Lessons in Soapmaking

If you line your mold with plastic bags, make sure it's not writing side in. I have nice Hyvee soap now.




(I'm not entirely sure it's soap. I licked it and it didn't zap me, so I think it's good. I let it sit 3 days before cutting but it's very very very soft still.)

It was really neat to make. Sadly I didn't pay attention when I added the color (really cool swirl) to see that the blue mica is not stable in cold process, so the color just disappeared completely. And honestly, it's kind of expensive to get all the oils. It's going to be a long time before I can use 12 bars of funky hyvee soap, but I hope to make more again sometime. (After they cure and I use them, I might give some away if they are any good)

Dye pot

When Suzy came over we did some dyeing with Wilton's icing dyes. Mine are old, so they didn't blend as well as they should (I suggested we use mine, knowing that if she didn't open hers yet they wouldn't dry out as quickly- since we wanted to use a sampler of all the colors.)

Gunky, or not, they still produced beautiful colors! Kevin just got a new dutch oven, so I arranged my nest of new yarns in it. I liked the way the small teal ball turned out so much I dyed one of my new skeins of Sheila's gold with the teal too!

I haven't had a lot to say lately. To tell you the truth it's because not much is going on. I lead a pretty boring life- don't sleep well at night, go to work, come home, attempt to sleep. That's about it. There is generally knitting thrown in the middle, and occasionally ice skating that I am not enjoying a lot, or yoga that hurts my calves. (I didn't make it to yoga today due to a stomach ache...)

Today, Suzy came over to play with yarn. We dyed up lots of semi-solids and I'll try to post tomorrow after they dry.

The other big news of the weekend is I finally finished the baby quilt. It's not a masterpiece at all, but it should be perfectly functional for a new baby. I hope baby and mom like it.

Here is the top: My favorite part is the really thin line diagonal quilting. I planned to do some more of it, but it turnd out it took forever, and I just wasn't up to it.

Turns out I love piecing quilts, but not so much quilting them. But the payoff is the back of a finished quilt. I love the way the designs look on the solid. LIke I said- it's not perfect, but I'm very pleased. I like the back better than the front, I think. (Good job picking the fabric Kevin!)

I had to use bias strip for the binding (though I didn't do the seamless binding technique, I took the sloppy, easy way out.) I usually just fold over the backing, but I accidentally cut into it when trimming the batting. Oops. So the backing got trimmed off too..
I'm happy to be done, and sorry I didn't make it in time for the baby's birthday.

Yarn Swap!

Remember the adorable pictures of mini skeins of yarn I posted a while back?

Do you want some adorable mini skeins of yarn? Yarn with silver, gold, or other metallic-ness to it?

Join the swap I'm hosting!
I'll even make it easy to you- after you've selected your yarn, ship it directly to me (or order it from my yarn store and I'll pick it up- contact me on Ravelry for more details) and wind it into mini-skeins for you.

For details, check out this thread: http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/blankiemania/1211333/1-25

Nothing...

I've been absent from my blog because I just have nothing interesting to blog about.

I went to Zenergi today for the 4:00 hot yoga class. It wasn't hot at all (the thermometer said 89 when I walked in... we keep the house at 80, though of course the studio is all kinds of humid) but I was sweating like crazy.

Can I be un-PC and say I really dislike having men in the class. It's distracting. During one pose- at the very BEGINNING of the class- we wrung out hands together and a waterfall-like cascade of sweat poured off the man a few mats down from me. Ewwww... it doesn't stay on their mats, it pools all around them. And men rarely wear shirts in class, and some even wear speedos. It's never in shape men who don't have shirts on. I'm out of shape, I wear a shirt to hide my stomach. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to be looking at other people, but I'm encouraged to watch myself in the mirror, if I'm seeing myself in the mirror, I'm seeing- even if I'm not focusing- the people around me too. And while I don't care what other people's postures look like, except maybe to try to correct myself to look like someone awesome- it takes me out of my practice to see waterfalls nearby.

My other rant- what the hell is wrong with my left calf. Everytime the instructor said "this should be a nice hamstring stretch" or "do xyz if your hamstring is tight" I felt NOTHING in my hamstring, but instead felt like my left calf was burning with the fires of a thousand suns and being torn open with a dull serrated knife. It usually does this, but tonight was particularly bad.

Maybe yoga is not for me. But neither is ballet, or skating, or cycling. What the heck am I going to do?