Recent content by Hawksquill

Made soap today for the first time in...months, probably? I prepped everything, took my time, got my husband to help me and I'm super happy with the results!

Stroller

Car

That much castor might make your soap sticky/tacky. I think in one recipe I used 7% and that felt like too much - I don't use above 5% now. Also, castor accelerates trace so you might not want to use as much of it for a recipe if you're planning to do a lot of swirls. I've never used it but...

Welcome! I lived in VA for a long time. And I'm going to try making my first shaving soap sometime this week - nervous but excited!

Wish Lambs Always Meshed DOOR

It's been far too long since I soaped or came on the forum, but I made a batch a couple days ago scented with white tea and ginger FO. The colors turned out more pastel than I was imagining, particularly because I forced gel, but I think it looks like strawberry ice cream and cotton candy so...

Cut two soaps today! Pretty happy with the results, and they smell awesome :)

What a lovely photo, congrats! :)

Congrats on your first batch! :)

Made two batches of soap today! One is a belated Christmas gift for some friends, red, green, and white swirled Bastile scented with spearmint and clove EO. The other is a version of what's rapidly becoming my base recipe, purple with red and copper swirls and scented with litsea, rosemary...

Thanks, both! I've used salt water a few times before but don't remember it being quite this cloudy - either I've forgotten or maybe there's some other factor at play! Straining is a good idea for next time :)

So I'm making soap today and for the first time ever, my lye solution is REALLY cloudy. I'm using hardware store-bought 100% lye, but I've used lye from this container before and never had this problem. Possible factors: 1) I'm using old salt water that I mixed a while ago and left in the...

If you like sci-fi/fantasy I always recommend Nnedi Okorafor! Afro-futurist sci-fi/fantasy depending on the book. I highly recommend the Binti trilogy and the Akata Witch books.

Ugh, I can totally sympathize with the plight of home ownership. My reading took the biggest dip after I graduated college (I was an English and history major, and did a reading-heavy master's, too) so I was totally burnt out on reading. New jobs, moving, buying a house certainly don't help...