Mistakes / Surprises – Rose Hip Soap

What the /&$/%&·(“?!???? happened to my rose hip soap?  My usually smooth pretty pink rose hip soap?  This speckled effect was completely unintentional… (love the natural light in this photo, the following 3 were with artificial light...)

I can’t think of anything I did differently other than make larger quantities (a full 48-bar mould) and maybe add a little more rose geranium essential oil than previously.

Right at the end as I was adding the trace ingredients, it started to set up on me in globs, actually one big glob, like a rock!!  Oh no… this is an expensive soap to make and I was determined to save it so I pleaded, attacked, sliced, blended, mixed, begged, coerced, chopped, bludgeoned, and blended and blended some more. Then I manipulated it into the mould.  Phew!

Note the irregular size logs.. hmm.. hmm.. the guitar string on my log splitter broke on me while cutting... another surprise!!

 I have some ideas on how to do thing slightly differently the next time, but in my smaller experimental moulds first.

Update:  Making making making soap again (Yippee yahoo!!!!), after a summer setting up the studio & shop, selling, packaging till the wee hours and 7 nights a week at markets. At the studio till 1am Friday and yesterday, tweaking my goat milk soap process and making tons of it… a rhassoul shampoo, a new salt soap with patchouli & geranium… with my husband near me in the packaging room, packaging away…  Both he and Aurora, my daughter, have really jumped on board this summer and have taken over most of the packaging.   And they are good at it!  I love that my work now incorporates family time.  Both are begging encouraging me to improve the packaging process – we are currently waiting on quotes and samples for customized boxes for soaps and stickers for the tins. So many things on the go, each one keeps me even more busy… WONDERFULLY BUSY.  I have never thrived on monotonous routine, as normally, I get bored easily.  I don’t even usually take my coffee the same, I change it up, sometimes with honey, sometimes with sugar, sometimes black, usually with milk, sometimes tea instead.  In university, I never understood why on the second day of class each student would go back to the EXACT same seat they had the previous day, and desperately hang on to that seat for the rest of the term… I would regularly change my seat as it was an opportunity to meet new people.

But now, I can’t seem to ever get bored doing what I do… it’s always so full of surprises and changes.

Coming up: More about my latest mistakes surprises.

Good vibes to you all.  Thanks for following!

Xo Jen