Misty

New soap using up the odds and ends from earlier projects.  Contains:  Almond, castor, cocont, olive, sunflower, sesame and jojoba oils, along with beeswax, shea and cocoa butter, and lard.  This is like the anti-vegan soap.  Scented with a fragrance from Fresholi which says ¨A fresh cologne that blends bergamot and orange blossom with delicate cottony florals with a base of precious powdery musks.¨  Colored with a smidge of alkanet infused olive oil that had been hanging around.

The Four Thieves

Legend has it that in the 1600´s Marseilles was suffering a plague.  Taking advantage of the fear and desperation, a group of four thieves began robbing the houses and corpses of those who´d fled the city or died.  Upon their arrest, the Magistrate offered them a deal - burn at the stake, or offer their secret for surviving amongst the plague victims and simply hang.  They confessed to soaking kerchieves with a vinegar and herb mixture that, when worn over the face, prevented them from being infected.

Alfred Rethel: Death as the Avenger

Innumerable versions of the herbs exist.  From Wikipedia -

Four Thieves Vinegar (also called Marseilles Vinegar, Marseilles Remedy, Prophylactic Vinegar, Vinegar of the Four Thieves, camphorated acetic acid, Vinaigre des Quatre Voleurs, and Acetum Quator Furum^[1][2]) is a concoction of vinegar (either from red wine, white wine, cider, or distilled white) infused with herbs, spices or garlic that was believed to protect users from the plague. The recipe for this vinegar has almost as many variations as its legend.

This soap is made from palm, olive, coconut, sweet almond and castor oils, green clay and spirulina. (I wanted to use up the last of the palm oil I had.  I won´t be using it any more for sustainability reasons.)  The refreshing EOs:

Lavendar - Analgesic, Anti-inflammatory, Antiseptic, Diuretic, Insecticide, Sedative
Cedarwood - Antifungal, Antiseptic, Astringent, Expectorant, Sedative
Eucalyptus - Analgesic, Anti-inflammatory, Antiseptic, Antiviral, Stimulant
Sage - anti-microbial, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, disinfectant (As it turns out, sage EO is a bit tricky, so do some research before using.)
Peppermint - Analgesic, Antiseptic, Antispasmodic, Astringent, Decongestant, Digestive Aid

I think this could have label appeal for pilgrims on the Camino.  And possibilities for related tasty salad dressings, cleaning vinegar solutions, or room sprays, too, assuming one eases up on the garlic, with bonus plague protection!

Hans Holbein

Poppyseed Citrus Goatsmilk Soap

Finally starting to see the end of the soap stash, so I fired up the slow cooker for some hot process soap.

Contains sweet almond, coconut, olive and castor oils, with shea butter, silk, saffron, poppyseeds and orange rind, scented with sweet orange EO and a vanilla, buttery FO mix.  As a heads up for those using frozen milk with the lye to prevent curdling/scorching, turns out it can also impede the silk from dissolving properly.

The house smells delish.

Lavandar Patchouli Goatmilk Swirl

Used the last of my alkanet infused olive oil (it´s been sitting in the window for months) and goatmilk for the liquid.  Wouldn´t you know - after a few weeks curing, the white is quite tan.  But on the other hand, the purple, which was almost black, has faded to a reasonable dark purple.  In my first experiment with alkanet, it didn´t hold the color longer than the curing period before it started turning a very unpleasant peuce color, so we´ll see.  I do have to say that the scent is holding about the best of the batches I´ve made so far - a lovely lavendar, orange, and patchouli blend.

Soap adventure

Was envisioning a lovely malachite swirl of shades of green, black and white in little rounded cakes.  Unfortunately, the fragrance made the soap batter sieze in less than a minute.  The whisk was standing straight up in the bowl.  Saved through the magic of hot process, although most of the colors got all mixed together.  Green clay, nettle, spirolina, kaolin clay and charcoal.  Rustic is manly - right?

Dulce de Leche and Goatmilk

Soap.

I have to say I´ve been using this one in the shower for the last week and it is great! Lovely rich lather and a subtle caramel sugar scent. Very pleased with this one. Wish it had gone a darker color, but will just have to try adding more DdL in the next batch.

Rebatching

Got a slow cooker over Christmas and this is my first hot process soap.

Not without it´s hiccups - started out with individual cakes and the results were, er, interesting. V took one look and said ¨Mortadela¨. I myself thought ¨spam¨.

So I rebatched by shredding with a veggie peeler and added a white layer, dusted with cocoa powder à la Future Primitive.

At last - a girly soap! It has a fruity scent mixture of FOs and EOs. Plum Blossom? Fruit Punch?

Goat´s Milk Soap

Experiments in goat´s milk soap. Maybe I´ll have a goat one day. Although the actual amount of milk in the soap doesn´t amount to much. You´d have to make a lot of soap to use up the production of a milk goat.

Anyway - introducing Milk Maid. A blend of olive, coconut, palm and castor oil, enriched with tussah silk and scented with a floral blend of orange, geranium, amrys, lilac and lavendar.

Vetiver Swirl

Manly soap. Made with green tea and clay with a charcoal swirl. Frangranced with vetiver, sage and lime.

Horchata Soap

My first ´milk´ soap. Horchata is a drink made from the chufa. It is a very popular Valencian refreshment during the hot summer months. I believe the new world version uses rice milk instead of the chufa or tigernuts.

I couldn´t find actual chufas in my neighborhood, and it looks like kind of a process from that excellent pictoral, so I substituted the comercially available stuff sold in bottles. Other than chufa and water, the only ingredients listed were sugar and a chemical thickener.

Made with olive, coconut, sweet almond, palm and castor oils and cocoa butter. Unscented but sprinkled with cinnamon.

Oatmeal Honey

Unscented, with honey, oats, tussah silk and superfatted with jojoba.

The honey/oat mixture strikes me as a homey, nourishing, unisex blend. Hot weather soaping presents its challenges. This one went into the mold OK, but then turned to oily mush over the next 2 hours. Seems to have finally set up, though.

Castile Soap

Simply olive oil, lye and water - no fragrance, no coloring, no special effects.

Shampoo bar

I used the recipe so generously provided by the lovely Cocobong. Scented with lavender and lemongrass. Colored with alkanet infused in olive oil.

Body Butter

Body butters are mixed (semi)solid oils and liquid oils beaten until fluffy. I am interested in saving some euros on the bottles and bottles of Nivea cream we go through, especially in the winter. The first batch was shea and jojoba oil, the second shea with almond oil. The good thing about body butters is that, being anhydrous (without water) you avoid having to use a preservative. I put in some vitamin E which helps in extending shelf life of the oils. But the quantity is so small, they only last a few weeks.

Verdict - a little greasy. That seems obvious given the ingredients, but the light mousse-iness fooled me. It works into your skin like body oil. My skin likes it, but I would be careful about putting on good clothes immediately after application. The second batch has an orange/geranium blend that´s quite nice.

Now I have to get over my complete intimidation before unpronounceable chemical preservatives and make an actual lotion for summer.

Shea soap with Madder, Saffron and silk

Scented with orange and geranium.

Spirulina soap

Scented with lime and sage. Unfortunately, now tan. Yeah peaks and layers!

Beer Soap

Trying to get the soap as dark as possible. Ingredients include dark beer (Mahou), molasses, dark chocolate. The soothing hops in the beer is the primary element that benefits your skin/hair. ¨Beer contains anti-bacterial polyphenols and skin softening amino acids.¨

Now aging. Looking forward to silky lather!

Bath Bombs

I must confess I don´t take baths. I´m a shower girl. I did take baths when I was in Grad school in Austin, Texas. I shared with 4 other women in a gorgeous ´20s limestone Italianate/Spanish style villa that had been the family home of a wealthy woman in Houston, built on a hillside overlooking Lamar Avenue with not one but 2 stone ponds and a wall fountain (non-functional). On the other hand, it also had fire ants and flying cockroaches. I´m sure it was torn down for tacky condos shortly after I moved out. But it also had a clawfoot tub. A full-length tub with a rolled edge that exactly fit the back of your neck.

So anyway, this whole bath thing is a little strange for me. My dear friend W likes baths though, so she´s going to be my guinea pig. They were fiddley to make, but that´s all part of the learning curve. The blue ones are lavendar scented (but not so much now, sadly) which have demonstrated definite fizz and the orange fishies are made with coco butter and scented with sweet orange, but I haven´t actually put them in water yet to see if they effervesce.

Shaving soap

Yesterday, I had my first Lush experience. Lush is a soap store chain from the UK, I think. We were at the mall (Dog help me) mostly shopping for stuff for the terrace since spring seems to have sprung here - yippeee! And low and behold there it was - the smell set you back a little upon entering. Some beautifully presented soaps - and far more rustic than I was expecting. Mostly selling for 4.50€ per 100 grams which would be hard for a small seller to match without their economies of scale.

It turns out that setting up as an artisanal soap maker is complicated. Lots of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. It remains to be seen if this is a viable business idea, or more of an expensive hobby.

I read a lot of soaping sites now, since I like it so well. There are some really beautiful things being created out there. Check out Cocobong, Latherati,Future Primitive, Jaboneando (in Spanish), and the delightful Jenora .

Latest effort - Shaving Soap made with kaolin clay and scented with lemongrass, lavender and vetiver. I kept whipping this for a long time after trace (and blew the fuses a couple of times until I switched from the stick blender to a regular hand blender) to try to get those lovely ¨peaks¨ that look so inviting on other people´s bars. Still need to play with setting times, I think.



We picked up the small bowl in Sober, in the Ribeira Sacra region of Lugo. They burn the ceramic over a wood fire to turn it black (cerámica negra).

Salt Soap

Salt soaps made in purchased molds. They were a little crumbly, but released pretty well after a session in the freezer. It is a 500 gram recipe of 75% coconut oil, 15 % Shea Butter and 10% castor oil, adding 500 grams of salt at trace. I got to use a silicon ¨madeleine¨ tea cake mold from Lidl for the first time and what a difference! They all came out easily and intact.

Now I just have to wait 6 months for them to cure to a really hard, exfoliating bar.