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Wild success! I made a classic castile-brine soap (mostly olive oil and sea salt, sweet orange & black pepper scent), and instead of using a Savon stamp, I got to use my Serendib House stamp (that’s a little tea leaf in the logo), and it worked beautifully and they smell so great and I love […]

So I un-molded my re-batched failed cold press soap experiment #1, and while I would have to say the end result is ‘rustic’ at best, it IS soap, and it DOES hold together rather than crumbling the way it was before, so we’ll call that a provisional win, shall we? We’ll see what shape it’s

One of the main goals of the summer is to ‘get this house in order,’ which breaks down into three major categories: – catch up on the outdoor clean-up and weeding and planting that I am woefully behind on (more this year than any year before, alas — I haven’t laid down mulch yet, for

I knew I would get bored with being a blonde, and I could’ve just dyed it all another color, but I was also getting tired of fussing with ponytails and the like, especially since I’m trying to do more daily exercise that gets me sweaty or gets me in the pool, so I figured it

I re-batched the failed cold-process soap #1; it’ll be a few days before I can try to unmold it. So on to cold-process experiment #2 — castile-brine, a combination of olive oil, lye, water, and sea salt. Apparently this kind of soap improves as it ages, and is considered to be at its prime after

When I tried to unmold my cold-process soap, it clearly had issues. Cracking and crumbling, and nothing unmolded cleanly. The question is, what went wrong? I’ve been trying to read up, and there seem to be lots of possible issues — the wrong amount of water or lye (problem with the recipe), or maybe more

Usually, I’m pretty decent at crafting — I follow instructions carefully, and get a solid end result. But sometimes things go really awry. A few months ago, I tried making cold-process soap for the first time. I think I did fine with measuring and combining the ingredients, and I was feeling fine when I poured