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I did it– Matt thought that I was joking, but I finally freecycled the couch and loveseat. They’re gone. I’m not doing a happy dance right now but if I were I could easily do a wild happy dance in our livingroom because now there’s room.

We’re not going to replace the ‘missing’ furniture. We have two cushy chairs and my vintage rocking loveseat arranged nicely, a little classroom nook with kid sized table and chairs and a big open space around the rocking chair and fireplace. All we need now are a couple of small area rugs and a play carpet for the classroom. It’s amazing how much nicer all of the other furnishings look when there’s more room.

Josey is attempting to teach Lexi geography now, he’s such a good big brother. She’s just started crawling the other night, before she’d scoot and roll, now she has the crawl going and she’s enjoying her freedom. Our family doctor says that she’s just petite and doing things at her own rate but it’s difficult not to worry about her when she’s so little. I have to admit that I exhaled a big sigh of relief when she got her knees under her and started the left-right-left-right wiggle for her favorite toy. Lexi’s also finally gotten over her aversion to picking up her own food, now she’s eating finger foods by herself and insists that no one helps her.

Got to use my soap! Ah, bliss…

It’s not very foamy in it’s final form and I would venture to say too ugly for gift baskets, so I’m making a shortening and olive oil batch for Christmas gifts.

I have no self-control when it comes to crafting– none. I needed to start soap making again like I need a hole in my head. My first justification was that I couldn’t find the soap I normally use at a reasonable price and didn’t want to switch back to commercially made soap. I figured I’d make a big batch and be done with it until the next time we had a household need. Nope, that didn’t work. Now I have all the stuff for making soap and I don’t really intend on stopping anytime soon, Matt doesn’t seem to mind– so I guess it’s okay.

I’ve been spinning the Lincoln on the Ashford Scholar like crazy. I have another skein already being knit on the continually consuming strip of spun and knit Lincoln, eventually I’ll start another strip and crochet the two together, then another and add that one until I have a nice coverlet (that’s the plan) or if I get bored with all this plain knitting I’ll hem it onto some dowels and hang it on the wall. I don’t know yet, I’ll just play this one by ear.

Josey’s watching The Day the Earth Stood Still as part of his homeschooling work he’s going to watch one classic sci-fi or b-movie a week and then write and illustrate a report on the movie. Last week was Rodan, he did pretty good in his interpretation of the story and it’s nice to see him really interested in a project.

First I have to answer about the IR thermometer. I’ve seen good IR thermometers at Costco, Frys, Radio Shack, on Ebay (everything is on Ebay). $30-$90 is the current range, some of the nicer ones have humidity too. I think since it worked accurately (in comparing it to the candy thermometer in my oil) that it could be used for candy (so long as you don’t need the candy over 600 degrees f). My husband also uses it for a cat toy– enticing the kitties to chase the dot all over the shop.

As for the ph of the soap, the normal scale is 1=acid to 14=alkaline, the acceptable range is 10.5 to 6, most commercial soaps are actually in the tens. So if I’m lower than the commercial soaps I’m pretty happy. I don’t fuss too much if my first process (cold or hot) soaps are very alkaline because I mill all of them at least once to make a more durable milder soap. Grating up and reheating a cold process soap (without any additives) helps expose any unbonded lye to the air and exhaust it, if you add more fatty substances they’ll grab up any leftovers and bond making more salt. In cases of curdling (too much sodium or hard water with magnesium ions) “salt freckles” (misnomer because it’s actually undissolved/unbonded lye) or slime (dissolved but unbonded lye solution)– sometimes the only way to make a batch usable is to grate it all up, make adjustments with additional fat, oils, or steam and pressure cook it.

I’m not a huge fan of cold process only soap (then again, I’m not quite that confident in my soapmaking skills). In cold process alone, only time, ambient temperature and air circulation around the soap will help exhaust the lye, and then mostly around the exposed edges– making for harsh soap. You can superfat during cold process to put a soap into an acceptable ph range, but that might also lend to the soap going rancid.

Started making soap three days ago, just olive oil and lye solution. The book said to expect the oil to separate and to simply stir it down every twelve hours– okay, so I followed the directions for a day.

Then the tinkerer part of my brain said “Trust no one.” and I decided to listen to my inner tinkerer since the soap pan was dead cold. I poured the batch back into my pot and slowly took the heat up to 135 degrees f. and stirred like a maniac for forty minutes. HA! Houston we have soap.

I poured the batch back into my primary mold and rewrapped it. Then I did the foam test in the empty pot (toss a pinch of salt into the residue and then hit it with warm tap water)– beautiful lather. Then I ph tested it. Flat yellow– absolutely neutral. Our tap water isn’t even absolutely neutral (probably the reason that I had to reactivate saponification with exterior heat). This morning I surface checked the batch and my inner tinkerer said “I told you so.”

Castile soap is awesome stuff, but I have never made it before. Plenty of homesteader batches, plenty of vegetable and beeswax batches but never have I used just an oil to make soap– I was desperate though– the soap that I was buying is no longer being carried at any of the stores within walking distance to our house and the one store that has it in Salem sells it for over $5 a bar. So I had to try– even if it was a complete failure– I just had to at least once.

I’ve made soap from bear fat before– a friend of mine had a friend that hunted bear and was given a large portion of the fat, she’d wrapped it and frozen it and when she was moving (about 5 years later) we came across the frozen fat and she gave it to me. I didn’t want to use it for food, so I thawed it and rendered it for soap. It was glorious soap– deep golden, soft little bubbles for the lather, very gentle.

My big soap ‘failure’ to date was duck fat. Another friend worked at a Chinese restaurant and diligently saved 10 lbs. of duck fat for me. It was awful soap, it didn’t want to set up (after weeks) and when it finally did, it started to curdle. I put it into the pressure cooker and forced it back into shape, then milled it after it hardened (or rather got less soft) and finally ended up with less mushy harsh balls of soap. We did discover that it quickly broke the oils from poison ivy after one fateful hike, so I guess the harshness paid off in the end.

We have an IR thermometer, point the lazer at what you want to measure and there’s a digital read out in kelvin or Fahrenheit, way slicker than trying to use candy thermometers (to check the accuracy I did use a candy thermometer in the olive oil as I was heating it– spot on readings.)