Economy Bad, But Life Is Good

Thanks to this wonderful economy, I've lost a few thousand dollars in my IRA. At least I can find solace in watching a live concert courtesy of my favorite band, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. The concert took place at the Paradiso in Amsterdam on October 10, 2008 and was broadcast live by Fab Channel. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that Fab Channel created a video widget to encourage users to put the full length concert on their sites, blogs or profiles!

Ever Have One of Those Days?

Although I've been making toiletries for several years, I'm fairly new to soapmaking from scratch. You can't make soap without lye and the whole lye thing really scared me. I've always been pretty klutzy so I kept picturing me spilling lye solution and ending up in a hospital burn unit.

I should have known it was going to be a bad soaping day when I couldn't find the blue soap dye I got at last year's Jersey gathering. I haven't used any coloring in any of my soap batches, so today I was going to attempt a swirl, the key word being attempt.

Today's recipe was Basic Recipe Two from Country Living's Handmade Soap book. I chose the recipe because it had wheat germ oil as one of the ingredients and I had never soaped using wheat germ oil before. It also contained a good amount of castor oil. Previously I've only used about a tablespoon of it for superfatting.

I've already added the lye to the oils when I realize I had never added the wheat germ oil when I was weighing out the oils. I've never left out an ingredient before. The batch traced nicely, so I hope the soap turns out okay.

Later, as I'm cleaning up, one of my gloves totally rips. Guess I should be grateful it didn't happen right in the middle of making the batch.