


Way back when I first bought my soap molds, I noted the soap cutter and thought I’d like to eventually get one. It’s quite easy to cut the soap by hand with a butterknife but the bars vary between 3 and 5 ounces. The more we talk about selling the soap the more I think I need a smaller variation between bars. I finally broke down and bought the soap cutter. It’s slower to cut the bars this way but now my bars vary from 4.25 ounces to 4.5 ounces, a much more reasonable variation.

I was chatting to someone on the phone over the weekend and we’d been talking about soap at one point and then later on I was telling her how I made fruit/veg bags with nylon netting from JoAnns so I can stop using those throwaway plastic ones. She had the brilliant idea that I could package my soaps in this same stuff for scrubbie soaps. I still have plenty of the stuff lying around as well as plenty of embroidery thread so I gave it a shot. I worried that it might be a bit too scratchy but so far it seems fine. Thanks Lynn!
I’ve been meaning to sew some reusable shopping bags for quite some time now. I’d heard a report on the news about how they need to be periodically cleaned but the store-bought ones I have don’t lend themselves very well to cleaning. I found a few different patterns on Etsy and settled on this one. Maybe she just happened to be online when I bought mine but it was delivered to my inbox immediately so I was able to get to work right away. The pattern is very clearly written and the bag seems quite sturdy if a little shallow. It’s going to be very easy to adjust so I plan to try making a deeper one and then hopefully make several. The store-bought ones seem to be all starting to fall apart now so I’ll have to toss those. The nice thing about these is that they’ll be easy to repair so I think they should last much longer.

Over the weekend I organized my soaps and fiber samples. The soaps had been hogging counter space while they cured but now they are neatly stowed away in boxes the perfect size for 5 pounds of soap. The fiber samples were just all over the place on my desk and tacked to various and sundry cork boards around the house. A wee bit more tidy is a good thing at my house.

I made more than a little soap last week and it was amazing how differently each batch worked up. It seems that I need to use less fragrance oil than I do essential oil and I took notes accordingly. I made coriander/matcha tea with apricot kernel, lavender with rhassoul clay, black cherry/amber with cranberry seeds, black cherry, kumquat, spearmint/eucalyptus with activated charcoal, and sea shore.
All week long I’ve been busily making soap. The last batch has gone into the molds this morning so I’ll have plenty of soap ready for holiday gifts. Seen here I have lavender with rhassoul clay, rose with jojoba beads, plumeria, dragon’s blood (sandalwood base), and ginger apple. Still in the molds is a winter citrus blend.
We haven't really had any hot weather to speak of but over the past week Jason noticed the a/c wasn't blowing very cool air so he put in a call to the repair guy. We might have skipped getting it serviced in the spring a time or two. It wasn't long at all after the repair guy's arrival that he reported a mousikin nest inside the unit. They'd chewed through the wire. Sound familiar? As in exactly the same report we got on the car a/c earlier this year? Ayep. Well, the mice have been evicted and the a/c is hunky dory again. Repair guy was even so kind as to show Jason how to turn off the breaker in the winter so that there's no warm spot to attract said mice again. I think the catnip for neighbor cats campaign has just gained even more momentum.
I also worked up one more experimental batch of soap. Jason asked for something with sea salt in. I'm not ordering new supplies until the fall so I had to go with what essential oils I had on hand and since I've just done sandalwood and lavender I went for mint this time for a change of pace. The sea salt is in rather large crystals and those don't seem to have behaved very nicely. It looks like those candles we made as kids with ice cubes to make holes when they melted. I'll give it a few days and then try it out to be sure it's okay. It does look like the soap set properly so I suspect the salt is just drawing out extra moisture.