The Week in Soap: 21st May ’17

Did you have a good weekend?  I’ve no idea where this last week has gone – seemed to fly by!  My husband was away for a couple of nights at the beginning of the week, so although I managed to make a couple of batches on Tuesday night, once the kids were in bed, I didn’t manage to get as much done this week as I usually would… He’s away again next week, for three nights I think, and as it’s half term and both kids are off school, it could well be a rather unproductive week soapwise…

Anyhow, back to the good stuff. These were Tuesday’s batches – Clarity and Luscious Lavender:

And, for once, I managed to photograph the freshly cut bars – forgive the rough edges, these were taken just minutes after cutting:

I’m still on the hunt for soap boxes – I knew there was a reason I put it off for so long, it’s not an easy search!  I’ll update when I have something to share.

This week saw the arrival of the last parcel (all the way from the US) in the 2017 International Soap Swap. I don’t want to spoil any surprises so I can’t really give anything away until all participants have received their return packages, but oooohhhhh I’m so excited to share.  There should have been 15 of us in total, but 6 had to pull out for one reason or another, and the final count is 9.  The contents of these boxes are stunning, and will be posted out to their rightful owners by the end of the week.  Stay tuned as I can’t wait to share their contents with you….

My soapmaking routine is taking a bit of a shuffle this week.  I’ve always been in the habit of making soap on a Tuesday night, so that I have a batch to cut at my soapmaking presentation on a Thursday night (48 hours later).  However, the venue has asked me to move my talk to Wednesday nights (after my kickboxing training – eek!) for the foreseeable future, and therefore I  need to make soap on a Monday night from now on.  It does however free Thursday night up for soapmaking too, so my schedule from now on will mean soapmaking on a Monday and a Thursday as a general rule.

There you go, that was my soapy week in a nutshell. In other news, we spent most of yesterday working in the garden.  Have I mentioned our back garden yet?  It was a complete jungle when we moved into the house, and it’s slowly being tamed into submission.  This was it last year – just look at those overgrown boundaries :-O (But on a positive note they hid pounds and pounds of juicy blackberries)

Then, after lots and lots of hacking, digging etc etc etc we got to this point a couple of weeks ago:

And by the end of yesterday:

I’m starting to see potential, and am getting excited about what we could do with it.  It slopes upwards, so it’s foreshortened in this picture, and is actually longer than it looks.  I have dreams of a greenhouse, a seating area, raised beds for veg and salad, and plenty of flower beds.  I absolutely adore gardening, and can’t wait to get to it properly! And obviously I’ll be sure to share the progress 🙂

Thanks for reading – back soon!