I peeked out at 6am and could see frozen eggplant leaves - so sad. :-(
Looks like I'll be starting post season garden cleanup in a few days
after this Arctic cold front moves on. That freeze hit hard last night and I know there are a lot of big, green, tomato popsicles on the vine! I know you can make green tomato pickles, but not once they've been frozen. I'll have to Google " green tomato recipes.". to see if there are any recipes for stewed green tomatoes.
This morning I downloaded the professional soap making software. That's going to keep me busy for a while, since I hear it's a bitch to learn. It has a lot of features that I probably won't be using unless I want to go into soap making as a business, but I will use the soap recipe calculations and inventory and costing features for sure.
After breakfast I'll be heading to the studio to tidy my pottery supplies, since I won't be doing any pottery until I know what they're going to do to fix this post hernia surgery problem. Until then, this is not a time for heavy lifting and throwing, so soap making and cooking will be it for a while.
Found out yesterday that my Nag Champa fragrance oil can be used to scent soap and that's the one I want to use for the first soap I make for Jim and I. We have always used Nag Champa incense for meditation, so it will be lovely to have it in our soap as well. This fragrance has vanilla in it so I will have to use the vanilla stabilizer that arrived the other day. It will prevent the vanilla in this and so many other fragrances, from turning the soap brown. This first batch of Cold Process soap will be a test for one of my theoretical slow tracing recipes. I need a base that will be slow to trace (thickening), so I can do more multi colored swirl techniques which necessitates a soap base that will allow you to mete out portions of the liquid soap, then add the various colorants that you will be layering before you begin creating the swirls; and it has to allow you the time to do all of this before the soap starts to thicken too much.
As you can tell, I'm very excited about soaping; and of course the whole family is eagerly awaiting home made soaps. Now I have to learn this new software enough to put in a couple of my theoretical recipes and see what kind of feedback I get from the software. As long as it doesn't kick up a photo of a skull and bones, or say na na na na na na, I think I should be able to start making my first batch of Cold Process soap by Friday.
This morning I downloaded the professional soap making software. That's going to keep me busy for a while, since I hear it's a bitch to learn. It has a lot of features that I probably won't be using unless I want to go into soap making as a business, but I will use the soap recipe calculations and inventory and costing features for sure.
After breakfast I'll be heading to the studio to tidy my pottery supplies, since I won't be doing any pottery until I know what they're going to do to fix this post hernia surgery problem. Until then, this is not a time for heavy lifting and throwing, so soap making and cooking will be it for a while.
Found out yesterday that my Nag Champa fragrance oil can be used to scent soap and that's the one I want to use for the first soap I make for Jim and I. We have always used Nag Champa incense for meditation, so it will be lovely to have it in our soap as well. This fragrance has vanilla in it so I will have to use the vanilla stabilizer that arrived the other day. It will prevent the vanilla in this and so many other fragrances, from turning the soap brown. This first batch of Cold Process soap will be a test for one of my theoretical slow tracing recipes. I need a base that will be slow to trace (thickening), so I can do more multi colored swirl techniques which necessitates a soap base that will allow you to mete out portions of the liquid soap, then add the various colorants that you will be layering before you begin creating the swirls; and it has to allow you the time to do all of this before the soap starts to thicken too much.
As you can tell, I'm very excited about soaping; and of course the whole family is eagerly awaiting home made soaps. Now I have to learn this new software enough to put in a couple of my theoretical recipes and see what kind of feedback I get from the software. As long as it doesn't kick up a photo of a skull and bones, or say na na na na na na, I think I should be able to start making my first batch of Cold Process soap by Friday.
The Nag Champa soap sounds nice. We always like to have that incense in the house too.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the soaping. It is a lot of fun, and very rewarding to use a nice product you made yourself. It's also nice to have for a quick gift for friends. As far as the selling, it's about like pottery for me, there are already too many doing it, I have found that every time I even think about setting up to sell soap, I go do something more fun!
ReplyDeleteThanks Tracey. I'm only going to make a one lb batch of CP today just to test the waters. My small oval silicone mold arrived yesterday, do I'll use that. I found that the Nag Champa fragrance is known to accelerate trace, so I'm using my recipe that was had a lot more softer oils which supposedly delays trace and I'm not going to do anything fancy - maybe just add a some color, and the nag champa and pour. The various soap forums have been very helpful. I'm loving the chemistry of it all but when I think I have enough info to get started, I read another but! LOL
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the selling. The way to make money from soap is to set up an etsy shop selling molds and soap making ingredients! The oval and heart molds that arrived yesterday if from an Etsy seller two towns over from me. About a half and hour after I put in my order, I got an email that they order was shipped and it arrived two days later. She also included a free plastic mold and a couple of tiny other samples. Her prices were a bit more that the big producers, but the service was great and I got everything so fast, and I didn't have to make a minimum order.
Your new job sounds wonderful - a great pairing, I think for you and the shop owner.