Problem Solving: Card Holder

I live in the Bay Area now.  This is a place where public transportation is the method of transport, especially for young couples like us who don't have cars.  There's also this wonderful system in the Bay Area called the Clipper Card.

The Clipper Card is similar to other systems, such as the Charlie Card in my hometown of Boston (shout out!).  Basically, you load cash onto the card, and then when you get on a bus, train or trolley, you tap the card and your fee is automatically deducted.  Often, such as in the case of the bus or the trolley, it's a flat rate, but sometimes, such as on the BART trains, you scan again when you exit, since the price changes depending on how far you go.

I had a problem, though, which is that I always left my Clipper Card at home.  Always.  It was either in the wrong bag, or on the front table, or it had fallen out of my coat pocket.  Every system that I tried had flaws.

Then, I realized that I never forgot my keys.  I would always need them to get back in the complex.  And so I found a little scrap of sock weight yarn, did some quick double crochets with a bigger hook, and stretched it over the card and through a keychain.  Ta-da!

It looks pretty ugly, but it's functional.  I used exactly the scrap I had and whipped it up in less than ten minutes.  I'll probably make something a little more beautiful later on, but for now, this is the perfect solution!

Have you ever made anything similar? How do you suggest I keep my Clipper Card handy?  Does anyone have an reccomendations?

Homemade Soap - How and Why You Should Make It

Last year, I got into Soap Making.

If you've never made soap before, this may sound a little strange.  Here are some basic misconceptions about making soap at home:

1. It's difficult.
Soap-Making is pretty simple!  It basically involves knowing three parts, and you just make sure to combine them at the right time!

2. It's expensive.
This one is also false.  Homemade Soap is a fraction of the cost of store bought soap.  There will be some up-start costs, and if you choose to use exotic oils in your soaps, then yes, it will be a bit more expensive, but even then, buying exotic soaps in the store would cost more, too.

3. The soap is bad quality.
Again, this is not true.  Like any hobby, soap making takes practice, but with time, beautiful, high quality soaps can be made at home.  The soap you make is also NOT less effective.

4. It's dangerous.
There is a little bit of truth to this.  While making soap, you are working with Lye and very hot oils.  Use basic chemical precautions and keep animals or small children away from chemicals and soap-making.  However, when done with care, this can be a safe and easy hobby.

Now that we've expelled some basic misconceptions, lets go on to explain other reasons why you should make soap at home!

1.  It's cheap. Very cheap.
2.  It's easy.  You make a batch and it lasts for a while.
3.  If you like it, you can experiment.  Add scents, essential oils, color, oatmeal, whatever!
4.  You control what goes into your soap.

Let me say that again.

4.  You control what goes into your soap.

Why is that so important?

Well, first off, there are tons of chemicals in store-bought soaps that are harmful to your body.  They seep in through your skin and can affect your mood, your homeostatis, and your brain.

But there's another reason.  Lets say you live in a family of five.  There's a baby with dry skin that needs gentle soap.  There's a teenager with acne.  There's a child whose skin gets little bumps from not being exfoliated enough.  There's a grandma with soft wrinkles.  There's a parent with dredlocks.

When you make your own soap, you can tailor each batch to a certain person.  No need to go to the store and buy expensive dredlock shampoo --  you can just make a soap with extra beeswax and jojoba oil instead of olive oil and they can use it as shampoo.  Soaps with oatmeal or coffee can exfoliate.  Some oils are more moisturizing, some are harsh, some are gentle, some are fairly typical.  You can learn the properties of each oil and each superfat and you can adjust to your loved ones, refining each batch a little more.

Store bought products might say "for dry skin" or "for blackheads," but each person's skin is made of different chemicals, and so it might be dry for different reasons, and what helps one person might make another worse.  When you make your own soap, you can avoid this trial-and-error with expensive products that just go to waste.  Make a small batch.  Does it work?  Great!  Make more!  Is it not the best fit?  Use it until it's gone, or bring it to the kitchen, or donate it, or shred it to make homemade laundry detergent.  Make another one!

Do I have you yet?

If so, read on, and I'll explain the basic idea of soap making.  If not, read on, and see how easy it is!

No matter which soap making process you're using (more about that later), there are several basic ingredient categories.

1. Fats.  These are usually oils, and any combination of different kinds of oils can be added in here.  Some recipes call for beeswax.

2. Caustic. Usually lye, every recipe needs a caustic.  Basically, this chemical interacts with your fats and chemically produces soap.  This process is called saponification.

3. Carrier/Liquid.  You'll need a liquid -- usually water, but sometimes milk or tea -- to dissolve your caustic.

Okay, so now that you've got an idea of what you'll need, lets learn about how to combine these ingredients.  There are two main processes for soap making -- hot process and cold process.  There are others, but they are more obscure are are better done with practice.

In both processes, first, you weigh out your fats.  Using a lye calculator, you can determine how much lye you'll need.  Always use a lye calculator.  Different oils have different amounts of fat, so your lye amount can change.  You usually leave a certain percentage of fats left un-reacted, called a superfat, as a buffer.  Too much lye can burn the skin!  Too much fat just makes it mushy.

Once you know how much lye you'll need, you can dissolve it into your liquid.  Always put the lye in the water, not the other way around.  If your oils are solid at room temperature, melt them, and combine them all together.  Then, you add the two mixtures together and stir them to trace.  Trace is a big spiffy word for "it looks something like pancake batter."  It means everything is mixed up.

This is where the processes differ.  In cold process, you pour your mixture into a mold and you let it sit for several weeks.  Then, you can use a spiffy tool to check and see if all of the lye has reacted.  If so, cut and use!

In hot process, you pour the mixture into a crockpot and basically bake the lye out.  There's a certain look it gets when it's done. (I suggest you google a picture).  At that point, you pour it into the mold, let it harden, and as soon as it's hard it's usable.

Soon, I'll post about some of my favorite recipes.  Stay tuned!

Has anyone else made soap at home before?  What are your favorite techniques and recipes? Which process do you like better?

Soap Cozy

I'm home for the week!  Well, until Thursday, that is, and then I'm off to my fiance's house for the second half of the week.  We're very lucky because his family's house is between our school and my family's house, so when we get time off, we can go to both.  However, in all the crazy shuffling of the last few days, I forgot my bath scrubby at my home by school!  Eep!

Well, I happened to bring a few skeins of worsted yarn that I wasn't really using for anything, and since a soap cozy has been on my project list for quite some time, I whipped one up in the last 24 hours.

Well, I chose brown yarn because the other options were gray and white, both of which looked dreary or messy.  The cozy itself was pretty easy to make, but I had trouble getting the soap in when I was done.  I may have made it a bit too small!  The bar was unused, but a few months ago (while I was home last for Christmas), I had unwrapped it and put it in a soap container (which still had water on the inside).  Because of this, the soap was infused with water and was moist and creamy, so when it was a little big for the cozy, some extra soap just kinda slid up the edges and formed lovely curls, which I promptly destroyed by shoving them back in the top before pulling the i-cord through.

I haven't used it yet (but I will when I shower tonight!), but my mother is convinced that it's going to become moldy and kill me with bacteria in my sleep, or somesuch.  I'll be sure to let you know if it does.

Have any of you ever used a soap cozy before?  Did it work, or was it more of a hassle than it's worth?

Ravelry Pattern | Ravelry Project

Wardrobe Walls!

I live in a renovated horse stall.  Yep, that's right, a horse stall.  A married couple bought the barn behind their house and turned it into a place for poor college students and married couples.  The bottom consists of six horse stalls and a kitchen, bathroom, etc, and each stall is occupied by a different collegiate.  The loft has become an apartment for the newly married and newly impoverished.

But since it's a horse stall, it doesn't have a closet, and upon moving in I inherited a nice wardrobe from the lady who lived here before me.  The only problem?  The left door won't shut.  I tried hooking it to the other door, but then they both hung open a few inches.  I also tacked my mirror to the inside of one of the doors, but when I opened the doors to look in it, they blocked all the light.  Besides, when they were open, they pulled the Wardrobe dangerously close to toppling forward and they interfered with opening the door to my room!

That lasted me for about six months, and then I decided to do something about those darn doors.  So, new project one is my wardrobe doors!  I decided to just take them off!

First, I took a good look at the bindings that were holding the doors to the wardrobe.  It was easy: three small brackets on each door.  I decided to only unscrew the side that was attached to the wardrobe and keep the brackets on the doors in storage in case I ever needed to use them again.  I also chose to unscrew the top bracket last so that it didn't fall over backwards while I was unscrewing the bottom one and risk breaking something (or itself).  So, in order to keep the bottom steady while I worked, I plugged a thick binder under each door before starting.

It was pretty easy, in the long run.  I took my mirror off the inside door, my whiteboard off the outside, and then detached the doors.  Afterwards, I re-hung both accessories and put the doors into our vast storage room.

I LOVE my room now that it's done!  I can open the room door much more and the room feels so much bigger now that the giant wood planks aren't boxing it in; it's easier to keep my room clean when it's easier to put things away.  I'm so glad I did it.  Besides, I now have a bunch of wood to practice my wood-burning on!

Maybe I'll make some curtains for the wardrobe at some point, but not just yet.

And on to project set two!