We shall have to see how this soap turns out in the end. It doesn't translate as well to the camera as it looks in person, at least to me. It feels mysterious and deep space-like, when I look at it, although I didn't spend a lot of time looking closely at each layer, which was a mistake. The camera focused only on the closest bit and generally I like to look it over to see which parts I like and don't like so I can try to get mostly the effects I like. I was bustling about getting each layer ready so that will teach me to be focused on getting it done rather than inspecting what I'm in the midst of doing. According to the pictures, I am happy enough that I will try this again but with little tweaks to keep the colors more separated. Oddly, the last layer is the one at the heaviest trace so the colors should have been more distinct but I see a lot of mixing. That's okay; I really love dark soaps so have no complaints about this one. I will have to sacrifice a bar to see how it looks throughout.

This is my soap from last night. It's a special soap. I recently bought a pair of soap goggles from Soap Queen, the ones with the foam padding around the eyes. I found them impossible to soap in because I get so warm while I'm soaping and add to that the frequent drenching hot flashes, the goggles get so steamed up I can't see a thing. I had gone back to by old beat-up pair that I wear perched out on my nose so as to let the moisture escape.

Last night, I was simultaneously pouring in my lye while I flipped on the under cabinet lights with my other hand and was looking up at the lights, when this Olympic-caliber drop of lye flew up from the bowl, rebounding from the pour, and hit the edge of the safety glasses, splashing right into my eye. Thankfully, I soap 3 feet away from the sink so I stepped over and started flushing, prying my eye open under the stream while my hair floated in the pan I had been inspecting water flow in. After 15 to 20 minutes, I called the ER to see if I'd have to go in and they told me to flush for a full hour and only come in if the pain increased after I was done. I changed to the bathroom sink and continued to blink and stare in the rushing stream and pull my eye open. Living continuously flushed by lovely perfectly calibrated saline, the eye does not appreciated fresh water, as anyone who has ever gotten splashed in the eye in a lake or pond knows. I glanced up at one point to find webs of thick mucus stretched over my eyeball. Not seeing suds in the sink, I was able to reassure myself that it was not strings of soap made from the cellular fat of my eyeball. They wouldn't rinse out so I took a Qtip and gently caught an end and wound it off my orb. After a few minutes I had more. It had to be a heavy duty response by my eye to protect itself from all the fresh water. As I bent back to the task, I had to contemplate AquaMan and the lie Marvel slipped to us. How could he possibly go from air to salt to fresh water with nary a goober veiling his vision? It sure wasn't working for me.

After an hour, my eyeball felt like a peeled grape but there were no holes in it, just raging red vessels covering my sclera, my mucus shield and enough puffiness to look like half of my face was in serious mourning. At least I didn't have to spend 5 hours in the ER. I cleaned up a bit and came out to find my bowl of oils and lye on the counter where I left it. Not one to waste, I donned the Soap Queen goggles and thought I would see what I had. Well, see is a bit of an overstatement. My one eye wasn't very open and was watering and this combined with the swamp that was now my face steamed up that side in about 30 seconds flat but heck, I couldn't see that well out of that side anyhow. I quickly fanned the working side and set the glasses in place.

I stirred a bit and was pleased to find my soap, sympathetic to the last, had stayed and waited for me for well over an hour and was perfectly willing to continue on. I even had to stickblend it. My experiment for the evening had required emulsion, not trace, and I got to the perfect place, split and colored. I will say that my idea for a pour was a bust, so I changed tack and got it into the mold. I tried a different kind of spin with it, as I don't always want the hook that seems to occur with the standard method, and it went nicely. I stared at it when I felt I was done, then added a touch of white and swirled a little cyclops eye in the middle, feeling it was the right thing to do. It may not look that special, but it is a very memorable batch.

My eye will heal, but I still look a sight today with my tiny puffed up red eye with its goop. But soap must be made, and made it was.

Occasionally you have to go back to some of the classics. I thought I might have overswirled the hanger swirl but it turned out nicely and I am happy with the shading in some of the colors.

I am a bit fearful of the peppermint soap, the second one. I didn't use the strongest amount allowed but even handling it, I can feel the cooling effect on my hands. It will require a prominent warning to avoid mucous membranes for fear of someone getting a deep freeze. It was a double ribbon pour that I then spun and I like the cloudy nebulous feeling of it.

Tried again, this time doing a Ribbon pour into a black background, and made a double sided soap. I of course used purportedly non-accelerating FO's which didn't go as planned. On one side, my black got pudding thick, so in order to pour the ribbon in such a way that it would go the bottom of that pour (or to the middle of the bar, once made), I had to make a trail for it with a finger while pouring just behind it. Thank you BB Amber. The colors got more mixed and muddied by the end, but parts of it turned out well. Thank you BB Orange Peel. For the other side, the black stayed nice and liquid (Thank you BB Amber- go figure) but then my colors started thickening and got apple saucy (Thank you BB Chamomile which is usually very well-behaved) and it became clear that no matter how long I soak my back-up TD, I will end up with clumps. I won't complain though because I ended up with kind of a deep space feel to the less defined side, which I like, and since the two sides look quite different, it will give the user more variety than I  had thought this soap would.

I now have to go look up deep space photos so I can try some different colors, but no doubt I will fail to get the same effect because, you know, it's soap.

Working on some variation on Ribbons Pours. This ended up being very interesting in that I used 4 colors; white, black, golden yellow, and a deep reddish orange. I poured about half white on one side and then the ribbon on the other. Half the mold got a swirl and the other half didn't and I like both. Oddly, the colors look to be all over the map! I see a khaki green color but used no green or gray and I see a burgundy color which may be from the deep orange and black mixing some. You just never know what you'll get!

The last batch was extremely thick so is quite blobbly. Ah well, such is soaping.