Scrub Up For Spring

"A bit premature" you may be thinking!

February, however, is the start of Spring in the old Celtic calendar - it is the month when green shoots start to appear and the snowdrops, Fair Maids of February are in flower. The beginning of February is also Imbolc/Oimelc (Oimelc = Ewes' Milk) when the first lambs would be born (although today there will have been some already).

My three new scrubs will be onsite from the start of February - a good idea for preparing yourself for Valentine's Day (or for a Valentine present!)


All three have had excellent reports from the testers, with no firm favourite. From left to right they are:

• Hey Mango! a medium textured cornmeal scrub for most areas of the body with Mango Butter, Papaya oil and a natural Mango Fragrance.
• Karakorum a more vigorous saltbased scrub with Himalayan, Dead Sea and Atlantic salts in a base which contains Kokum Butter and Black Seed oil - a really luxurious and exotic scrub with a fragrant spicey blend of Essential Oils.
• Face the Morning with powdered Cardamom, Fair Trade Golden Caster Sugar and Grapefruit Essential Oil in Jojoba and Grapeseed oil base. The majority of testers found this suitable as a facial scrub/masque.
  

Keep your eyes on Fresholi Bites for an introductory offer!

(must keep my eyes open for a goodly clump of snowdrops to take a pic)

Soap Mould from Germany

Corrie of Lomond Soaps (see blog list) arranged the purchase of some of these partitioned moulds from Germany so I tried a batch of HP Castille.

I put my soap into the mould end of the afternoon and demoulded about 10.30pm (went out to eat with Child and S in Shotton on (the unroyal) Deeside.

I used 1300 oils (olive with bit of coconut for Castille) but will have to arrange crockpot (5.5ltre) the other way round next time as I couldn't lift it to pour the way it was and had to use a ladle - so despite banging a few times the batter didn't level completely.



When I pushed the dividers down the edges of the soaps curved downwards - so they've not sunk in the middle at all.

De-moulding was no problem 'cos it's cold in the utility and I just pushed the soaps down and out.



Parchment had wrinkled on the base - I'll cut a piece of teflon oven liner to fit before next lot. The tops of these will have to be planed but if I'm making a scrub soap I'll sprinkle a layer of oatmeal or whatever on the top.

On second thoughts perhaps I won't plane the tops - it's quite a nice texture and there's a potential here for swirling (my HP soap batter is quite fluid as I add Sodium Lactate at trace.

Compliments of the Season