Sheep On My Stuff

It is, however, marginally a sheep:

What it is is my first attempt at a bath fizzy! I've been looking and looking and looking for ones I like on Etsy, and all too often I see the fatal word: cornstarch. I have had extremely bad reactions to cornstarch in sensitive regions, and I'm not willing to trust the stuff. Plus I liked the idea that it was a minimal-ingredients kind of thing. I couldn't go wrong, right?

I started with the recipe on this page, as well as some baking soda from the kitchen, and citric acid and witch hazel and fragrance oil from Brambleberry (recommended by several of the soap blogs I frequent). Brambleberry is also a (semi-)local business for me, situated in Bellingham. I picked up Cranberry Fig, and oh man, it smells AMAZING. Very fresh and fruity and delightful! (I also have "Ginger Fish", rosemary, and peppermint -- and a Red Lychee Tea they threw in free.)

Well, I overdid it on the witch hazel, as perhaps you can see. While it doesn't set off the reaction as quickly as water will, it does set it off slowly. By the time a few minutes had gone by, my bombs-to-be had grown a bit larger, and they hadn't hardened enough to get them out of the molds.

(Yes. I did buy a sheep mold! :D I bought two, but only used this one.)

So I kind of pried them out, then rinsed out the ice cube tray and the sheep mold. Now, I'd been told that if you use much too much witch hazel, they won't fizz, but the leftover stuff sure fizzed in the trays and the mold, so I figured I'd let them harden and see what happened.

(Lesson two: Don't set them on toilet paper to harden! It doesn't peel off.)

I tried out a bath with them, and they fizz and float and I seem to have gotten the scent just right -- strong enough to use, but not strong enough to linger. (Again with the wanting to make things myself; I don't want the scent from a bath fizzy to linger. Lingering scents can trigger migraines, especially if they don't wash off.) You can smell it if you sniff me, and it was great in the bath, but no more than that!

While I'm not expecting bath stuff to take over from knitting by any means (indeed, I have started a good half-dozen projects since finishing the Great Big Mystery Project -- a sweater for a dear friend's husband [who is also a good friend!], which I am told went over really, really well, HUZZAH!!! -- just from the sheer joy of being able to branch out that way), it is the first thing I've taken pictures of, and I'm pretty pleased by it. :) The results may not have been ideal, but they were functional, and for a first project I think that's pretty good.

(This post was backdated and was actually written on December 26th. Whee, catch-up posts...)