I wasn't going to write more now, but checking to see if my last post displayed properly I happened to click on the "soap" category. I got a shock. Firstly I was shocked by how few posts there are in here, and secondly how angry they sound. My immediate feeling was to recategorise them - to remove the ones not entirely about soap and to hide the rants among the morasse of uncategorised material on my blog. But I made a deal with myself at the start not to re-write history, so I can't start doing so now.
Instead, I realised that what I have in my soap category is an analysis of a misspent soaping year. Compared to Bex, whose loft groans under the weight of her soap hump, my output for 2007 has been paltry. A few "mega-batches" from the occasional soap binge during the reign of the voodoo queen, and one or two quite frankly generic batches from the second half of the year when the risk of being chatted to mid-pour made me shy away from anything too involved or any soap that required focussed magical intent.
It has been a furtive, angry year of soap.
By contrast, my first batch of soap in 2008 has a smooth two-colour swirl. I soaped at 25 degrees, taking my time to let the oils cool and to blend the ultramarines thoroughly with the traced soap. There was no chatting, just a passing interested query: "what are you making?" as a disembodied voice disappeared up the stairs. It was very zen, and I don't think that has to do with the recipe, even if it was meditation soap that I was making.
I had thought that I didn't want to make another batch of two-finger soap right now because I didn't want to upset any good thing I have going in my life at this point, but maybe I should. Maybe I should make a batch so that I can make a clean break and put a bad soaping year behind me.
