Busy, Busy, Busy


So it was kind of a crappy weekend for me. I stayed home the whole time, made a big pot of Italian Soup & stayed in my housecoat!! While contemplating whether I'd ever see my navel again, I kept on knitting touques. I now have 17 finished & 1 still on the needles. At this rate, I think I'll go for a personal best & knit 20 before the weekend when I'll drop them off!! I actually found some 'manly' yarn in blue, green & black - there was some red & some rust but not enough to work with - so I thought I'd better use it up in a good cause - head coverings! I know they don't look like much but they come down over the ears, they're nice & stretchy & feel good on! The afghan of squares will just have to wait till later. I may finish it up over the Holidays while watching all the OLD MOVIES on the tube. 'It's a Wonderful Life' in the original black & white was on this past weekend. You just know we're getting close when they start running that one!!

And just so you don't think I'm stuck in a rut - I made a batch of soap too! I have my favorite soap molds which are rounded to fit in my hand in the shower. I'm not fond of square or rectangular bars but I do like the shape of the DOVE bar. So I make mine curved on one side to fit the hand & flat on the other to sit in the soap dish. I love my Beehive & Lady Bug molds which I tend to use almost exclusively. Once upon a time, I made soap from Beef Tallow or a mix of olive & coconut oils & Gillett's Flaked Lye. I used the recipe out of the Reader's Digest "Back to Basics" book. I let my soap almost set & rolled it into balls which I flattened on one side removing most of my fingerprints in the process.

Then I found Voyageur Soap & Candle Company & my soap life changed forever! I'm lazy these days, I use a soap mold & buy my oils in bottles, premeasured & premixed. The lye is also premeasured for the mixture of oils. The nice part of all this is that I can get several kinds of blends that would cost a fortune to mix myself from bulk stock for a fraction of the cost. A couple of times a year I stock up & that's it. Soaping is a lot of fun but when you make it from scratch with lye, it has to "AGE" for at least 2 weeks so that the lye stops working. I prefer to age it for 4 weeks so that I don't inadvertently give myself another facial 'PEEL' like the one I gave myself with two week old soap!! It should "AGE" for a couple more months so it lasts longer in the shower too. My soap sits atop the drying rack for a couple of weeks & then goes into an airy wicker basket to harden for several more months.