Two things make a place home for me, my cats and my soap making supplies. For the bulk of the May, I had neither. Admittedly, I do tend to move a bit of a time but as of last week the cats are here and getting to know the new space. As of today I have all my supplies here and all of it put away, nice and organized. So I'm officially home.
I christened my new space with not one but two batches of soap and a quick batch of bubble bath. The bubble bath was more a whim. I'm out of it and I wanted a bubble bath so naturally I whipped up a bottle. The soaps are completely different beasts from one and the other. One is a castile, a column swirl, scented with amber, neroli, orange peel, chamomile and bergamot. Originally it was meant to simply be neroli and amber but I discovered I was nearly out of my neroli fo so I made a broader blend. The other soap is a shaving soap. This has been a project of mine for a while and I only just made the first batch. Yes. I've been researching the subject to death for months and I've finally made a batch. The recipe includes black cocoa butter and kokum butters with avocado, olive and coconut oil. I made it with a combination of sodium and potassium hydroxides. Where most people seem to favour more potassium hydroxide than sodium hydroxide, I decided to go with more sodium hydroxide. So far the results are good. Really good actually. The bars are truly firm and can survive being lathered directly onto the skin. Naturally, I need to play around with the recipe and the method for a while yet but I'm gratified that my research seems to have had good results.
I've got to say. It's good to be home.
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