This and That

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by and left comments. I'm hopelessly behind on reading all of your blogs lately, but I am trying to catch up! It seems like there is always something happening that needs my attention. Like the lawn mower. After driving 90 miles to mow grass at my second home, the silly thing wouldn't start. The battery won't charge, and it needs either a new battery or a starter. When did lawn mowers become so complicated? We weren't able to linger in the country on this trip long enough to get it fixed, so it's still not working. In the meantime, the grass is still growing. I'm going to have to find someone to cut it in the meantime, while we figure out how to fix the mower. This "Harriet Homeowner" thing is new to me-- my "real" home is a condo, so these are things I've never had to worry about... until now. It's a heck of a learning curve!

Speaking of learning curves, I'm still fiddling around with my soap making. Well, not really soap so much this weekend, but bath bombs. I made my first batch on Tuesday. They're pretty, and they smell WONDERFUL. I wasn't sure about the sunface mold for bath fizzies, but it actually worked quite well. I was surprised at how nicely the details came out. The whole process was extremely easy-- 2 parts baking soda, 1 part citric acid, fragrance, color (mica powder), spritz the whole thing with witch hazel until it gets clumpy, and voila.... Bath Bombs!! The only tricky bit was spritzing the mixture without setting it to fizzing. If that happens, the entire batch is ruined.

I tossed one of these into a bath last night, and the results were so-so. The scent was great, but the bomb sunk like a rock straight to the bottom of the bathtub. I've bought a ton of these commercially, and all of them floated. I'm not sure what's causing it, but I'm playing around with my formulation in the meantime. Also, they're not at all moisturizing-- not that I'd expect moisture from baking soda and citric acid. But that bit can be easily fixed with the addition of some oils or butters. After my bath, I promptly went back to the kitchen and started tinkering around with the recipe. I only made one bomb last night, just to test the adjustments. We'll see how that one performs this evening.

In between making and testing bath bombs, I've also been stitching. The latest installment (part 3, of 12) of Persian Iris Garden was released a day early, on June 30. This was perfect timing, since we were driving to the country on Saturday morning. Even though it was a very hectic weekend, I still managed to stitch just a bit on PIG. I'm not quite halfway through part 3. I also have 2 exchange projects in the works-- one Christmas ornament and one summer-themed project, but of course I can't show pics of those. ;)

FYI-- I'm still having problems posting directly to Blogger, so I've been doing all of this from Photobucket. It's why the format/spacing is a bit messed up.