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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

My soap whoops

This is my latest soap, a feathered mantra swirl. I love the colors and the pattern came out very well; but I inadvertently left out the lavender essential oil, because it had spilled and I didn't know it. I have now idea how a tiny mis en place cup could tilt enough to empty about 90% of its contents then right itself up! And of course, I could smell the oil, and seeing the almost empty cup I assumed I had added it. It was only when I was removing my several layers of paper at my work station that I noticed that the oil had spilled! So now, I have a pretty, but unscented soap. My friend Kay's daughter and grand daughter are allergic to scents, so I'll have someone to give some soap to, and I'll enjoy it without the scent.

I'm eager to try this one again but I'll have to wait a couple of weeks to get a proper separator for my larger mold, since the supplier's Etsy chop is closed till the 20th and maybe longer. For making this soap in my smaller mold I made my own separators out of cardboard. It worked well enough but the spacing wasn't exact, so I wound up with not enough white to fill the mold as much as I would have liked. That's why I used the larger portion of colored leftover with the little bit of white leftover and poured it into a couple of oval  guest sized molds and did a spoon swirl with my chopstick. Lesson learned!

Yesterday a couple of friends and I went out shopping for Christmas presents for  several children from a few  disadvantaged families, and today my hip is needing a rest after all that walking on hard floors for a few hours. Our women's group is doing a great job making a nice Christmas for many local children. 

I have plenty of paperwork and computer work to do, so all is good, and I may be playing mah jongg if my friend Kay is going. She's in the middle of packing to move in a few weeks and may opt to skip it this week, and I may do the same.

I'm having a weird glitch in my computer that I need to find a fix if I can figure out how to do it. When I open my Adobe elements program, a message comes up that I have files to burn on one of my drives. And since that has happened, the program won't open correctly. It's bizarre! When I put a blank cd in to try to copy some of those files I get another error message telling me there isn't enough room even when I only try to copy a single, small file.  I'll try a different type of disc and see if the problem still exists. Even when I put a music cd in that drive, the list of files that it says I need to burn shows up as part of the contents of that music CD! And part of that problem is now the Adobe Elements won't recognize my camera, and a whole new page shows up on my desktop that only allow me to download my most recent files, and if I get out of it, next time they don't show up and my only other option is to download every photo on my camera to another folder it creates. So now I have to delete that folder because my C drive already needed a good cleaning and that made it worse! 

Computer clean up and fixes will keep me busy for quite a while as well as some kitchen cooking time.  It feels like it may be a  good night  for some New England clam chowder, or as Jim is suggesting, going out for Mexican food. Right now it's time to make some oatmeal.


2 comments:

  1. I'm not a soap or essential oils expert June, but I seem to remember being told that high grade lavender essential oil is one of those that will 'walk' on its own. Maybe you need to count the drops into the recipe direct from the bottle.

    Unrelated news: my copy of John Britt's "Mid-Range Glazes" arrived last week and I noticed a Chrome-tin glaze named "June Perry". Would that be you then?

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  2. LOL! Walk it did. It actually tipped of the bowl, emptied a majority of the contents which quickly seeped through about 5 layers of paper on to my granite counter top! I hope my food won't all be flavored lavender for a long time!
    I believe that is a glaze I share with John and others; but it's not my original glaze. But often time, even though you give your source, the person you share with will name a glaze after the person who gave it to them. I'd prefer is credit were given to the source, when known, but everyone has to managed their glaze name references in a way that works for them.

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