I had planned a regular posting about some of the soaps that are curing right now but, as is normal around here, something came along that cracked me up.
This week I’m writing about the straight Olive Oil Castile soap that was made about three weeks ago. We used a blend of regular and pomace olive oils and avoided any scents or colorings this time to create a clean, gentle soap. (This was part of my inspiration from our brand new nephew Lex and my cute-baby-obsessed brain.) It is very mild, moisturizing, and is as well-loved by sensitive and mature skins as it is by the wee ones in our lives.
I had made a large batch this time in hopes that I might be able to stash some away for the holidays but was really, really unhappy with the texturing of the top when I unmolded it. Now, if you are a new reader, you may not know that I am one of those soapers who owns a block grater and is not afraid to use it. Luckily, this soap was still very young and I was able to chop it up quickly with my favorite big knife. Lots of little olive oil bits went back into the soaping pot for another round until they melted into submission. I remolded the entire batch and was very pleased once it came out the next morning. These were cut into large bars with a few sample scraps so I made them a home on the curing racks. Sure that I was once again the queen of my soapy domain, I lined up all my beautiful soap bars to cure. I admired their greenish gold tint and made myself swear I wouldn’t start putting any of them to use until they were fully cured, or maybe three weeks, or maybe just one for now…… I mentioned I can be impatient about waiting to quality control each batch, right?
I promise I behaved and left them alone until hubby came home that night. He was checking out everything I had cooked up that day and was intently staring at the olive oil soaps. Confidant I had totally rocked that batch, I waited to hear any questions, comments, or praise he might have. No worries, right? He floored me completely with his reply: “You know, this looks like zombie soap.” Huh?!?! It still makes me laugh but I had to agree once I heard him out.
Soapers can tell you how colors will morph some as they cure and certain oils will give you certain colors in your soap. This olive oil blend has a light green gold hue but as it was curing it made some slightly darker spots that had a brownish tinge too. Dunno how much your family is into zombies but this batch provided us a few giggles for about a week as it settled itself down. I am sad to say that I no longer see the zombie resemblance but now I have some inspiration for another batch of soap. If I can get it to work, we will add “Zombie Soap” to the silly soap line along with the “Cow Pattie” and “Mud Balls.” I’ll make a blog post about those another time; let me find some good pictures of them so I can put it in there, ok?
This batch of no-longer-zombie-looking soaps will be ready to go to new homes around September 25th. I hope to have some good pictures up soon of everything on the rack for all of us who enjoy staring at soap pics. If you are in the Houston area, you can catch us at Donna’s Market on October 13th. Please stop by and say hello, tell a good joke, or just have a chat! I shall sign off here for the week as the sky’s just opened up and the rain is pouring down. Time to go get dirty for an excuse to try out the new experiments!
Happy Washing!
Dorothy
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