Author: bluesun

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Round bars and solid lotion

I intended to make two soaps today but I wound up not having the time.  Instead I’ve been working on packaging and tried making a few solid lotion bars as a test.  First, the new label pattern.

This may be a little dark, but I wanted something “citrus” themed for the label background for the “Tropical Citrus” soap.  I like the almost glass-like look of the cut fruit.  (My printer only does black and white).

Then I moved on to wrapping and labeling the round shampoo bars.  These are my first label mockups. I learned that I have to put the label on the flat side (the top is bumpier than the bottom).  Below that are my 4 tiny solid lotion bars to test out.  They are made with shea butter, beeswax, coconut oil and sweet almond oil.

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Seascape Kayak – Quick Update

Using the right tools and some WD-40 I managed to get the rudder apart.  Here are the metal pieces that need to be straightened.

And here is the critical central plastic piece that holds the rudder to the boat and allows the blade to slide up and down.  It’s seen better days.  I’m going to see if my Maker friends can cut a new one or if we need to purchase it from the manufacturer.

I’m currently researching the deck cording to see if I can do better than $.50 per foot.

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Broken Kayaks – Before

I made soap this week, but I haven’t taken pictures of it yet – those will come later. Instead, since we had a rare patch of sun today, I decided to repair a crack in the cockpit of my kayak and have a look at the free one donated to our club a few weeks ago.

The repair of my thigh brace went well – the company sent me a plastic patch to lay over the top (it’s a 14′ Delta Kayak, made from a lightweight ABS plastic) and some epoxy to hold it in place after a bit of sanding.  I love my Delta.  It weighs nothing (45 lbs), it has unique ‘gas-pedal’ style rudder pedals, a surprising amount of bulk storage, and a snack hatch!  It’s just fun to paddle.  I’m not entirely sure how the thigh brace cracked.  My guesses are either that I jumped into it too abruptly launching from a rocky patch into a quick-moving stream or something to do with my 13-year-old son.

The donated kayak is a 21 foot fiberglass tandem. A “Seascape 2” by Northwest Kayaks. I’ve seen them used by a lot of touring groups in the area. It had been stored upside down under a hedge for many years and the rudder was broken off. Today I went to see what we were up against.

All the bungee needs to be replaced and I had to pry/cut off two rotten pieces of wood that had once been used to mount an outrigger.  Fixing the outrigger holes and maybe some new gel-coat should do it for taking care of the body.  I don’t trust the hatch seals, but I’ll test those when I get it into the water.

The rudder needs the most work. The blade is bent and the plastic parts are cracked or broken completely in half so it is no longer attached to the boat

These are my ‘before’ shots.  I hope we can either replace or manufacture all the parts we need to get this rudder working again, and get the whole thing cleaned up – it’s filthy.

EDIT

A shot of the 2 kayaks side-by-side.  The 21 foot tandem makes my 14 foot long sea kayak look like a toy.

The patch job on my Delta’s thigh brace.

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Arboretum

I managed to come down with the 3-week crud that has been plaguing everyone, but late last week I finally felt up to moving around and we went down to Seattle to catch the cherry trees before the blooms faded.  I didn’t wind up with too many great photos of cherry blossoms, but there was quite a bit to impress.

What I learned:  I need to think about the composition of my shots more and I find that difficult when I’m still tired.  It’s hard to nail the focus on macro shots, especially when I don’t have a tripod. I’m still learning how to take photos in aperture priority mode and it’s not always a success.

ferns and moss on a tree
tiny orange bells
mysterious fairy glen
fiddlehead
hellebore
katsura

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Skara Brae & Hobbits

I’m hoping someone else will find this as exciting as I do. This summer we visited Scotland and I made sure to stop at all the archaeological sites until my family rebelled.  This was the best moment for me.

Skara Brae is a neolithic settlement of semi-subterranean earth-houses on Orkney.  There are up to 8 dwellings and a workshop here, all connected with underground passages.

Skara Brae

Back in 1992 I was informed that my observation that the crannoga of Switzerland sounded a lot like the Lake Town from the Hobbit was not just a coincidence.   Thus, I was pleased to discover this hobbit-village-looking illustration in Skara Brae.

Artists impression of Skara Brae by Jim Proudfoot

The illustration isn’t the best part.  Look at the artists name!  (If you can’t make it out – the artist is Jim Proudfoot).  That’s the hobbitiest hobbit name ever.

A few miles from Skara Brae there are multiple other Neolithic sites including the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness, and a chambered cairn.  The Ring is surrounded by barrows, so that we left Skara Brae, and seemed to travel a few miles to the barrow downs described by Tom Bombadil.  The bus driver warned us to walk counterclockwise around the stones or else you’d get pregnant (not eaten by wights, but I have my suspicions).

Ring of Brodgar
Barrow at Ring of Brodgar
Standing Stones of Stenness
This is exactly what it looks like before the wights get you.

Conspicuously missing: menacing forest and hobbit-eating willow tree.  There are almost no trees on Orkney.

 

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Soap pot this week

Last night I made a new solid shampoo bar since the trial worked out great (and I was starting to run out).  These are scented with lemon & rosemary.  I’ve never used this combination before but some friends were suggesting that in addition to the sweet-dessert scents (coffee, chocolate, honey, vanilla) I needed some savory scents as well.   You still shouldn’t eat the soap.

The scent didn’t carry through as well as I would have liked so the next batch I will increase the amount of essential oils.  They look fantastic though.

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And here is the annatto-infused oil that I plan to use for my next batch which is also going to be a citrus-scent: Bergamot and Litsea.

I think these count toward my 365, but I don’t know what number I’m up to.

 

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Aikido at the shrine

I attend an aikido class a few times a week.  I’m still very much a novice, but it gets me moving and I find it is frequently the only time during the week when I am truly ‘present’ in my own body.

This weekend a friend invited me to attend a class at a nearby shinto temple.  It was a great experience – a different style of instruction with a different emphasis in techniques.  I didn’t think to bring my camera, but my daughter took some images.

It’s amazing to me that something like this is so close.

Kitsune shrine
Kaeru
temizuya water pavillion with a dragon spout and underwater frog
One of the outdoor holy places. I love all the moss.
Inside the shrine
the torii gate
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Moustrap Car Racing

It’s one month later and time to test our designs.

My eldest had the idea to let the cars ‘fight’ and I suggested mounting a wedge-shape onto the front of it to knock other cars over (I used to watch BattleBots) but alas, we didn’t devote enough time to this project during the month and now there is no time.

2-mousetrap prototypes under construction

Somehow adding a second mousetrap failed to result in the higher level of performance I was expecting from our mousetrap cars.  When raced most of them didn’t move at all.  In some cases I could point to obvious problems: too much friction on the wheels, mousetrap not securely fastened.  But my prototype which was just the original, working model with a new mousetrap added, also didn’t move.  Clearly more research is needed.

Here are some photos of the lineup.  No video because I can’t edit the children’s faces out of them.

Starting Lineup

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Coffee & Cocoa results

I cut the soaps that I made yesterday.  Overall good news!   Like all new soaps they smell of lye but I can also get a bit of coffee and chocolate in the coffee soap and the warm ‘graham cracker’ scent that I like in the oatmeal honey.

Now for the science!

Both batches have some vanillin powder in them which will turn soap dark brown.  I mixed it in uniformly in the coffee soap, but I made a swirl of it in the oatmeal.  Today the swirl has already started to darken.  The dark specks in the brown patches are vanillin, the dark specks in the light part are oats.

I expect the dark swirls to go much darker than they are right now.

 

 

Unexpected results: The coffee half heated up more than the oatmeal and the areas that fully gelled have this ‘crackle’ effect. I’ve never seen that happen before in a soap that didn’t have titanium dioxide and I wonder if I have just managed to create something new. In a soap with oxides, this is called ‘glycerin river’ it’s harmless, but rather interesting.

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Sunday Soaping

Three new batches of soap today.

The first was a special request for unscented ‘hotel bars’ and then I decided that I wanted to experiment with two more unscented recipes.

Here’s the first, a nice white coconut soap with coconut milk at ‘trace’.  This is what the soap looks like when it’s ready to pour.  It’s fully emulsified and has started to thicken up.

I can’t take photos of the pour because I’m working by myself but here it is again all nice and tucked into the mold.

The next two are a coffee-scrub recipe and a honey-oatmeal recipe.  Both contain some vanillin powder which will darken the soap over time and I’m hoping that a bit of the scent comes through into the finished product.

Here they are right after the pour.  Over time I expect the colors on the oatmeal honey to reverse.  The swirls that are lighter colored on the right contain vanillin and the darker areas do not so as it dries the light areas should turn darker than the rest.

A few hours later, as the chemical reaction progressed, the soap started to heat up and go through the ‘gel phase’

The coffee soap has gelled all the way to the edge, while the oatmeal is a little behind and only the center has darkened.  Once gel starts I keep it insulated so that it will gel all the way through.