Soap Homecoming 2

11/12/17

It is the 28th day and, unable to wait, I cut my batch of Copra-olive soap into bars yesterday. When our HVAC maintenance man, unasked, cleaned our gutters of hurricane detritus, I gave him a big bar for his wife. The remainder yielded fifteen 1.5" x 2" x 3" bars and a few odd ones—not overly beautiful to the eye, but oh the touch. My magic batch of old had nothing on this.

Imagine copious sudsy bubbles, so rich they are almost mucilaginous, that clean the skin and leave it soft and supple. However, the magic scent, so powerful on its own, in the soap is subdued. Perhaps a small amount of a complex formula has too little of any single ingredient to reek. The upside is that no perfumista need fear interference with her perfumes from this scented soap. Even hubby, who at first found the scent too female, spirited away a bar. To me, this batch is a treasure—worth all the waiting, all the mess, all the expense. Off my unopened commercial soap bars go to charity, and the opened ones to the trash, their merits overwhelmed by this:

I plan two more batches—a pristine Castile and a super-fatted Avocado soap. Now, my priceless old stalwarts aren't enough:

(L-R, Bulgarian Rose, Violet, Lily of the Valley, Eucalyptus)

I want to scent the Castile with a facsimile of Homage attar, sans the Taif rose, which is just too expensive. I'll use a regular Damascene rose oil instead, rather than Rosa Damascena trigintipetala, or 30-petal Damask Rose. I do long for it—the scent of a Bulgarian Damascene with a hint of tea, however, I am NOT going to spend £136.99, currently $180.69 for 3 ml of it and that's that. (Are you listening, ScentFan?)

Using a 20-50-30% formula for base, heart and top, I mixed the following essential oils. Apparently it's important to add them in that order.

1.5 ml each of: orange, lemon, sandalwood

5.5 ml each of: Jasmine Sambac, Agarwood

3.3 ml each of: Rose, Frankincense

It actually does vaguely resemble Homage. Will it survive at any strength in the soap? I think I'll double the scent material this time to 1.5 oz total.

For the avocado oil soap, a greenish scent would be nice, perhaps an imitation of Vol de Nuit. For the base I know I have: Oakmoss. Orris root, Musk, Sandalwood. For the heart, Narcissus, Vanilla and I guess a bit more Orris root. For the top, Bergamot, Galbanum, Mandarin on the way, Orange and Lemon. No Orange blossom essential oil here, as I discovered. Just a fragrance oil. Not good enough. I notice orange blossom esential oil and Neroli are sometimes treated as the same thing by sellers when the latter is actually the blossom of the seville orange.

Off one bar goes to a brother in the hospital, another to my daughter, a third to a sister and the rest are mine, mine, mine! Are you being selfish, ScentFan? Yes! Strange, normally you instinctively share. There is no answer, but faint whispers are heard over Magic Soap #2 — "All mine, my pretty, my pretty."

Ahem.

Let's leave these two alone: a lover of soap and her soap bars that love skin. Stay tuned for future updates on "Castile ala Homage" and "Inspired-by-Vol-de-Nuit Avacado."