December 22, 1998

Yep, it's true, I'm being abysmal about updating the diary! Wait for the holidays and new year and my birthday to be over and I'll be better, I promise. :)

So today I'm going to summarize what has happened lately... well, I tried three new things -- using goatsmilk (evaporated), using hempseed oil, and using GSE. (Not all at once :) Oh wait, four new things -- we also got a potato ricer to squish soap for rebatching, and DB broke it :) He squeezed it too hard and bent it out of shape, when the soap was a little too hard to squish easily. So now I need a new potato ricer -- what little did get squished, squished really really well. So I'm holding out for a new potato ricer in my stocking. :)

I made rose soap on December 2, I think it was. Now, I screwed that batch up when I made it. I wrote down 4 oz. lye instead of 5, so the batch was really soft. I was going to rebatch this batch last night, by melting it down in the oven and making a new batch of castile scented with the rest of my FO and mixing the two batches. This is the batch that made a twisted mess out of my potato ricer though, so it hasn't gotten done yet.

New recipe! Goatsmilk and hempseed soap -- typing the recipe in from memory now, will correct it later.

Mix:
10 oz. hempseed oil
30 oz. olive oil (pomace)
12 oz. palm kernel oil
8 oz. lye
12 oz. water

At trace:
12 oz. can evaporated goatsmilk
2 oz hempseed oil

I poured the cold goatsmilk into the hot soap mix, so I got little grains. I think next time I should gently warm the goatsmilk first. (Well, next time I used canned, that is.) It had a nice nutty scent that I liked, but Steve didn't like it quite as much, so we split the batch and scented one half with 2 oz. sweet orange EO. Turned the bars out the next day and beveled the edges; so far it's a nice creamy color (kind of like nougat). Little scraps that I washed my hands at lathered really well and left my skin feeling nice, without the annoying dry, tight feeling. Got a good feeling about that batch. :)

Cocoa butter cream:
I tried making this to go along with my pure cocoa butter soap. Didn't like it as much as I thought I would; the cocoa butter seems to more form a protective layer over the skin than soak in. It would probably be great as a protective hand cream, a la Avon's Silicone Glove hand cream (you apply it before you go do something that's going to be harsh on your hands, so it protects your skin). I just wanted to make a small batch to try it out, so I made up the recipe myself using the guidelines on MMS' site.

0.5 oz. cocoa butter
0.1 oz. glycerine
0.1 oz. stearic acid
0.1 oz. e-wax
0.1 oz. GSE
1.1 oz. distilled water

Melted the cocoa butter, stearic, and e-wax in the microwave, then added the glycerine and GSE. Nuked it a bit longer, then started wisking in the water. Took it a little while (20 minutes?) to stop separating and cool a bit. I poured it into a 2 oz. double-walled jar and it filled it about 4/5 of the way. It was pretty thin for a cream (eg, it wouldn't hold a chocolate chip shape) at first, but a day later it had a nice thick texture. It's a nice cream, and it does seem to be appreciated by my skin :) but it doesn't seem to soak in quite all the way.