News! And what I have been up to...

Yeep!  It's been ages since I updated.  But in fact I have been ludicrously busy on the craft front and I have two things to mention...

First of all, I am a lil bit excited to announce that I've been doing some handmade soap projects for another craft book that is due to come out soon.  I'll post more details once I know the release date, but for now I can say that it is going to be along the lines of a big book of mixed crafts (not dissimilar to Complete Craft)

I have to confess that there have been times in the last couple of months when I've cursed my own hubris for taking on this piece of work alongside a tiny baby.  Having to stop constantly to feed, change or entertain a baby means that things that would normally take me a day to accomplish have taken weeks... and some days have been spent in a sort of  fug of baby and soap, trying not to get bits of soap into the baby or bits of baby into the soap.  BUT - the copy is now written and last week I attended a two-day photo shoot where all of the step-by-steps were shot for the projects.  Hooray!

In other news, I am pleased to introduce Microboy's latest hat!  I knitted this months ago, but it is only now that it fits and I am entirely delighted with it.

Full details of pattern, yarn and so on are on Ravelry, here.

And now that I am done with the soap, I really must try to post here more often...

Home spa treatments - a simple tutorial using soap offcuts

As a break from knitting, I'm using this post to share a recipe and tutorial for a really nice home spa scrub/bath soak that I've been playing with, which is very easy to make at home and is a great way to pamper yourself.

Supposing you've made some gorgeous handmade soap and, after trimming the bars, you're left with a pile of beautiful-smelling offcuts...  (In my case, these are the sliced-off strips from a batch of my favourite handmade soap that I made about 6 weeks ago, scented with lavender, ylang ylang and patchouli and embedded with calendula petals)

...or perhaps someone has given you a bar of lovely soap, but you have very sensitive skin and you're just not 100% sure about using it on your face or body.  This recipe solves either of these problems, by combining the finely grated soap with oatmeal, creating a very mild skincare product that can be customised to your skin type and used in a variety of different ways.  

Mixed with honey, the mixture can become a deep cleansing and antibacterial facial scrub.  Alternatively, encased in muslin, it can become a very mild skin-softening bath sachet, which doubles up as a face & body wash.   

For the sake of brevity I won't attempt to elaborate on the skin softening properties of oatmeal or the antibacterial properties of honey, but if you're curious about these ingredients I'd suggest googling it, as there is a wealth of info available online.  I shall simply talk through the steps to make the treatments...

 


What you need...

Soap offcuts of your choice
Oatmeal (plain and simple, with no additives)
A fine cheese grater
Storage jars (little ones make ideal gifts)  

Optional items...
Clear honey (for use as a facial scrub)
Small pieces of muslin and ribbon (for use as bath sachets/body wash)
Essential oils (e.g. if you wish to bolster the aroma or properties)

Method

Step 1 - Using a food processor, grind your oatmeal down to a fine grain.  The most economical option is to buy regular rolled oats from the supermarket and blitz them in the processor until they reach a texture similar to wholemeal flour.  (Alternatively you can sometimes find oatmeal in finely ground form - e.g it is often sold as 'Colloidal Oatmeal' in  health food shops).  

Step 2 - Grate your soap cuttings until you have a a pile of fine gratings, at whatever quantity you choose.

Step 3 - now simply blend the grated soap with the oatmeal.   Depending on your skin type you can use a proportion that suits you.  A ratio of 40% soap to 60% oatmeal is pretty good for most skin types.  But if you're after a very mild product, try lowering the soap:oatmeal ratio to 30:70  ...or for a more cleansing product, up it to 50:50.   (If in doubt, you could always test out small amounts as a handwash, to find out what works for you.)

At this stage, you may also choose to add some extra drops of essential oil to the mixture... e.g. if you're using unscented soap, or a very low ratio of soap:oatmeal.  Given that this is a skincare product, I'd strongly suggest that you avoid artificial fragrances and go for pure essential oils that are known to have beneficial properties for your skin type.
 
Combine and shake the mixture thoroughly, until you can see that it is perfectly combined, then decant into a jar for storage.  At this stage, the mixture is ready for use as a honey facial scrub (see instructions below) or  could even be scattered loosely into a bath, if desired, to scent and soften the water.

Step 4 (optional) - If you'd like to package the mixture up as bath sachets or body scrubs...  cut out a circle of muslin, approx 7" in diameter, and place a pile of the mixture in the middle.  (If you're a true perfectionist you could go so far as to hem the muslin or use pinking shears to avoid fraying).  Tie up the muslin tightly with string or ribbon, until you have a securely filled sachet - and voila!

Using the treatments...

To use the powder as a honey facial scrub...  
Wet your face with warm water.  Now take about a teaspoon of the powder into the palm of your hand and drizzle on just enough runny honey to form a thick paste.  Massage the paste into your face, allowing it to exfoliate the skin gently.  As long as the oatmeal has been ground thoroughly it will not feel harsh or 'scrubby', but very gentle.  If desired, leave the paste on a for a few minutes as a mask (e.g. while soaking in the bath) and then rinse off thoroughly when ready.

To use as a bath sachet...   
The next time you take a bath, try dangling the sachet under the taps while the water runs through it, or alternatively drop the sachet into the bath and swish it around for a while.  You should notice the soap and oatmeal infusing through the muslin, scenting and softening the bath water without creating any sludgey mess to clean up afterwards.

To use as a face & body wash... 
While you're in the bath or shower you can use the sachet as an all-over face and body wash, simply by soaking it in the water and then rubbing it against your skin.  This creates a gentle lather through the muslin, with the softening properties of oatmeal, and you'll get several uses out of each sachet before it needs refilling.

Enjoy!

Handmade soap-fest!

Ye gods, my flat smells heavenly. This week I decided to get some serious soaping out of my system before my pregnancy renders me unable to pursue chemical shenanigans and whimsy. So here are four new batches that I have whipped up...

All of these were made with base oils of olive, coconut, palm and palm kernel. They also all contain either goats milk or coconut milk and were made using the 'cool technique' described by Anne L Watson in her truly excellent book, Milk Soapmaking. (Seriously, I've become such an Anne Watson convert that I'm on the verge of throwing away all of my other soap books. Although some of them are great for aesthetic inspiration, none of them come close to the simplicity, clarity and common sense of Anne's methods).

All of these soaps need a few weeks to cure on the rack before they will be ready for use. But for now I've given a bit more on each soap below...

Lavender Soap

This is a goats milk soap that I made using all of the leftover vegetable oils I had at the end of a day's soaping, so it ended up having a higher proportion of coconut oil than the others.


I decided to keep this one simple and scented it with nothing but pure lavender essential oil, which I love. The lavender buds on the top are purely decorative and will come off after a couple of washes. (Lavender unfortunately does not keep its colour if you embed it within the body of the soap itself)

Orange Oatmeal Soap

This is another goats milk soap, made with a crowd-pleasing scent blend of sweet orange, ylang ylang and cinnamon leaf essential oils. I actually discovered this scent blend as part of my essential oil experiments and it was so utterly delightful that I used it for both soap and candles (which I will blog separately).



The oatmeal is finely ground and has two purposes - firstly it adds a gentle scrubbiness to the soap; secondly, along with the cinnamon, it will help to anchor the sweet orange scent which is notoriously fugitive and prone to fading over time. (Suffice to say I also used a LOT of essential oil in this batch, to help counteract the risk of fading, which created rather a nice pale orange hue).

Earthy Blend soap

This is a repeat of my all-time favourite soap, made with lavender, ylang ylang and patchouli. I made this batch mainly to counteract the number of bars that I have given away from the last batch! This scent is beautifully earthy and, to my mind, greater than the sum of its parts.



The addition of calendula flowers adds a bit of rich colour to the bars, which are made with coconut milk rather than goats milk.

Minty fresh soap

The scent of this soap is so fresh and zingy it practically jumps up and down to be used. This batch is made with goats milk and scented with peppermint and spearmint essential oils. The speckles are the contents of a peppermint tea bag, which tend to turn rust-coloured when you add it to soap.



The subtle greenish hue is due to the addition of a couple of teaspoons of French green clay, which adds extra cleansing properties and will also make the lather somewhat creamy. This is a particularly nice soap for men - or anyone who appreciates help waking up in the morning.


Finally - I thought I might show off a pair of glass jars that I use for displaying handmade soaps in my bathroom... (I bagged these bargainous items about 6 years ago at a bric-a-brac stall in a village fete).

Scented afternoon

Whoo... as part of my inspiration for making some more soaps, I rummaged out my neglected essential oil collection this afternoon and had a bit of a blending session.

Mainly, this consisted of me playing with a range of scent combinations using the cocktail stick method. This is an efficient way to experiment with scent combinations that simply involves dipping a cocktail stick into a particular essential oil and putting it into a ziplock bag along with other dipped sticks - and allowing it all to fulminate for a bit.

So, for example, if I wanted to blend 3 parts Bergamot with 2 parts Rosewood and 1 part Ylang Ylang, I could place 6 cocktail sticks together into the bag, 3 dipped in Bergamot, 2 in Rosewood and 1 in Ylang Ylang. (The only crucial thing is to write on the bag what I put in there!)

Anyway - lovely as this activity is, all of that hard core sniffing made me feel quite giddy, so I gave it an hour and then called time out and flopped for a bit of blogging. Tomorrow, once my nose has had a bit of a rest, I'll give each of my experimental scent bags a sniff to see what I think of them. If I like any of them, they might become candidates for future soap batches - or possibly scented candles.

The longer I keep the bags, the more I will learn about how the blend matures over time... e.g. which of the top notes stood the test of time and which didn't. If a blend turns out to be disappointing or faded, then it is a lesson learned. But quite often I come across blends that smell completely different - and far more lovely - once they've had a bit of time to fester.

All good fun!

Feeling Soapy!

Happy weekend, dear readers! And now for something completely different....

Behold my first batch of handmade soap for 5 years!


As a diversion from knitting, I've started to have a little reversion to the past and thrown myself back into cold process soap making. This used to be one of my major crafty obsessions from the late 1990s - just one of the many building blocks in my crafty journey through life. At some point oil painting took over as my number one obsession, not to menton knitting, and my love affair with soap was put on the back burner...

But recently a series of things have conspired to reignite my soapy urges. First of all, I used up the last of my lovely handmade bars and was filled with regret at having to revert to shop-bought soap. Then a few weeks ago I listened to the soapy episode of the iMake podcast and recalled how much fun I used to have with this, bringing evocative memories of a time when my house smelled like a fragrant pharmacy.

Finally, I discovered my intact (and delightfully anal) soaping spreadsheet, which contains my recipe calculator and detailed notes about all of my previous batches. (Sadly I was not a blogger back in my soapy days, but the spreadsheet meant that I still had a full set of records to refer to - hoorah!) This time around, I intend to supplement my spreadsheet notes for each new batch with a blog post and photos... so watch this space.


These bars are currently 'curing' to firm up a litttle and will be ready to use in a couple of weeks. They're made from a combination of olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil - mixed with sodium hydroxide and coconut milk. The yellowish colour is a result of combining olive oil with the warmed coconut milk and the deep hue of one of the essential oils. When the soap became ready for moulding, I added calendula petals for decorative effect and scented the batch with my personal favourite blend of Lavender, Ylang Ylang and Patchouli essential oils. Scent blends are a very personal thing, but all I can say is that this one makes my heart sing. Each of the oils is changed in nature by combining it with the others and, as it matures, this blend becomes reminiscent of light rain on a summer evening.

This week I've been testing the curing of this batch by using offcuts like these to wash my hands.


I've noticed that the lather is geting fluffier by the day and the soap milder. Once these offcuts are fully dried out, I'm going to try something new, by grinding them to a powder and combining with finely ground oatmeal to make a softening skin scrub... (will blog the results of that later!)

For now - if any of you are interested in giving cold process soaping a go, I'd recommend a copy of Smart Soapmaking by Anne Watson - it's a great beginners' guide that demystifies the process beautifully.