workroom table and it was....beeping. 

I had unplugged it when I bought a new one last week and apparently it wasn't happy about being unplugged and was letting us know about it. That was the beeping we had originally heard before we got the smoke detectors all riled up by unplugging their batteries. They are apparently very testy about being bothered also. The really funny thing is that WE HAD THIS HAPPEN ONCE BEFORE. That very same detector was unplugged while we were painting a few years ago and we had gone through the same ridiculous scenario. You'd think we'd learn.

On a happier note, Monday's soap turned out very nicely. I don't want to jinx myself by getting too excited by it but I'm pleased with the colors and the Blackberry scent. 

Yesterday's pour was another new to me fragrance that calls itself Aroma Therapy. It's very woodsy and herbal. I used half of the amount of fragrance I usually use in soap which is a quarter of what the fragrance formulators recommend. I also had too much fun with the colors but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if it's another win. 

Tiny Needle Tuesday: Sprung

 

My stitching projects have been packed away during the big soap adventure but I have something to look forward to when I can get them back out again.

I went ahead and bought the last two of the seasonal patchwork patterns that I needed to complete the set. I'll be starting the spring one as soon as I finish with the soap and give the room a good cleaning. I might even make a spring grime catcher for it since it's going on a Q-Snap. 

Speaking of spring...I've got crocus popping up in my front bed. I've even got one pitiful daffodil trying hard to bloom but not quite getting it all out there yet. Since the front trees came down the sun pattern has changed and things are blooming early that used to be the last to arrive. It's going to be an interesting spring seeing what shows up and when.

The latest addition to the soap shelves is yesterday's disaster which doesn't actually look too awfully bad but boy does it smell. It was a new to me White Tea and Pear fragrance and it is STRONG. I had to take it out of the soap room just so I could work in there. Even The Mister complained about it. The reason I bought these new fragrances is because his friends at our local small grocery store always complain that I don't make smelly enough soap so to make them happy I've been making some really smelly ones. This one should make them very happy. 

This company's Blackberry scent is also pretty strong but at least it smells nice. I hope. You never really know until they finish their 6 week cure. I'll be back to making some unscented and lightly scented batches in the very near future. I can't take much more of this. My house smells like a Yankee Candle shop. 

And......Happy Valentine's Day to you and your sweeties. The Mister and I treated each other to our favorite junk candy when they had a 2 for 1 sale at the grocery store last week. They've been sitting here tempting us and today we're going to break them open and celebrate. I also have a box of Thin Mints he brought me home so it's going to be a very good day.