Just a quick post today. My first attempt at a “funnel pour” using one of my standard recipes and Frankincense and Myrrh fragrance oil. The black is activated charcoal while the yellow is the natural color of the soap. I expect it to morph into a tan as it cures.
Also check out my new silicone molds from Brambleberry.
Update – the soap is now cut
I ordered new supplies recently and got new things to experiment with! When the rest of the order comes in I will try a hand at making solid conditioner bars, a syndet* shampoo and some oil cleanser.
But first, here’s what I tried today.
I got a free sample of a nice floral fragrance called “Midnight Waters”, just enough for a 1 pound batch. I made a simple coconut soap with coconut milk and tried to color it purple. The fragrance discolored a bit tan so my base purple was crowded out, but since things were moving slowly I tried to add a purple line and colored the top pale green. I’m quite pleased with the result
Then I tried two shampoo bars. One is my favorite coconut recipe but I wanted to try it again with the addition of apple cider vinegar and citric acid. The next was a very different recipe with 6-oils that also includes apple cider vinegar.
I scented one with ylang-ylang and bergamot essential oils and the other with a green tea fragrance oil.
*But wait, I hear you say. What is a syndet bar? The shampoo bars I’ve made so far are all true soaps. That means they are made by reacting lye with fatty acids from plants or animals and you get a high-pH solid soap at the end. Your hair has a natural pH on the acid side and some (but not all) shampoos you can buy commercially make a big deal out of matching the pH of the shampoo to your hair. It’s unclear to me if this is really beneficial or a marketing ploy (I suspect the latter), but I do notice that when I use my soap-shampoo that every week or two I like to use a cider vinegar rinse that seems to remove some build up. (It will also de-scum your bathtub!)
If you try to add acid to soap to lower the pH below around 8, you will undo the chemical reaction that makes it soap and be left with a pile of fatty acids.
Enter ‘synthetic detergents’. This is what nearly all commercial shampoos are made of. They can have a pH anywhere from about 4 to 8 or 9 but they stay detergents, and will still clean, even with a lower pH.
Lush makes shampoo bars by pressing detergent noodles into a mold along with some other ingredients and I’m going to have a go at that and see if like it any better than my soap-based shampoo.
The local 4-H Arts program had a workshop where the kids could learn to make acrylic-pour art on canvas. Since I’d been looking at exactly that just a few weeks earlier and thinking that I wanted to try it out, I jumped at the chance to sign up with my two younger children.
We did a ‘flip cup’ pour with only 3-4 colors as this was suggested to get the best results for the kids. And I held back a bit to watch how everything turned out. Part of the secret seems to be patience – don’t rush the process of letting the colors spread out.
I happen to like the one made by my youngest best, I think choosing highly contrasting colors help the final outcome. I also noticed that the color I used most in the cup isn’t necessarily what you get most of on the canvas. (For mine, I used nearly 1/2 purple, but it’s not dominant in the final painting).
They are still drying right now and will have a poly finish applied before they are ready to go.
The kids loved this so expect to see more!
In addition to the mushroom cave, we went to 4 other caves during this trip: Lascaux 4 (reproduction), Font-de-Gaume, Chauvet-Pont d’Arc (reproduction) and one more where the kids went spelunking and rappelling (and I did not!).
The ones that I went to are all caves that have famous cave paintings in them. Lascaux is the most famous, but I think the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc paintings may be more beautiful.
The reproductions were interesting. I had some hesitation about going, thinking ‘why would I spend my time going to a fake cave, better to just see the real one and skip the others.’ I’m glad I didn’t do that.
For Lascaux 4 and Pont d’Arc, the process of making the reproductions was just fascinating. They are full size, to-the-millimeter, faithful reproductions of the inside of the cave. To the extent possible the paintings were replicated using original techniques. My favorite bit: they hired a ‘professional nose’ to visit the caves and replicate the SCENT – which is now pumped into the replica, so that it will feel even more like you are in the real thing. No photos are allowed inside the full reproductions (or in Font-de-Gaume – the only original cave I visited) so all of my photos are from the museum at Lascaux.
This was not the only place, but Lascaux 4 was the first place we encountered armed military guards. They’ve been taking things seriously since the terror attacks.
In Lascaux 4 the most common animals were aurochs and horses (17,000 years old). Reindeer were the most common food but were not depicted with nearly the same frequency. In Chauvet-Pont d’Arc is by far older than Lascaux, at over 30,000 years old and had good preservation as the entrance to the cave was blocked for tens of thousands of years. Font-de-Gaume has some as old, and is primarily a bison cave. No photos were allowed here. I bought a book, but the photos don’t do it justice. The drawings aren’t in as good condition but in the dimly lit cave, with a light playing over them, much as it must have been with crude lamps when they were drawn, the animals seemed to reveal themselves more clearly.
Common to all the caves: predators were rare and were always ‘hidden’ they were in the shadows, in the cracks, hard to see. Humans were rare and crudely drawn, especially compared to the beauty of the horses and bison.
PS We got lost looking for Pont d’Arc cave and accidentally drove past the actual Pont d’Arc – a natural bridge, and the original cave sight, although we didn’t know it at the time.
PPS We also drove past some signs indicating that the road would be closed for the Tour de France, but I didn’t get a shot of it 🙁
Or at least – ‘artists impression of a sandalwood tree’. I admit it looks more like a madrone (and like all my other trees so far), but I’m happy with it.
A little break from photos of France. I am getting ready for my fall soaps and thinking of new labels in color. I wanted a wood grain, but when I tried looking for photos of that I was disappointed in the results.
And if you are thinking “what is a madrone tree?” They have a very striking cinnamon color bark that peels. The outer bark can get rough and darker, the inner bark is smooth, flowing and can be orange to green. They are a broad leaf evergreen that lives in the pacific northwest.
This is a chateau and large garden on a ridge-line above the Dordogne river. Normally open during the day, it sometimes opens in the evening for a candlelit view of the gardens along with music. I would go back in a heartbeat. I’d love to also see it during the day.
As we were about to walk in, the light glowing through a grape arbor caught my eye.
Inside, in addition to musicians, there were ‘fairies’, colorfully lit fountains and these little goblins popping out of the earth. In the daytime there was a mini rope-net course for the kids to play on, but we didn’t have much time there before it became too dark to see.
The main word that comes to mind is “ostentatious”. I mean, building a giant, spired, wood-paneled, fake-castle/palace as your summer home (or in this case, hunting lodge) is alway ostentatious, but this one really seemed to do it more.
Just look at it!
It was only used for seven weeks total by the builder (in the 16th Century), in part because it’s completely impractical. It’s too big and open to heat effectively and there was no nearby village to supply food so everything had to be carried in for the 2000 or so guests who would arrive all at once. But it has some really neat features. One of the most famous is the double helix staircase. Two staircases spiral around each other and you can stop at the internal windows and look at your friends going up the opposite stair.
And there are fire-salamanders everywhere, and who is not a fan of fire-salamanders?
And, as usual, the gardens were vast and impressive.
There was an equestrian show at an outdoor pavilion on the grounds that I missed, and I’m a bit sorry I did because it sounded amazing. Next time, I guess?
So you’ve got a vast network of damp, dark, underground, limestone tunnels. What do you do with them? Grow mushrooms of course. We visited a cave used to grow shiitake, champignon de Paris, oyster and ‘blue foot’/Pied bleu mushrooms. The blue foot were my favorites, but Sylvia, surprisingly, was a fan of the Parisian. We got to pull some directly out of the beds and eat them. Later, in the shop we purchased a half kilo and made risotto for dinner out of them. I brought back a jar of the blue foot and have yet to decide what to do with them.
The tour was officially in French but our guide spoke English so she took the time to either translate for us or to pantomime so effectively that we didn’t need to know exactly what she said.
Of interest: the shiitake mushrooms are grown in cubes resting on the floor and they said it was important to their growth to periodically whack the cubes. I’m wondering if ‘mushroom walloper’ is a good thing to put on your resume.
Of course there’s extra tunnel space. What to do with it? In this case a stonemason and and artist came down and carved an underground village there. Many of my photos didn’t turn out. There were shop doors, with a cat sneaking along, trees and balconies.
And just outside there was this pretty little cluster of flowers.
This château has everything: white stone towers, a river, grand rooms, complicated gardens, a tree-lined path and a hedge maze. We may be early in our journey, but I declared it “Peak Castle” all other castles are downhill from here. Technically I consider this a ‘palace’ – a non-defensive structure, leaving room for me to really enjoy some less elaborate and more defensive structures. While we were there we saw a few people paddling by in canoes which also seems a great way to view it.
I was impressed by the amount of copper-ware in the kitchens and the vast black-and-white checkerboard tiles in the long gallery that spans the river, but the best part was definitely the exterior of the castle and the grounds, which were stunning.
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Hello again!
We’ve been away on a 3-week long trip to France and now that we are back it’s time to go through the photos. I always liked the idea of traveling with children, but it turns out that I find organizing for that many people stressful, so we kept putting it off. Finally, I noticed that my oldest was 18 and if we wanted to do a major, whole-family trip, I had better act now.
For our first three days we stayed in a ‘troglodyte house’, a home partially built into the limestone hillside behind it. I really love the idea that if you ever thought your house was too small you could just continue to dig into it and make it bigger.
This one has some remnants of an old wine press in it. The back rooms were wonderfully cool, which we enjoyed because temperatures in France were very hot for our entire stay. A house two down from this one was for sale, and while we loved staying there, the rooms are also perpetually damp and that might get old after a while.
This little canal and bridge was in town, near the patisserie. It did not take much time at all for us to get used to the ubiquitous presence of fresh daily baguettes and pastries within walking distance. The baguettes were inexpensive, generally .8 euros or less, which is FAR less than I would expect to pay for them in the US.
At night it was very quiet and dark, all the street lamp went out at midnight giving a good view of the sky. In the early morning we saw hot-air balloons in the distance. When we had free time at home, we listened to “Coffee Break French” podcast to try to prepare ourselves for actual conversations.
