This has worked, quite beautifully! The soap, which we last saw in their moulds drying off in the airing-cup
board, hardened far more quickly than I thought it would, and I was able to turn it out yesterday. Meanwhile, I tried using one of the washballs, and found it delightful, so decided to make some more as I had a bit of time. They are currently hardening in the airing-cupboard (the original 5 are on the same plate, to make life easier!).
Then this morning I decided the moulded soap was hard enough to cut up, and, behold - 16 bars of soap flecked with lavender and/or rose-petals.
These can sit on the corridor cupboard to dry for a few more days, and next week I will wrap and label them, all ready to be given away!
As I still have a drawerful of ends-of-moulds and so on waiting to be used, I think I will use them up in these sorts of bars before making any fresh!
Those of you who know me well will know that I have been making my own soap for many, many years. It never ceases to amaze me how drain cleaner and cooking-fat can be turned into the most lush and lavish soap - I almost never wash my face with anything else.
However, this also means that I have a drawer-ful of bits of soap - mostly the ends of moulds that aren't nice enough to give away. We use these in our bathroom, but obviously a bar lasts some time, and the drawer was getting fuller and fuller.
But the other day, I came across this video on YouTube.
And that gave me some ideas. I started by making a few balls as proof of concept,
but then it occurred to me that one could make some extremely nice soap by melting down existing bars with rosewater or orange flower water, and maybe adding some ground-up flowers or herbs.
You start by grating your soap, 2 or 3 bars at a time,
then put in a bowl with your flowers, if using (I used lavender and rose-petals in the first lot, and just rose petals in the second lot. You moisten this with rose-water, or orange-flower water, and stir vigorously. Now at this stage you can absolutely form the resulting squidge into balls and let them harden off, as Sally does in the video, but I chose to melt the soap down. This is done in the microwave, a minute at a time, stirring vigorously between bursts. When it has gone fairly liquid and looks absolutely revolting,
pour into moulds (I used silicone loaf tins for this, to distinguish from the empty water-bottles I usually use), cover with cling-film or whatever, and put in a warm place to harden off.
When they are hard, probably in three or four days (although they'll have to come out of the airing-cupboard before then as it'll be wanted for clean laundry!), I'll unmould them, and probably slice them up a few days later.
If they are a success, I'll be using up all my ends before I even think about making more goats' milk and/or lavender and/or oat milk soap! I'll update on the results in Part 2.
Update: For Easter Day, I boiled up yellow onion skins the day before and left them to sit overnight, then boiled our breakfast eggs in them this morning, with this result:
In German supermarkets, they sell boxes of six or ten hard-boiled eggs, dyed pretty colours, all year round, and I often buy them, both for us to eat at lunchtime and to take home for my mother, who likes them.
However, we are not in Germany, and won't be going for another month, and it is Eastertide. I have vague memories of reading that one could dye eggs with natural ingredients, and then a picture form this post popped up in my Facebook feed. So I had a couple of experiments.
WARNING: The eggs, while perfectly edible, are horrendously hard - I still haven't quite perfected them. The ones you buy in Germany are hard-boiled, of course, but not to the extent that they get a black ring round the yolk, But I think it's probably difficult not to when making them at home.
The basic recipe is very simple. In a stainless-steel saucepan you put your dyestuff of choice (I used firstly 1/2 packet of frozen blueberries, and then secondly the skins of 5 or 6 red onions), and a large spoonful of vinegar. Fill the saucepan with water, bring to the boil, and simmer for 20-30 minutes (don't let the saucepan boil dry, which I nearly did!). If necessary, top up with cold water and bring to the boil again. Let it cool, strain out all the solids, and then add your eggs - as many as you can spare, or as can comfortably fill the saucepan, bring back to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes, then let them cool in the liquid. If they aren't coloured enough, let them soak a little longer. Remove from the water and admire! When cold, polish with olive oil.
This was my first attempt, with blueberries:
and the next day's, with red onion skins:
Of course, the colours will vary according to whether you use white eggs (not so easy to get here, but Lidl does sometimes have them) or brown. I think for Easter Day I'll use yellow onion skins (maybe make the dye bath the night before) and then just boil the eggs as normal for Easter morning breakfast. We shall see....
