This was a really fun one. We tried three new things:
1. A new recipe using a lot of rice bran oil.
2. Coloring using alkanet.
3. Coloring using charcoal.
Rice bran oil makes great soap. I highly recommend it. I love this soap. We mixed it with coconut oil, canola oil, olive oil and veg shortening. The canola oil really slows the trace, which was lucky in this case, because we divided the batch. We finished the pink stuff first, and then decided to add the charcoal to the rest. And then we decided to add more charcoal, so that stuff almost seized before we got it into the mold. It turned out really pretty though and it smells fabulous.
To use alkanet to color, we had earlier put a tablespoon of dried alkanet into a pint jar of canola oil. It colors the oil a deep dark red. The red turns to a medium blue during the mixing. The blue turned to light pink during the drying. Interesting.
Charcoal is easy to use. We bought ours ground from Brambleberry.com. Started with 1/2 tablespoon and wanted it darker, so we added more. It would probably have been better if we had stirred it in by hand instead of using the stick blender. Things go really fast with the blender.