These just got unmolded tonight. They’re my first round of breast cancer soaps! Colored with french pink clay and red morrocan clay, these soaps are great for your skin (excellent facial soaps for oily skin!) and smell delicious.

These are my breast cancer soaps. All proceeds from breast cancer soaps now and in the future (they’ll be the ones with the embossed ribbons) will be donated to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. They won’t be ready to go for a few more weeks, but they’ll be ready in time for the Blim Community Market at Car Free Day!

I’m very pleased with how they came out, and can’t wait to try them!

I will have space invader soaps. And brain soaps. And pirate soaps. And proper non-silly soaps, too! And if I manage to get a free hour between now and then, I might even have some beeswax candles!

A portion of my proceeds go directly to HugABull, who just brought in 23 neglected dogs into their program. These guys need vet care and that don’t come cheap, come out and help support the adorable little buggers!

I think they’re adorable. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I actually think they’re so ugly that they’ve transcended uggo and moved right back into “holy crap, you’re cute!” And really, no dog can smile half as well as a happy pittie.

It’s one of the few breeds I would never own. And this really depresses me, because they are SUCH sweethearts. But… I already have one aggressive dog with a bad reputation, the last thing I need is a dog with a bad reputation just from looking at him. I’m the asshole with the snarly dog, I don’t want to also be the asshole with the pit bull… because no matter how sweet a pittie you have, there’s a stigma.

And the stigma totally sucks. The pit bull myths that are still common today are outrageous. And don’t get me wrong — I respect what dogs were bred for, and pitties absolutely are bred for dog aggression, but they’re also bred for human non-aggression. And quite frankly, how a dog is raised, trained, and shown how to behave by his handlers is FAR more important to any dogs behaviour than his ancestors.

I used to walk dogs for the Burnaby SPCA, and of course many of the dogs that wind up in their care are pitties. And a sweeter bunch you’ve never seen. Untrained little whackadoos to a T, but with a little love and attention, these guys would make fantastic pets… if it wasn’t for all the pitbull hate.

I’m from Surrey, so … I get it. I really do understand the stigma, and it’s why I would never get one myself. Honestly, if I see someone walking a pitbull (ESPECIALLY an offleash one) while I’m out with Justice, I hightail it. Ok, to be honest, I do that with most dogs — avoidance is still our best management technique for her particular issues. But moreso with a pittie, because sadly most of the people who are likely to get a pitbull are absolutely the wrong person to be adopting one to begin with. I don’t blame the breed, I blame the jackasses who keep fucking them up.

So, I’ve got this new dog trainer, and she’s awesome, right? Justice & I are really enjoying the classes we’re taking, and she’s come so far just in a few months. Our rally classes are great practice, and I was very pleased that our reactive dog training classmate was a gorgeous pittie named Maya, because Justice can be sensitive to specific breeds, and having her less reactive toward pitbulls is a good thing. (On the flipside, please don’t bring any cranky rat terriers or min pins around. She’s not a fan. Aussies are in, though!)

How’s this related? New trainer is on the board of directors for HugABull, a local Pit Bull advocacy & rescue organization. I was so, so pleased when Shelagh told me about her reactive dog — a pit bull. And I thought I had bad stigma against my friendly looking reactive dog. Here’s someone who has to deal with not just reactivity, but the pit bull stigma to go along with it. She’s realistic, experienced, and damn good at coming up with solutions tailored to each individual dog. And the fact that she also works with rescues in her spare time, instead of “oh, well, all of my dogs are perfect…” well, it’s just easier to relate, you know? I mean, perfect dogs are great, and everyone should have one, but that’s not what I have. Raising a perfect dog from a perfect puppy is a laudable achievement, but one that is a lot easier than getting a dog with issues to learn how to manage them.

Anyway. So, breed discrimination: Bad. Shitty owners: Bad. Pitbull stigma: Bad. HugABull: Good!

And therefore, I get to my point: May 16th, HugABull will be holding a fundraiser at Dizine Canine Training Centre at 1730 Vernon St (under the 1st Ave overpass at Clark, accessible from the north side of 1st.) And I’ll be there with soaps and candles to sell, donating 15% of proceeds to HugABull. There will also be food and other goodies available, so come down and check it out!

And now that I do my own vending, and spend a lot more time at craft fairs, I hear people who not only say this, but say it loud enough for the vendor to hear. I’ve even heard it myself from another soapmaker about some of my own soaps. I hear this at SCA events, heck, I hear it in pretty much any gathering of people who like to make their own things. And this is what really gets me: It’s not non-crafters saying this. It’s the very people who are making, creating, crafting. Wow, that hurts. The people who should get it the most are most guilty of devaluing other crafters hard work.

I’m occasionally guilty of thinking this. And sometimes even more of a “wow, I really want to make that myself!” And gaining inspiration from someone elses work is fine, but don’t rip it off directly. Inspiration is a compliment. Imitation is theft.

You know, making soap? Not hard. Anyone can do it, really. Don’t want to play with lye? There are plenty of options around that as well. I have fun with it, but it’s not overly complicated. On the other hand, it is pretty time consuming. Given enough time & money, I’m sure you could duplicate everything I’ve ever made. I’m not ridiculously talented, I just like to play. But the next time you’re looking at something and thinking “I could do that!” ask yourself: Would you?

And don’t say it out loud. Crafters take pride in their work, even if our work isn’t super difficult.

Little known fact: I love buying handmade soap. This is slightly ridiculous, because not only CAN I make my own, but I do, gobs of it. I have enough soap to last through the apocalypse. I will be very clean when the zombies come. I also believe in supporting fellow soapmakers, because there’s nothing more depressing than someone rolling their eyes and dismissing your hard work with, “I can do that.”

Anyway, I mentioned this to a coworker who has known Nick for about 20 years.

“Nick is like a samurai!”
“How’s that?”
“Because he can do totally gay shit and nobody would ever question his masculinity for it.”

Precursor: These are not instructions. If you’ve never made cold process soap before, go read a proper “how to” guide, or get someone to teach you. This is written for people who already know how to make soap and don’t need every step laid out. There’s lye involved, don’t play with that without knowing what you’re doing. Also, never use a found recipe without running it through a lye calculator on your own first. (I made this one up for myself.)

First, here’s the recipe I used — it’s a little varied from my usual mix, because I wanted to use the last of my cocoa butter & shea butter, hence the odd numbers:

400g Coconut Oil
400g Palm Oil
200g Water
200g Coconut Milk
200g Olive Oil
172g Sodium Hydroxide
100g Grapeseed Oil
56g Cocoa Butter
22g Shea Butter
28ml Lemongrass Essential Oil

I did the usual measuring out of the lye & water. I can’t be sure, but I think the lower volume of water made it heat up more. At least, I can only assume that’s the reason that the glass jug I’ve been using for 8 months to hold my lye/water solution broke off cleanly at the bottom when I submerged it into the water bath. Crap. Well, at least it broke in the sink and not all over my counter. At worst, my sink will drain a little more clearly. Lye all over my kitchen is NOT something I want to think about.

So, I switched to a pyrex measuring cup instead. This worked fine. Phew. Left that sitting in the water bath while I went on to measure & mix the rest of my oils.

The shea butter & cocoa butter were already measured out, because I needed to see how much I had left so I could run that through my lye calculator first. I added the rest of my oils, and measured out the coconut milk and set it aside. Heated the oils, cooled the lye until everything was about 120F (Yes, I measure my oils in g, and my temperature in F — “120″ is a bit more exact than “50″ so being a degree or two off is less of a big deal.)

Got my stick blender out, and started stirring the lye solution into my oils. Blended in very short bursts — I’ve discovered before that a low-water soap can go from “untraced” to “seized in the pot” SUPER fast, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up with a solid lump again. Huge pain in the butt. When I guessed it was roughly halfway to tracing, I added in the room temperature coconut milk, stirred a bit more to get everything fully blended, added in my essential oil (lemongrass — yummy!) and grabbed my prepared mold.

It was starting to trace super fast at that point, so I started lumping it into the mold as fast as I could. I usually make round soaps, using a lined PVC pipe, so the more firmly traced it is, the harder it is to get it into the mold. By the time I was finished molding it up, it was roughly the consistency of playdoh, which is ridiculously hard to work with, especially with a narrow mold. Upon reflection, I probably should have grabbed one of my flat pan molds, but I really like my round soaps. Here’s hoping there aren’t any major air holes in there — I pushed at it a lot with my spatula to try to shove it down. Next time, I think I’ll add the essential oil at the same time as the milk so I can avoid extra stirring.

I had a bit more than fit into my single round mold, so I grabbed one of the washed, clean milk cartons I save for exactly this purpose. They’re neat, they make perfectly square soaps.

So, everything is in the molds, and I’m leaving them uninsulated because… well, it’s a milk soap, and I’m told those heat up a ton. They’re sitting out in my pantry right now, and I’m looking forward to unmolding them on Wednesday.

…stay tuned for how they turn out! I didn’t add any color because I wanted to see what the coconut milk did. My soaps tend to be a fairly standard light cream color when left uncolored, so we’ll see how they turn out with the milk.

Updated! Now, with pictures!

I unmolded my coconut milk soaps, and hooray, they seem to have turned out! Will wait a few weeks to really try them, but washing the residue off my hands sudded up quite nicely and left my hands nice and soft, so I think it’s going to be pretty good stuff.

As expected, there are a few "gaps" where there were air pockets. Next time, I have to work on getting it into the molds faster, it’s difficult to work with a long narrow mold when you’re at a super thick trace.

Color: Not much different from my normal soaps, maybe a tinge more yellow… although that’s probably from the lemongrass, which has some minor discoloring effects. Next batch I do (I still have another 200g of coconut milk) I will probably try to color a bit. We’ll see.

I scented these a lot stronger than I usually do, and my kitchen smells very strongly of lemongrass. I am totally okay with this, because lemongrass is awesome.

My new Kindle-hider, specifically for SCA events so that I’m not the dick with the eBook ruining the illusion.

Mmm, crafty!

The sacrifice was that if you spend years telling yourself you’re worthless without any sort of counter, especially if those years are impressionable preteen/teen years… you do eventually believe what you’re saying. How can you not? I had virtually zero self worth for most of my teens and a good part of my 20s; contributing, if not leading to that crushing depression I experienced in my early 20s. So the exchange I made for not letting other peoples words hurt me is that my own were a thousand times worse.

In the long run, not a very equal trade. I don’t recommend this.

I’m much better now (she says, wryly.) A few years of therapy, medication, and some wonderful people who love me (uh, and not being a hormonal teenager), and I can now be occasionally self deprecating without it affecting my self worth. Which is good, because it’s a form of humor that I’ve developed pretty well, and if I can avoid the negative aspects of it, it’s a pretty good way of keeping humble. Laugh at yourself first, because honey, you ain’t the perfect being you think you are.

That said, I never did get very good at vulnerability, or putting myself out there. I still expect that extending my hand is going to lead to being bitten. So I still don’t do it often to the general public.

I’ve been trying to do it more lately, and thus far, it’s worked wonderfully in my favor. Sometimes I run upstairs to show Nick my latest creation, and I feel like a little kid showing off my spelling test, hoping for a gold star. Of course, being supremely wonderful, he’s amazingly supportive with his feedback, either offering accolades or inspiration (usually both). I love bouncing my ideas off of him, even if I end up doing my own thing. He never dismisses my silly ideas, but often comes up with improvements. I love that. Admittedly, I’m a bit approval-seeking from Nick — we’ve joked we should buy that pack of gold stickers, or maybe he should hang some of my stuff on the fridge (we had a discussion last night about putting magnets in soap so they’d stick to the fridge. Uh…. maybe not.)

Anyway. So a few days ago, I made a batch of soap with some new colorant I picked up, making another attempt at swirlies (thus far, previous attempts at swirlies haven’t turned out exactly the way I wanted. Not bad, just not as awesome as I was hoping for.) When I unmolded it on Monday and sliced it up… I was SO excited with how it turned out. It had awesome swirls, and very cool looking designs all through it. The base was the standard cream color that I usually get from using olive oil (it’s very dark, so it colors the soap a bit) with the swirls a dark maroon/russet color. Nick agreed with me that it looked really awesome, so I took some pictures of it yesterday, and uploaded one.

Y’know, I can take criticism. I’m okay with that. However, I am not always the best at taking criticism when I’m not expecting it. When I think I’ve made something really awesome, and I’m not anticipating a negative reaction… it comes as a surprise, and I react a lot worse. So, I was a little dismayed when the first response was that it looked like meat.

And moreso when the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc all agreed. In the end I had nine people tell me in various independent channels that it looked like meat. A big hunk of fatty gross meat.

I know the responses weren’t designed to hurt, and I’ve had half of those people trying to convince me that looking like meat is a good thing. For the record, it’s not. Go ahead — I dare you to put something out that you’re really proud of for being pretty and have it compared to meat. Tell me how it feels when people tell you that it looks like a big hunk of fat. And even if you’re okay with it, good for you. I wasn’t.

Nick says I set myself up in the past by being a little self deprecating about previous soaps that didn’t turn out the way I liked — my Ugly soap, for example. Heck, the Strawberry Chocolate soap that I thought looked like ham. And here’s the difference: I said it first. I SAW it first. I wasn’t super proud of my ugly soap, because oops, I fucked it up and it came out looking like meatloaf. (Funny thing? A lot of people really liked it. It was a big seller at the last craft fair I did. Cool.) This wasn’t something that came out of the mold and I went “oops! Well, that didn’t turn out how I wanted…” This came out and I thought “holy fuck, that’s gorgeous! Look what I made! I am so proud of me!”

And this? This is why I’m not good at sharing things like this without some form of self deprecating humor: those responses hurt so much I cried for a good fifteen minutes last night. Dwelling on it now still makes me tear up a little. For those playing at home, I’m not much of a crier. See above about being somewhat flame-proof. Well, except for sad movies. I cry at sad movies. Shh.

If it had been one or two… I could have laughed it off, and concentrated on the more positive responses. Except… I didn’t get any (well, not until I deleted the picture and expressed said dismay.) I got nine people telling me something that I was really proud of looked like something gross.

For those who told me it looked like meat: I’m not upset with anyone for being honest, and I know that nobody meant any harm. It still hurt a lot.

Saving grace: Nick assures me that in real life, it looks nothing like meat. But I’m a little gun shy, so I’ll leave the pictures offline. I’m not really looking for false praise either, and now I suspect re-uploading would just get a bunch of feelgood platitudes.

Pride goeth before the fall? I guess so.

Felting Soaps
- My ginger & white tea soaps smell good, but are kind of bland looking. I think I’ll felt up half of them, especially now that my new roving has arrived. (I bought 4oz of some absolutely gorgeous deep purple roving at Ursulmas, too.)

Handmade Paper
- My handmade paper kit arrived yesterday! I currently have two tupperware containers of little tiny pieces of paper soaking in them. One of them is nice and pulpy already (it had thinner paper in it) so I’ll hopefully be making that tonight. Bonus: I already have a bunch of cool “additives” like calendula and lavender. Need to buy: mortar & pestle. Or an old blender, but I like the idea of using a mortar & pestle better. Also, could use a mortar & pestle for soap projects, too.

Hollow Book
- Need to hit up Value Village and find a nice leatherbound book that I can destroy. Concept: I want a hollow book cover for my Kindle, mostly so that I can read at SCA events without feeling like I’m totally ruining the medieval experience.

Striped Giraffe
- With the “success” of my Lesser Red Velvet Marmot, my next trick is going to be a striped giraffe (made out of an old ripped button up shirt I’ve been saving for just such an occasion). I have a few other plushie projects planned after that, but they’re surprises! so I won’t mention them here yet. I may need to pick up some fabric… or dig through my scraps.

More Cold Process/Melt & Pour Soap
- Unmolded a sexy, sexy soap last night, a gorgeous creamy base with maroon marbled around the top. the saran wrap I put on to protect it while it saponifies hit the top and fucked up the original design I was going for, so I shaved off a very thin layer off the top… and to my surprise, it’s FABULOUS underneath. Has a very anthropologie feel to me. Anyhoo, I need to make more soaps. More pirate soaps, more space invader soaps… and I want to try again at that marbling technique WITHOUT fucking up the top, even if it turned out gorgeous anyway.

But little is known about this elusive rodent, the lesser red velvet marmot. What is known is that it was originally in Hastings-Sunrise, but can now rarely be seen in the trendy south main area.

The other day, I came across this tutorial for how to make a plush hedgehog. Well, I’m not obsessed with hedgehogs, so I put it aside in my head for a minute until I thought of other creatures I could make. Of course, first in my head was… a marmot! Especially since I knew a certain someone would totally love it.

So, I made my pattern, used some red velvet I picked up for $2 at Value Village, cut it out, sewed it up… and totally failed. Hmm. Ok, so sewing weird curves is actually quite hard. I ripped out the stitches. Tried again. Hmm. Nope, I’ve totally buggered this one. All right, so I grabbed my pattern, added a larger seam allowance to take my beginner sewing skills into account, and … success! I stuffed him with some polyfill I had lying around (what, you don’t have polyfill lying around?) sewed up the opening, and … omg, I love him. He has little tiny seed bead eyes, a fat tail, and paws that could perhaps be holding a tasty treat up to his non-existent mouth. He was going to have ears, but I decided he was cuter without. Also, ears are hard.

I also left a few teasers around for Jenn, via twitter, facebook, and email… so that she was sure to be extra-curious when I saw her tonight for the craft exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver (which was AWESOME, btw! Why have I not been here before?) And sure enough, she loved it. And I have more ideas for future plush creatures. Gotta use up that polyfill I’ve had lying around for, oh, ever.

I made my first ever plushie. I love him and I am ever so proud. Lesser Red Velvet Marmot! Very, very endangered. I mean, there were 75 Vancouver Island marmots left in 2001. There’s only ONE lesser red velvet marmot around!