Misadventures In Soapmaking: Frozen Edition

Over the years we have had a few giggles in my misadventures in soapmaking... I've melted buckets by trying to liquify solid oils, I've dumped a few pounds of castor oil onto my kitchen floor (More than once actually. Don't ask.) I've cleaned up volcano eruptions from my counters and, well, part of our hallway floor is permanently scented lavender. Could be worse, I tell myself. And my husband. Or, well, he may not have known about the mysterious lavender scent until now. Long term air freshener? It's the new thing, I swear.

I have a knack for keeping myself on my toes with my job. Unintentionally. I play hide and seek with myself multiple, and I mean multiple times a day. Seriously, I need a gps tracking device on my coffee mug and I have successfully hidden 50 lb buckets of oil from myself in the house before. Today, however, I even made myself laugh.

I froze some of my soapmaking equipment in a solid block of ice.

Rewind to yesterday afternoon when I finished a batch of soap and took my buckets and tools outside. As usual, I put my tools in one of the buckets and filled it with the water hose to soak until the next morning. Except that while I was preparing the house and livestock for the drastic temps plummeting to 18 degrees overnight, it never dawned on me that my bucket of soaking tools should probably spend the night inside.

So yeah. Up bright and early this morning, woodstove roaring and I'm ready to make soap when I look out the frosty window and see my bucket of tools. Frozen. Solid.

I deserve extra creative points for this one.

So we brought it in, sat it by the woodstove and then put it in the tub with hot water running on it until we could slide the mass of ice and tools out. Once we had the block free from the bucket it didn't take long to melt the ice away, but I admit the progress was slowed by us laughing and making jokes about soap-sicles the whole time.

Now I'm thawing my frozen hands by the woodstove with the dogs as I write this, planning out the soap making for today. Two 50 pound batches on the agenda by noon, and then packaging cured bars this afternoon.

Unfortunately I can't get started until I find my coffee mug which I swear I just had a minute ago.

It's here. Somewhere.

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