Brantingham Pine Soap

As you've probably noticed, after moving to weekly posts, I've been able to keep up, but the posts can often come quite a bit after the actual project has been completed.

On that note, I'm still posting about Christmas gifts in the end of January.

Next on the list is a mini-batch of soap that I made for my father-in-law.  They have one of the most beautiful cabins in the Adirondacks I have ever seen, perched serenely atop a hill the plunges into the cool lake waters of upstate New York.  It's been in the family for three generations, now, and it is Dad's favorite place in the whole wide world to be.

Unfortunately, it's not heated, and so there's no chance of getting up there in the winter.

In light of this, I got some lake water and pine needles this summer, and boiled them together into a pine-needle tea, which I used as the water-base for the soap.  I cooked the soap using my usual recipe, and after trace, I added Pine and Cedarwood essential oils, as well as green and brown coloring.  Because the coloring was added after the cook, it was blotchy and perfect for the pine-needle-strewn calico ground surrounding the cabin.

Over all, I'm really happy with how this came out.