Saturday Makinday

My friend Diane renames certain days of the week "Makinday."  These are the days when she's slamming the soap production and filling her soap curing racks with her creations.

This past Saturday, I'd planned a Makinday, and one of my friends wanted to watch the process.  I'd already started by the time Bobby showed up (I'd been itching to get started), but he was able to see one of the soaps from start to finish.  What was so exciting about this?  I absolutely LoVe teaching people how to make soap, and I really get a charge out of sharing my passion with others.  The fact that this was a friend just made it all that much better.

We started with a rebatch of wine soap.  Bobby and my younger daughter shredded the soap into the bowl while I gathered everything for the second batch.  After pouring some water over the soap shreds and covering the bowl, we moved on to the next soap.

Soap #2 was Lemon Grove Gardeners Soap.  This was a cold process batch and is very straight-forward.  It's a scrumptious blend of skin-lovin' base oils, an exclusive essential oil blend, corn meal and calendula petals.  It wasn't long before that soap was tucked into bed, covered and insulated.

Bobby helped with Soap #3.  He measured and melted some of the oils and ran the stick blender for the very few minutes before the soap came to a heavy trace.  This batch was Drama Llama, a fun soap with subtle sparkles and a frosted appearance.  Unfortunately, this batch took much longer than anticipated to neutralize, and Bobby had to head home before it was finished.  Before dinner time, Drama Llama was in the mould and filling our lower level with the scent of amber, vanilla and musk.

After dinner, I was able to get back to Soap #1, that wine soap rebatch.  It got nicely melty and it was time to scent and color it.  For this soap, I brought back a Sara's Soaps 'n Such exclusive fragrance, Pacific Sunset.  Pacific Sunset is an enticing, intriguing blend of jasmine and eucalyptus.  I mixed up my colorants and added them to my soap.  The bronze, green and yellow swirls were beautiful, exactly what I'd wanted.  And then I saw the fragrance still sitting on the counter.  Uh oh!  The swirls didn't come out quite as beautiful once I slowly, carefully folded the fragrance into the soap.  But this soap will mellow out to pure loveliness with its antioxidant-rich wine and zippy scent.

Lemon Grove will be available in about three weeks, and Drama Llama and Pacific Sunset should be ready in a week-and-a-half.  Be sure to follow my Facebook page to find out exactly when these jewels will be available.

Of these three soaps, which one sounds the best to you, and why?