Soapmaking efforts

I have had a wonderful weekend with a visiting good friend.
Time is always to short if you have good company.
We talked a lot and among things also about soapmaking and I promised to make a shampoo bar for her.
What the heck was I thinking?
I wanted to do this one hot process so I gathered my stuff and got going.

The Trace stadium looked good to me.

I peeked at 15 minutes and I had my crockpot on hot!

I could already see that it was browning on the sides, but I thought that was part of the process.

Here you can see that is what was kind of burning.
So the crockpot went on low.

After an hour I put my mixture in the moods, but look at how it looks!
It looks like scrambled eggs!

So I have taken a shower with the bar and I have to say......

It worked. My hair is stil wet so I don't know what it looks like when it has dried up, but it feels nice. 

The latter was amazing. We have very soft water and the you get more lather too.

I will keep you updated and I might send her the shampoo bars after all.

Yesterday and today I have knit knight and as you all know I cannot knit because of my tennis elbows. 

I can do Inkle Loom weaving though so yesterday I started with a double weave project and it looked better on the back then on the front.

Have to work on that then!

Here are the pictures. The pattern is from Laverne Waddington.

This is the front

and this is the back. You see the pattern better on the backside.

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Making washing powder

It has been a rough week.
After I made the soap I got some horrible news that a close friend of mine had passed away.
I was defastaded and had to fly out to the Netherlands.
So my grinder soap was waiting for me a whole week.
I came back last Friday and it will take some time for me to understand that she is really gone.
Yesterday I decided to grind the soap flings to powder.
Wel it didn't go as planned.

The first grinding I did, I was pleased with.
This should have dried out for 2 days and it became 6 days.
But my thinking was, the harder the better, right?
Because then it would have been easier to grind.

So then I started to grind it in a coffee grinder and it didn't turned to be powder like hers.

A lot of the soap clung together and it was hard again so I guess what happened was that the grinder went to fast and it stuck together.
It didn't become powder at all.
I tried different methodes like food processor and a mixer with those nut grinders.
I hope you know what I mean.

So that project was not successful at all.
My daughter is picking up another crockpot for me as I sit her and write so in the afternoon I will make a shampoo bar as planned from the beginning.
I bought one of Jan's e-book from The Nerdy Farm Wive.
The book is lovely with a lot of tips, recipes and a walk trough how to do it and a lot of information about oil etc.
As soon as her milk e-book is coming out, I am on it.
What also is very nice about the book is that the measurements are also in grams.
Here in Europe we always work with grams, although Sweden measure a lot with deciliters and I wasn't used to that at all.
For me, that is not as precise as grams.
As you all now I dye wool as well.
Not as frequent as now, but that time will come to again and I had to buy a very precise scale so that is working in my benefit now, because the soapmaking is very precise.
Well hope to talk to y'all soon to see my experiment with my first shampoo bar.

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