Basic Soap Recipe

If you've been following this blog, you know that on Tuesday, I posted about How and Why you should make your own soap.  Today, I'm going to follow up with my favorite basic soap recipe.

This recipe provides a pretty good amount of lather (from the castor oil), a nice cleanse (from the olive oil), and a bit of moisture so your hands aren't left crusty (from the coconut oil).  This is a hot-process soap.

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces of water
• 2.75 ounces of lye
• 12.5 ounces of olive oil
• 6.25 ounces of coconut oil
• 1.125 ounces of castor oil
• Essential Oils (as desired)
• Colorants (as desired)

You'll also need some supplies:

• Hand blender
• Crock pot (about a quart)
• a plastic shopping bag or other liner
• a sturdy box (I used an old cardboard box from those 8-set yoplait yougurts)
• a scale (to get precise measurements)
• a soap-only spoon
• a heat-resistant glass container

So, now that you know what you need, here's the process:

1. Measure out your oils and melt them together in the crockpot.
2. Measure out your lye and water.  Make sure the water is cold and, very slowly and with caution, add the lye to the water bit by bit.  The lye will cause a heat reaction, so this should be a carefully controlled addition.
3. At this point, I add different colorants to each batch.  This is completely optional, but always use specific soap dyes for this (they're not that expensive).  If you choose to use colorants, read the label to see if they are to be added to the water (ie the lye solution) or the oils (what's cooking in the crockpot).  In fact, some are best to be added at the end.  Read up on your particular colorant.
4. When the oils and the lye solution are about the same temperature, slowly pour the lye solution into the oils.  At this point, any plastic ware or wood you are using (such as a spoon) should never again be used for food.  The lye will leave traces in wood and plastic.  Stainless steel, glass, and ceramic are safe.
5. Use the hand blender to blend the mixture to trace.  Basically, it should be the consistency of pancake batter.  When you lift the blender out of the mixture, it should leave convex trails of mixture along the top.  For this recipe, it should take 10 minutes or more.
6. Then, you put the lid on and just let it cook.  With my crockpot, this recipe takes about an hour and a half.  You should see the entire mixture crawl up the edges and fold over into the middle.  There will be a pool of glycerin in the middle.  You can either collect this or stir it back in.  Everything should have turned whiteish foamy, and then eventually go back to being transparent at least in some places.
7. If you're adding essential oils, add them at this time and stir them in well.
8. Pour the mixture into a plastic bag and lay it inside the box you are using as a mold.  Let it harden for at least 24 hours, then remove it, peel off the plastic bag, and cut it into bars.

Here are a few bars that I have made recently.  Each color signifies a different combination of essential oils.

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!