Here’s a new soap that’ll be going in the December Patreon treat boxes (both regular and premium). I was inspired by my friend Kel Bachus, who hosts Fiberworld, and the way dyers name their yarns — this stockinette-stitch patterned soap, I’m naming “Dragonheart Yarn.” Kel themself has the heart of a dragon.
It’s not actually yarn, see! But it looks like yarn! And it is gold, and sparkly, like a dragon’s heart. 
It’s a good thing I amuse myself.
The scent offers herbaceous citrus notes of petitgrain, overlaying cassia cinnamon — warm and clean. Just the way the dragon likes its hoard of gold, when it curls up on it to take a nap.
Petitgrain is derived from the leaves and twigs of the bitter orange tree; neroli oil is derived from the blossoms, and bitter orange oil is derived from the rinds of the fruit. A very useful tree for perfumery! The name Petitgrain is a French word that translates to “little grains.” It was given this name because the fruit of the bitter orange tree is quite small for a citrus fruit—about the size of a cherry.
Petitgrain is supposedly good for calming the nervous system and relieving anxiety, also for relieving acne, but I have only the word of petitgrain manufacturers for that, so I hesitate to claim any accuracy there, until peer-reviewed studies show up!
It’ll take a while to make the 25+ soaps I’ll need for the treat boxes, since I only have one mold. I have to melt the soap, pour it, let it set, re-melt it, repeat; it takes about an hour or so for each soap to be ready. So I’ll be working on these over the next three days, probably. The nice thing about being stuck at home is that it makes it easier to intersperse a few minutes for this sort of project in between other work.
