The Soapinator

I mentioned to my wonderful husband that I would like him to make me a soap mold that would hold about twice as many as my current mold holds. On one particularly cold and windy day, he went outside to work for a while, and came in a short while later with this:



I'm sure you can tell, but I tilted it on it's side so you can get an idea of what the inside looks like. Bernie dubbed it "The Soapinator". I couldn't wait to put it to the test.

I whipped up a batch scented with a Lavender L'Occitane type fragrance last night. The Soapinator easily held the 8.75 pound batch of soap I poured into it! Here's a picture of it, filled with soap and topped with the lid he made for it:



I could hardly wait to unmold the soap today and cut the bars. The Soapinator did great - and I ended up with 27 bars! It would have been 28, but I cut a little off each end to use as tester bars. My soap didn't turn out as I had envisioned. It was supposed to be white soap with lavender swirls, topped with white soap shavings and a thin layer of the lavender on top to just barely coat the shavings. Well, the white turned rather beige, the lavender turned rather plum, and the lavender over the shavings is too thick. I still think it turned out OK - just not quite what I had in mind. I'm going to name it Lavender Breeze. Here's a picture of the whole batch:



As a bonus - you can also see the yellow walls of the kitchen in most of these pictures! To be fair, the colors are a little off. I used my camera with no flash. The soap is more purple than the picture shows - and the walls are a brighter yellow, if that's at all possible.

Bernie stood by to watch as I sliced each bars. He made some interesting observations about the swirls. For example, he commented that these two look a bit like ape faces:



He also found faces in all of these:




Unfortunately none look like the Virgin Mary or Elvis. We won't be getting rich off EBay with this batch. Darnit.

I wonder what, if anything, you see in these? It's sort of like an ink blot test. Only whatever you see will be interpretted as meaning you are insane. But wait.... that's exactly how the ink blot test works. So I guess it really is an ink blot test and you really are insane.

Bernie has close to 3/4 of the fence posts in now. He's also taken down several trees that were dead and threatening to fall in the path of the fence. Once he takes down a tree, he also saws it up for firewood and stacks it, and then shreds the small left over brances. All of this takes a fair amount of time. I'm sure he will be happier than I am when that fence is finally finished!

On another note, we just finished our 6th month living on the homestead. Can you believe it's been that long? I can't. Bernie is getting as bad as I am about leaving this place. In the last two weeks he has only left this place twice. And he wasn't happy about either of them. I'm fairly certain the neighbors will begin to think of us as those crazy people that live in the middle of the woods that no one ever sees. But I'm not so sure that's such a bad thing.

Bee Free,
Penny