Ink & Pixels
Telling stories worth sharing
I’m so grateful for this journey, and my crit group was entirely right when they cautioned that “your first novel is a learning experience”. Someday, I will overhaul that stalled plot, sharpen the stakes, and pull the reader in from page one. I hope to, anyway. The years that have passed have taught me a little more about the craft; I am a better writer, now.
Wow, 41 books in my 2023 Goodreads goal of 40! I read a lot of cookbooks, and whatever happened to be on the library display shelf and I could quickly grab while hurrying to the 3yo’s clarion call from the other side of the room. Here’s my complete 2023 reading list; I’ve summarized the top 7 and lowest 3 below.
This year, I managed to read 37 of 40 books of my Goodreads goal. That was also the year I started Analog August; a 30-day fast from social media. You can browse through that chronicle on Instagram. I embraced much craft, natural beauty, and found an invaluable calm in appreciating the work of my hands apart from a screen. You’ll see that reflected in my book summaries below.
“…I am more conscious of the small, tactile observations around me. A construction-yellow-mustard lichen, no bigger than a thumbnail. The juicy crack each romaine leaf makes when pulled off the crown. The feeling of filling my lungs full, full to bursting with air, as I pray for a friend whose breath has become laboured with pneumonia. The scratch of sand against my shovel; the slinky slide of clay.”
“…Most of my morning was business, but I gladly abandoned my desk for the sunshine and this little miss. She is the cheeriest little joy, our little parrot, our climbing monkey, our apprentice gardener. She happily drowns the tenderest seedlings, moves dirt with proud industry to the surfaces her Daddy has just power washed, and somehow manages to mimic my every mannerism. She crosses her arms, her chin thrust speculatively out towards our efforts, humming and tsking her little opinions.”
Life has changed drastically for her these last 2 years. Demoted from Daily Companion to Toddler’s Live Toy, banished from the bedroom, beset with hyperthyroidism, arthritis, a world-altering change of homes, and now failing kidneys, this kitty is far older than her 14 years.
The first half of her life was treasured by breeders: she was a champion show cat, and a born nurturer; she would try to steal other kitties when she had none of her own. When presented with the chance to adopt her instead of waiting 12+ months for an $850 kitten, we snapped her up.
Making soap is pretty rewarding: you can take a few pretty innocuous ingredients and, with some careful measurements and a lot of stirring, end up with a beautiful, chemical-free product that's cheap and long-lasting.
There's all kinds, but I've started to think olive oil soap might be the best option for several reasons. I weighed the pros and cons for you below.
I've found some workarounds for these cons. I intend to purchase an immersion blender, since I've been using a far inferior hand mixer. I hear it's a game changer: stir for minutes instead of hours. Second, adding just 15% coconut oil to 85% olive oil really helps with bubbles and hardness; so does sodium lactate (a natural salt, so if you don't have this ingredient, dissolved salt in your lye solution works just as well). Because of my hand mixer situation, I've been adding 2 teaspoons of honey to accelerate trace. This helps with hardness and bubbles as well, though not the caramel colour situation.
Once I have my immersion blender, I'm going to try using coconut milk, which apparently is less likely to scorch (turn yellow) and helps contribute to a creamy white shade. But for now, I will catalogue these recipes as learning experiences.
Blended in turmeric, then swirled in charcoal before pouring
Cured bar #inthewild, 5 months later! Love how much it mimics the wood dish.
Waiting to unmold...
Aaand, cut! Look at that swirl!
25.2 oz olive oil
6.4 oz coconut oil
4.41 oz lye
8.56 oz water
2 tsp sodium lactate
2 tbs maple honey (accelerant)
2 tsp powdered turmeric (for colour; add at trace)
1 tsp activated charcoal (for colour; add at trace)
Cost per 100g / 3.5 oz bar: $1.19
Notes: This took forever to trace. We finally added the honey out of desperation—and in hindsight it was too much. The soap got very hot, 170 deg F, and you can see how much the sugar caramelized and crystallized in the final bars. Next time, adding a bit of hard oil like shea or cocoa butter, or palm oil, would have likely made a big difference. So would a 10-20% water discount... though I'm still a little fuzzy on how to calculate those.
Even though I put the molds in the freezer right away, the loaf molds still went through partial gel phase, so the colour transformation wasn't as complete or vivid as I'd hoped. Still, interesting how dark the sugar "burned" and then lightened over time.
Gorgeous! Love those forked charcoal lines.
This photo makes me want to use gold mica in EVERYTHING.
Photo taken just before sunset...
I almost wonder if a better name would be "Saturn's Rings"
Cost per 100g / 3.5 oz bar: $1.36
Notes: Coconut oil is pretty expensive, even the cheap stuff from Walmart. Colourants aren't cheap, either. Better if we could have started with a lighter base. You'll note the base ingredients are almost identical to the first recipe, and yet the liquid added to the lye (water vs buttermilk) is not equal. Originally, this recipe called for 8 oz of buttermilk and 2.5 oz of pureed carrots, for natural colourant. Some substituted this for equal weight, though I think that was a mistake. Some of that weight would have been the carrot fibre and not water, so I should have probably only added 10 or 9.75 oz of buttermilk instead of 10.5 oz. Perhaps that contributed to slower trace... because any excess moisture was certainly swallowed up by the rose clay once honey had accelerated trace.
Next time, figure out a water discount. Even with Superstore bulk, olive oil is $0.24 an ounce. Canola oil I can get as low as $0.05 or $0.09 an ounce, though it can't completely replace olive oil. That would bring cost per bar to $1.09 each. I'm not sure how canola oil would affect trace.
We added probably more than 3 tbs of rose clay in attempts to heighten the colour, but alas, after gel phase it seemed to fade to a more neutral shade of peach. Perhaps the honey contributed to this colour loss, with high heat; but the honey also darkened the batch and made it harder for us to whiten. In future, make a harder bar so that honey isn't the last resort!
