Making Soap and Sewing

Good morning! Beautiful day here. Sunny with some clouds hanging out and a temperature of 37°F. Just lovely!

Well. Deeeeep subject. Especially for shallow minds. Good thing there aren’t many of those around.

Soapmaking Monday was good. I’d planned on Simply Sandy, Simply Soap, Simply Swirls, Grandma’s Rose Garden and Amena’s Baby Bars but neglected to note that Simply Sandy and ABB take jojoba oil and I had only a small amount so Simply Sandy was replaced with Cinnamint Shaving Soap. As it was, part of the jojoba oil in ABB had to be replaced with olive oil. Not a huge big deal but a change, nonetheless. Right now they are all sitting in a lovely row on the table awaiting the moment when I take them out of the papers.

I’d entertained thoughts of making more soap yesterday but when I checked Monday’s labors, they were not ready to take out of the molds (which I rather expected because I hadn’t actually started making soap until noon Monday). That put soapmaking off to today. I have now a limited supply of coconut oil so I will probably only be able to make two or three batches. I’m going to weigh what I do have and figure out what I’m making based on that number.

I have been thinking about the palm oil that I use in making soap. Almost every soap I make contains palm oil and palm oil has been in the news as of late. I have considered, and am considering still, not using palm oil because of the effects of harvesting it. I have more palm oil left right now than I do coconut oil. I could just use what I’ve got and then replace it. That will mean reworking every single recipe I have. As with many things, however, there are many things to consider. I am a minor player in the use of palm oil. The relatively small amount that I use does not contribute much to the deforestation in Asia. And we won’t get into the supposed effect that this deforestation is having on global warming. Not going there, people, sorry. There is some debate as to whether or not companies boycotting the use of palm oil will really have any effect on deforestation because if there is no demand for palm oil, the forests would likely be burned and used for something else. So, what should I, as a minor maker of soap do? Cut palm oil out entirely? Use a lesser amount of it? Unilever, the world’s largest consumer of palm oil, uses 1.36 million tons of the oil each year. Holy cow. That’s 2720000000 pounds. I currently am using less than 40 pounds per year (2719999960 less than Unilever or 1.470588 x 10^-8 [I think I did the math right]). Not even a drop in the bucket.

Isn’t thinking while you are writing fun? Based on my current thoughts, I think that the small amount of palm oil that I use does not make much difference. But surely I should do my part to be environmentally responsible. And it might not be a bad idea to look into the harvesting practices of the other oils I use. Maybe I should only make castile soap (I hope you can hear the sarcasm on that one because there is no way I could afford that much olive oil).

In other news, Saturday is the Trunk or Treat at church so I think I’d best be getting a move on with construction of outfits for the boys. Yesterday I sewed the side seams on Seth’s breeches inside out so I’ve got to either do the flat feld on the outside or take the stitches out. Still undecided at this point but leaning toward taking stitches out. Shirts are done other than buttons and buttonholes. Waistcoat linings are together. I’m working on breeches. My goal is therefore to finish breeches today (other than buttonholes which I’ll be doing on the other machine), and get waistcoats going. If I get everything to the point of just needing buttonholes, I can get all of them done Friday as well as buttons. Except the breeches which need some buttonholes before I finish sewing the waist. Anyway, should be tons of fun.

No soccer practice for Cedric today and we have a half day so we’ll see how the day goes.

Have a spectacular day!