After my first almost disastrous effort with soapmaking I went straight back to the books. Double checked my recipe. Tried to learn more.
But you know, you've got to crawl before you can walk!
So I decided to try to harvest some calendula flowers to use in my second batch. I separated the heads from the petals. My new recipe called for tallow, and I was going to make tea with the heads to add into the soap. It all started innocently enough. The flowers STANK when boiling water was poured over them. Still, I was determined. I strained them out and used that for the lye water portion.
I cringe when I think about the disregard I had for any but the most basic of safety equipment. Gloves and goggles. I could so easily have been hurt. And badly. ��
Nevertheless, it managed to come together in the end. I added the petals into the batter at the end and it made a fairly nice (if somewhat oily) soap. It was my first real proper soap. It came out fine. It was awful to use though. 100% tallow. Very waxy and greasy. And it smelt.
But I made soap again, and was hooked completely and thoroughly.
You knkw, there's got to be one life lesson learned with making soap. You can expect whatever you want. But the soap does what the soap does. You can either pout and stamp your foot, or accept it. Either way it does what it wants.
In that respect it is a lesson. You don't often get a say in the way life goes. But you can choose to step back and assess each change to see if it has any value to you.
With each new soap, I step back and try to assess if I like it. Usually I pout a bit first, but then try to understand why it turned out like it did, and accept it for what it is.
Happy soaping!
Deb.
