One Day: 2 Major Fails

 Yesterday: I got up expecting magic and pulled back the dishtowel loosely veiling the peppermint bath bombs I had so carefully formed the evening before. I was not a little disappointed by what I saw:  Five very sad, grossly expanded and deformed gloops of citric acid and baking soda gone awry.  A sixth one still recognizable as a sphere, but also engorged and far from the ideal I had been shooting for.

and this was the "good" one

Bath Bomb fail #2.  I had considered this second attempt a sure thing.  I had followed a different recipe meticulously, not adding a single extra drop of water than what had been called for.  They had popped out of their molds easily enough and were left to harden in all their glory under the protection of that dishtowel when I had turned in for the night.  It should have worked, but it didn't.  And now I was heading back to the proverbial drawing board.

see the tiny speckles.  What a shame!

Fast forward 6 hours.  I am walking past my newly unmolded Geranium Rose soap.  I am particularly excited about the way this soap has turned out. Love it! So, I pick up the 1 small sample I had cut 2 days earlier.  (I had only sliced off the one piece from the loaf hoping to preserve all the lovely essential oils until I was ready to sell.) As I am walking by, I pick up the sample to take a whiff.   I do this often because I am really in love with the way my soaps smell and I like to enjoy them every chance I get.  My eye snags on  a glimmer, a pindrop of oil.  I rub the oil between my fingers, touch it to my tongue.  It's the "zap" test and I had never been "zapped" before in all of the batches I have ever made.  I zapped.  I felt zapped too.  Frustrated and depleted.  Not my beautiful Geranium Rose!  And so my soap was lye heavy.  I am fairly certain it was because the coconut milk was too cold and had not allowed the lye to completely dissolve.  There's a good reason why I had frozen most of the milk, but I won't go into that now.  Lye heavy soap is not usable.  I would have to ditch the whole batch or attempt to rebatch it. I was not crazy about either option, but this was the way my day was going. I process.

Yay!  Peppermint Fizzy Bath Bomb

This morning:  I wake up to a perfectly spherical, firmly hardened peppermint bath bomb.  I had hesitated to  pull off its covers. Now I am elated and.....relieved. Very relieved.  I had opted for the simplest recipe I could find that DID NOT include water on its list of ingredients.  They had not held their shape at first and I had  needed to add a bit more oil to get the two sides to stick together. I am thankful!

Now it was time to address that failed batch of lye heavy soap.  I decided to attempt rebatch.  It meant grating up all the soap with a cheese grater and melting it down in the oven with a bit of water and then adding a brand new batch of soap to the melted soap.  It was a lot of work, more work than making the initial batch.  But I couldn't stand the thought of throwing all those good butters and oils and essential oils away.  The process went smoothly.  I complicated things somewhat because I didn't want to mix the 3 colors together to get an unappealing muted gray.  So I had 3 separate pots and had to distribute the new soap batch evenly as well.  I am not sure if I "cooked" it long enough after mixing in the new soap.  I was afraid it would harden on me if I didn't pour fairly quickly.  I will know shortly.

Lessons Learned:  Yes, I learned a new technique:  how to rebatch soap (we'll see how successfully) I learned more about how soapers "hot-process"  soap, and I learned to be extra careful to make sure all that lye is dissolved when I'm soaping with milk.  I learned never to add any water at all to your bath bombs though apparently some do it with success because there are quite a few recipes out there with water in them.  But, by far, the most valuable lesson I took home from my day of soaping catastrophes and epic fails was the importance of keeping a healthy perspective on the process.  Being able to accept losses and setbacks and to keep going forward is not an easy thing to do.  I have to intentionally keep my head high and recognize than every misbatch is a chance for me to make my product better. I guess we could all do well to apply this principle to every aspect of our lives.  The day was a great reminder.