Challenging soap day!

Finally got up my courage and a large enough time block to try the 12 Color Linear Swirl from the Soap Crafting book.   Instead of measuring the oils separately, I was working with already mixed and measured oils from a Soap Crafting class at Bramble Berry, which was greatly appreciated because the time I would have spent measuring oils was spent preparing 12 colors!  There is so much to do when making this soap that the fragrance oil is added to the oils before adding the lye. Once the oils and lye were mixed it was divided into 12 containers and colors were added, then the fun began of pouring stripes into the mold until it was as full as I wanted it.  A skewer was used to swirl the colors all the way to the bottom of the mold and create the pretty endpaper design.  It's resting now and in a few days I'll be able to take it out and get a better look.

Here's a close-up:

The leftover soap went into this 4" mold with all the colors just scraped from the individual containers, ending with pink on the top and then it was swirled just like in the large soap mold. The difference here is that I have no idea how this one will look when it is cut, because the soap was thickening and was just blobbed into the mold.  Can't wait to cut this one!

I decided to count my soap batches and this one is soap 32!

Since my last post

a lot has been going on around here.  There have been house guests, soaping, canning, knitting and a little sewing and basket weaving!

This is the first try with my very own soap recipe.  I wanted to try using all tropical oils, and should have used a fragrance that I'd used before, but I couldn't resist trying out Baby Rose fragrance oil from Bramble Berry.  My friend Cathy helped, and even though it thickened much quicker than any of my previous soaps, we were still able to do a simple swirl and get it into my new cylinder mold.  It smells great and I can't wait to use it!

Cathy and I also made Linear Swirl with Oxides together.  I'm so glad she was there to help, because there were so many colors to pour into the mold!  We chose White Tea and Ginger Fragrance Oil and it smells so good!

We have a really large garden harvest in progress and in wanting to save some pears for the future, I had my first adventure making a fruit butter. Although it too way longer than the recipe said, and wasn't finished until after midnight, it smells and tastes great!

Another canning project was pickles, which are resting and soaking up the vinegar to be ready for eating soon.

Finished up the Jeremiah Basket, which was a kit I purchased a while ago.  I did swap out some of the reed, because some of it was scruffier that I like to work with.

 On the knitting front, I usually have many things on the needles, but am currently working on Summer Moon.