Monday after a Holiday...is always a welcome for me. I love to have special times but I love to return to my normal daily life. I'm catching up on laundry today and we are being blessed with RAIN...yeah! We are in a drought here in the southeast and we sure need it. I won't be able to use my clothes line, but hey, I don't mind the convienence of the drier sometimes.

Yesterday we found a website that had a description for a quilters frame. I'm so excited about that...I've been wanting to finish my queen quilt this fall but hadn't because of the need of a frame. I bought a loop for my lap, but really that would have been difficult to work with on such a large quilt. Here is the site: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Quilting-2339/Frame.htm

We have the supplies we need to make it, but the wood is outside and I'm sure wet so we will wait for it to be dry out.

This quilt has a color theme...of plums and greens, and I'm using the fence post pattern. I think it's pretty, but I have realized I like the older quilts that have no other theme except to keep the children warm. So, the next quilt I make will be just squares of scrape fabric. I'm sure there is a name for those...I'm not really an experienced quilter, but love it and hope to do more of it. Oh yes, I'm saving old blue jeans to make a picnic blanket...one for each of my kids. Maybe useing the red and white check for the backing and just tieing these quilts using red yarn.

This winter I also want to learn to hand spin....I will have to learn on a hand spindle for now. I am hoping to go to a beginners class this month. Maybe a lamb will be added to my goat flock this spring....hehe. Or an angora rabbit...that seems more reasonable for now, but I've always wanted sheep.

we'll see.......

Thursday, May 24, 2007

It's so hard to get started....But I thought today would be a good day, since I made my first batch of bar soap. I used a simple recipe that was for a small batch...which was wonderful because I had all the equiptment that I needed right in my kitchen. I have been wanting to do this for years, but have always been a little nervous to deal with lye. And honestly, it sounded harder then it was, and maybe working with the larger batches would be more difficult.

The recipe I used was for goat milk soap...

1 pound of vegetable lard

2 oz of lye

3/4 cups of partially frozen goats milk

Fragrance or Essential oils to flavor...I used lavender in one batch and then I used honey and finely ground oats...

Everything turned out good, except the honey seems to be too strong smelling...smells a little like those "Bit-o-Honey" candies. The lavender not strong enough. But the consistancy of the bars felt wonderful. Of course, I won't be able to use them until they finish curing ... 2-3 weeks minimum. The longer the better is what I've read. I mixed this soap up yesterday and let it harden in the molds for 24 hours.

For the molds I found a 3 inch pvc pipe in the barn. I cut 3 pieces about 8 inches each. I put vaseline in the inside and plastic wrap w/a rubber band at one end. I filled the molds and placed them in a igloo cooler with towels wrapped around the molds and closed the lid to the cooler to insulate them well. This morning when I took my soap out that I made yesterday...it came out of the mold easily. I had to push a little ..but once it started it just came on out. In a few weeks I'll be able to use some pretty round bars of lavender. and honey & oatmeal soap. Each batch made 7 bars.

After those two batches, I had the fever...and I tried another batch using Olive oil, coconut oil, advocado oil w/vit E, and vegetable lard. This wasn't as easy as the first recipe. I now have read that olive oil is slow to trace...

This recipe was:

5 oz olive oil

4 oz coconut oil

2 oz advocado oil

5 vegetable lard

2.25 oz lye

7 oz of partially frozen goats milk

I stired this for over an hour and it never came to a light trace.    I could feel that the bowl was cool to touch, so I had an   I heated the mixture up by pouring it into my stainless steal pan on the very lowest setting on my stove. I stirred it to keep it from scorching the milk. When I could feel it was getting warmer I took it off the heat and got my hand mixer out,  beating on low for about 20 minutes. Finally!... a light trace.  I quickly poured the luscious looking soap into my mold and I guess I will find out tomorrow if it worked. I fragranced this batch with Ylang Ylang and a little orange. I'll try to take pictures of my soap tomorrow....