Sunday, August 17, 2008

Soap Mistake

It's been a long time since I've made soap -- more than a year and a half. My supply was fine through last fall, and I kept telling myself that I had to get to it so that the new soap would have time to cure before I ran out of the previous batches. But I still had soap, so I procrastinated. And then the soap-stash began to get really low: only a couple of bars left. Still I procrastinated.

After several months of using store "bath-bars," somebody pulled the last bar of real, home-made soap out of the drawer. Oh, it is so nice and smooth and silky. And it doesn't itch. That was the impetus to get to making another batch.

I did tonight. But I noticed a problem with the lye-water (a problem which I'd had before) and attempted to intercept the problem and correct it. But I over-corrected. Now I have soap with lye-water oozing from it as it begins to cure. The internet tells me I can melt the soap and add fat and re-pour it into molds. But I think first I'm going to let it cure for several weeks and try one bar. If it burns like I expect it will, then I'll try fixing the batch. But for right now, I'm just going to wait and see what I've made. And probably make another batch so that I will have a proper soap all done and finished before I even figure out just what's up with tonight's batch.

1 comment:

  1. This happened a bit when my gramma and I made soap. My gramma told me to be careful when unmolding the soap, and to rinse it off outside... but then, we were making soap for laundry and stain-removal use, not for use on hands and skin!

    (I'd love to learn more about making soap!)

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