Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Oatmeal, Clove, Milk, and Nutmeg Soap

I made soap on April 15th. It is made with coconut oil, shortening, olive oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, distilled water, lye, oatmeal, clove eo, milk powder, and nutmeg. The nutmeg was a last minute, spontaneous addition. Still not sure what drove me to do it but it felt like a good idea. I put them in my pipes (my molds) and then in the middle of the night I realized I did not line my molds. I waited 2 1/2 days and then tried to push them out. Even Victor couldn't get them out. So I looked up what to do. I tried freezing them for a few hours but it did nothing! I waited and pushed every so often. Finally today, 9 days later, I took a long, thin knife and ran it around the edges. Yes this means I lost more soap than I'd have liked but it saved me from having to rebatch. (from what I can tell rebatching is a total pain) And some of the individual bars got marred from the knife and had to be trimmed smaller than others. It's not a real loss anyway since I'll just dump my trimmings into my dish water. Cause this soap seems to be really, really good quality. When I washed my soap making stuff it made my dish water last so much longer than usual. As far as I can tell it does good on skin cause after I was done trimming it I washed my hands and they feel all soft right now.


First, please excuse the state of my floor it is mud season and kind of pointless to sweep and mop till after the cats are in for the night. Second, this is from the first pipe and the only one that's been trimmed is on the bottom right by the red knife.

This is all 16 soaps from both pipes. They are all trimmed up and ready to cure! To make the math simple on myself I prefer to wait a month before letting any of them be used. Even though I handle my soap bare handed (not recommended, btw, do as I say and not as a I do; wear gloves!) I'd like to be safe and not let any of them be actually used till they've cured a while. They're still soft right now too, anyway.

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