Nom de Plume

Not counting the 10 bars I’ve already given away, I have 57 bars of soap. Granted, some of them are small, but still, it was time to scale the batches back. Still, no palm oil and still lots of Crisco, so I found a recipe for 8 lbs and modified it. Also, the oo was the remainder of my green tea infused stuff. And it’s not even a pound, but the title was too catchy to give up. So:

3 oz oo
3 oz coil
4.5 oz Crisco
4 oz water
40 g lye (I think. I forgot to write the total amount down in my notebook. Make sure to run through a lye calculator.)

I added some ylang ylang III and cedarwood, lovely combo.

When this came out of the mold, it was very oily — but that could because I have this execrable habit of unmolding and cutting too soon in my impatience. Up the sliced chunks went onto a door lintel. Three days later, I cut a sliver off and used it. I think this is the best one so far — silky and smooth. However, the scent is gone. I think I need to start adding orris root as a fixative.

I am not posting a picture because I molded it in a tupperware bowl and it’s not the most appealing looking stuff.

My hardworking man needs a little extra scrubbaliciousness sometimes. As for me, I needed a hard oil to replace the palm oil that’s missing in my new soapmaking life — Aha! Crisco! (Which, by the way, I have never bought in my life. I felt so … Betty Crocker.)

Started with an 8 lb soap base I found online. Then I wanted to use castor oil, which I had read makes super big bubbles. I figured Steve needed super big bubbles. So:

2 oz castor oil
24 oz oo
24 oz coil
36 oz Crisco
11.75 lye 32 oz water

I was going to do a peppermint tea tree thing, but I couldn’t find my big bottle of tea tree oil, and I only had half an oz of peppermint left. This is where things started to get interesting. Remember, the point of this is detoxification. Isn’t green tea detoxifying? So they say — and thus I infused the oo with a quarter of a cup of gunpower green tea. For scent, I decided to do manly odds and ends, which consisted of:

1.5 tsp patchouli
2.5 cedardwood
2 petitgrain

It was a lovely combo, even though generally I despise patchouli.

At trace, I added the oils and 8 tb of sea clay — one for each pound. I had bought the clay for masks, but it’s so detoxifying that my skin screams its way into the next room whenever it sees that evil little baggie.

And now I know: Too little eo, way too much clay. It doesn’t smell like much of anything. Still, it’s a cool-looking bar. I need a new name though. The Detox Ox?

*** Update.
It’s way too drying for my skin, though troubled teenagers might like it a lot. So I’m using it for pet soap.

Pug Sudz
Harry may be a little dog–but there’s nothing small about his stench: Dog slobber. Mud. Or his favorite, the kitty poop buffet (don’t ask). Still, no matter what disgusting smells he’s rolling around in, Pug Sudz makes him sweet-smelling and cuddly again. Green clay pulls out the yeechh even as olive oil protects his delicate pugly skin. Give it a whirl on your own furry stinkbomb. You’ll love him a lot more.

This started as Susan Miller Cavitch’s Thai to the East soap and then underwent modification. As I mentioned in my first soapmaking post, I accidentally bought palm kernal oil, rather than palm oil. So I doubled up the olive oil in the recipe, making a modified castile soap.

201 g lye
13 oz water
1 lb 5 oz oo (this is my super, ultra-hip abbreviation for olive oil)
1 lb coil (super, ultra yaddah yaddah for coconut oil>
6 oz coconut milk
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp ground dried ginger
2 tb dried lemongrass
2 tsp lemongrass eo, 5 tsp basil eo

*** Update.

This is a really nice soap. I wasn’t sold on the lemongrass bits at first, but they’re a nice scrubby. It’s very moisturizing. I’ve also renamed it:

The King and I
If you want to come-hither Yul Brynner, this is the soap for you. There’s no better way to say hello to that hot king of Siam than this delightful combo of coconut milk, basil, and lemongrass. It’s got big fluffy lather, bigger refreshing scent, and lots and lots of skin softening.

Poor Harry. He doesn’t have a lot going for him. He’s fat, not too bright, somewhat nearsighted, and dumber than a stump. The one thing he has always had in his favor, though, is that he’s pretty darn cute.

But now he has lip warts. And they’re, shall we say, disfiguring. “Take close-ups of his warts,” Steve urges with not just a little glee. “Post them on the blog.”

I have resisted.

But you know that last picture? The one where he’s doing an impersonation of a dead frog? Those two bumps on his mouth aren’t teeth …

I always thought Harris’ Chocolat (and the subsequent knock-off foodie-empowered-woman novel) was the diet version of Like Water for Chocolate: readable, but a little too saccharine. Harris has now turned toward the psychological thriller, and again, it’s readable, but falls short. I get the feeling she really wants to be Ruth Rendell.

Gentlemen and Players centers around the prestigious St. Oswald’s boarding school and a mysterious character whose history as the groundkeeper’s child makes him/her hate the place. This person becomes a teacher for the sole purpose of infiltrating the hallowed grounds and destroying the place–which seems like a really farfetched premise.

The novel was brisk and moved right along — and certain characters were beautifully realized–but ultimately the ending was less of a surprise than it should have been, and I had a hard time believing that anyone could hold a grudge for so long. Harris, too, seems to have that difficulty; she awkwardly inserts the idea that our strange character might possibly have psychopathological tendencies towards the end of the book (i.e., has a shrink) … but at that point, it was far too late.

More aptly, a novel of no sex, stupidity, and mindcrushing boredom. Again, my standards for chick lit are low, but not this low. Not even on an airplane — with no other reading material in sight save for the in-plane catalog filled with FrontGate garden lighting and Lord of the Rings paraphernalia — could I force myself to wade through this labored story that never seemed to start.

The thing about Seattle is that no one paints their houses bright colors. Behold the orange! (Everyone hates it, except for us. And even if we did, we wouldn’t admit it.)

After making 2 batches of blackberry jam, 1 raspberry, 1 mint jelly, 2 plum butters, and 4 apple butters, I finally grew tired of the Urban Jam Project (tag line: Mooching Fruit from Friends and Neighbors Since 2006). I’ve wanted to make cold process soap for years and years, but have been petrified of lye. Finally, I bit the bullet. I dropped $120 on supplies, and now I have a new obsession. It’s really easy. It’s REALLY addictive. I can’t seem to stop. Four days, four batches.

Zum Soaps makes a lavender anise bar that I absolutely adore. I tried to knock it off. The basic recipe was:

24 oz olive oil
24 oz coconut oil
38 oz palm oil
12 1/8 lye
31 oz water
1 oz anise eo, 1/2 oz lavender eo, and (because I ran out of lavender) 1/2 oz bergamot.

I should note that I realized on batch 2 that, silly me, I bought palm kernel oil rather than palm. It’s okay, but makes for a rock hard bar.

In any case, here’s a picture of my very unevenly cut first batch:

I have since decided that the best place to put them as they dry is on various lintels.

(Hard to see because the soap matches the walls!)

This guy is amazing; I love his woodblocks, which I found in the McClain’s gallery a few months ago. He had sold out of this particular print and I was mucho bummed. It reminds me of those wonderful Sekino self-portraits, but with a more contemporary twist. Now he’s found one.