So today, I unmolded the soap brick.  It looks & smells almost completely unlike strawberries.  But it’s soap, and it’ll wash the sin off you.

A while back, I started making soap.  Because soap is expensive & hard to find in stores, right?  I do cold process soap making, as opposed to melt & pour.  Melt & pour is basically where you buy a brick of pre-made soap, melt it & pour it into a mold.  You can add color & fragrance.  It all looks real pretty.

Fuck that.  Give me the caustic chemicals.  If I’m not in danger of horribly maiming myself, I’m not interested.  I now have over 10 pounds of lye in my apartment.  If I ever try to buy pseudoephedrine, they’re gonna drop a cage on me.

This weekend I decided to make use of those strawberries that were going bad in my fridge.  How delicious does strawberry puree soap sound?  Out comes the hand blender, *vroom vroom*, strawberry puree!  Add a little distilled water to thin it out, and you’re good to go! At this point, it’s such a lovely, happy color.  It’s something you’d consider pouring on ice cream, or perhaps pancakes.

Then added the lye solution, and it changed.

It’s kind of obligatory to make a Fight Club reference when working with lye, but this picture shows why you don’t fuck around with it.  It’s the same puree, after adding the lye.  You can’t see it in the photo, but it’s smoking.  That’s a chemical reaction, people.  SCIENCE!

I buy more plain white vinegar than anyone else I know.

I’ve made soap with goat’s milk before, so I know that your liquid gets scalded.  The lesson I need to remember is to be patient & add the lye slowly.  But last night I was impatient, and the result was the nastiest looking excuse for strawberry puree I’ve ever seen.  And because I didn’t want to burn the inside of my lungs, I didn’t try to smell it.  I plowed ahead.

The oils were added, the mixture was stirred & then poured into a wooden box to sit all night & do its thing.  I’ll unwrap it tonight & see how it turned out.  It won’t be bright pink like I was hoping, but maybe it’ll smell nice.  I’d settle for that.