Adventures in Hand Spinning

Monday, May 6, 2013

In search of liquid soap, part one

We recently ran out of dish soap, so I decided to make some. The first recipe I tried was from here and I tweaked it as follows
1 3/4 C water
1 T borax
1 T Washing Soda
1 T grated castile soap (I used 1 T liquid lavender Castile soap)
1/2 t essential oil (I used eucalyptus)

Results:
It smells great, but I love lavender to begin with. It did not thicken as the recipe said it would. I think this is because I used liquid castile soap as opposed to grated bar soap. My fault. It does not bubble, which I expected. I am going to keep looking and find proportions for one that uses liquid soap.

This is next on my list to try. However, it includes castile soap (basic) and vinegar (acid), which is cautioned against here as the vinegar works against the soap. I will likely omit the vinegar.

"The ingredients are botanicals, and our bodies speak Botanical. Our bodies don’t speak Triethanolamine or Polyethelene Glycol or Isobutane (common conventional shaving cream ingredients)"-Lisa Bronner

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Making Soap

Taking a break from talking about fiber to talking about soap. In all my research online, I haven't found a basic template. I want one so I am going to try and write one.

Choosing a base
There are many different bases to choose from (don't just melt down what you find at the grocery store) at craft stores and online. Caution: many bases contain the detergent sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a detergent and can irritate skin. If you use commercial soap or shampoo, it likely contains SLS because it makes bubbles. So this is not something to worry about unless you're already trying to be SLS free. For example, Brambleberry's house bases do not contain SLS, but the bulk bases do.

Choosing Add-ins
Colorants and fragrances need to be cosmetic grade. Food dye can stain skin, and candle fragrances can be irritants. Essential oils can be used, and often have good properties in addition to scent. Sifting add ins will help them mix in.

Melting soap
Do not heat above 160 or the soap will burn and stink.

Adding essential oils
1-2 teaspoons per pound of soap
Links
http://teachsoap.com/soap-making-methods/
http://teachsoap.com/basic-melt-and-pour-soap/
http://www.fromnaturewithlove.com/reprint/meltandpoursoapmaking.asp
http://www.lyndenhouse.net/recipes/advancedmeltandpour.htm

OK, so this is not really a template, but it is time for me to go do homework.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Dyeing and Plying

I don't quite understand different techniques of spinning hand dyed roving. I find spinning roving that is 1 color rather monotonous. However, I don't really like the barber pole effect of dyed roving that is then spun and plied. After reading this article, I decided to try and apply her techniques.
There were two issues. She talks about the different techniques of pre drafting versus splitting/ stripping, yet in her experiment, she plied one with a white yarn and plied the other with itself. I really couldn't tell the difference, and the fact that she therefore had 2 variables bothered me.
I took this roving and split it, plying it with itself:

And the result:

Then I took this roving and pre drafted it and plyed it with itself:

I couldn't tell any difference between the two techniques.

So I decided to run an experiment of my own. I dyed up some roving with koolaid in my crock pot (lemonade, black cherry, and iced blue lemonade) ( I think).

The resulting roving looked surprisingly like a snow cone.

The pre drafted roving (top) had a much greater chance of multi colored singles. The stripped roving is a little more vibrant. In both of these, I divided the roving in half, spun on different bobbins, and then plied together. There wasn't a large degree of matching up. I still can't tell much of a difference between the two.