Day was going just fine...till I decided to make soap.
I have to leave town tomorrow (my daughter is having surgery) and I wanted to have a batch of soap to cut when I get home. So I run my recipe through the BB calculator. Measure out my oils, my lye, my water. Mix the water and Lye. Leave it cooling in the sink while I melt my hard oils. I double check my recipe, realized I didnt pour enough of one of the oils, so I added it in. I went to print the recipe during this time and got an error, lost the recipe. (I should have know better, I have gotten this error before). Reentered the recipe, got a different number for the lye. Sigh... then my husband comes home from work while I am trying to get everything recalculated. Dogs go crazy them settle down. Husband grabs a rifle, to take care of some rabbits that have overrun my garden. Dogs freak out (why I have no clue). My dog is sitting on my feet dang near having a seizure from shaking so hard. I finally get everything recalculated. Im extremely irritated at this point and should have stopped. But NOOOO, I had to trudge on like I had good sense. I check the temp of the lye...the thermometer isnt working right, it thinks 80 is 0 and is spinning all around the dial, so I have no clue what the temp is. Toss the thermometer in the trash, grab another one, this one seems to be working and the lye solution is still too hot. I wait a few minutes check again, too hot. repeat, wating and temp taking. This goes on for a few minutes, and I am clearly not thinking straight, and I guess I was in a bit of a hurry to get it poured. I think to myself, I jsut went to a seminar where they were pouring the lye within just a few minutes of mixing. So I should be ok here. I pour in the lye and turn on the stick blender and immediately get cottage cheese coming up from the bottom of my mixing pot. CRAP!!!!! The scent was already in the oils (Hollyberry) and I was adding some rose clay for colorant....I know, I know...your sitting there reading this and yelling STOP- STOP. So I stop blending add my clay mixture. and start blending again. Stir, blend, stir, blend, when my stick blender spins apart. I stop, grab some paper towels, wipe enough off of it to put the blender back together. And on I trudged. Blending till I get a nice smooth texture and hopefully a decent enough mixture to call it soap and not rebatch. I make sure that I have the color all the way to the bottom. , smooth texture. I have my new vertical mold all ready to go sitting on the floor so I can reach it. I look at the mold and the thick pot of what can only be described as peanut butter. Grab a large spoon, squat down on the floor and start scooping it in the mold. As I am scooping it in, I notice white chunks, not large ones but white just the same. I am praying that they are not lye spots but the hard oil, even though I melted them.
I get to the top of the mold...pause. I was only supposed to have about 6 oz extra (wanted to try out some of my new silicone molds) and I have enough for a WHOLE sleeve in the verticle mold. Do I have more than one prepared? NO!! So not wanting to mess with the detail in my new molds and not getting the peanut butter in/or out of the mold I grab some other molds and smooth the peanut butter into them. I look in my soap pot, and I still have a bunch left. I sigh loudly, scraped the soap off of my spatula and spoon into the pot. Threw the utensils in the sink. I look down at the verticle mold on the floor and the top is already cracking. I move it over to the floor vent for the AC to cool it down. Where it will be sitting all night. I cover the other molds with some saran wrap, and took them to the other room so I wouldnt have to look at them.
I made so many mistakes: 1 . Didnt write things down on paper and relied on my computer, 2 got in a hurry when I should not have. 3. got distracted 4. poured too hot. 5. didnt not have an extra mold prepared. 6. Got too big for my britches and thought I knew what I was doing.
Im not looking for advice on my recipe at this point it wouldnt help. I am so busy kicking myself in the butt for the mistakes that I did make and I needed to vent. I have a long drive ahead of me tomorrow and wont really get to see how bad this is going to turn out for about a week. My husband will be pulling that mess out of the mold for me while I am gone.
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Dawn
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