A botched batch of soap

 I am sure that all of you who make soap have had a few 'surprises' when using a tried and true recipe. Well, that is what happened to me last week when I was making another batch of my 100% coconut oil soap . I added a new to me fragrance oil and that is all it took to botch it up....well appearance wise anyway as the soap will probably still be good to use. 

However, don't let that put you off if you had been meaning to have a go at soapmaking as it doesn't happen all that often and you always learn a lesson along the way. I now know that 'Australian Bush' fragrance oil will accelerate trace which I would have known if I had read the details on Gavin's website. Also I experimented with adding dried calendula petals to the moulds before the soap went in...big mistake...I won't do that again. So, as you can tell, you learn from your mistakes even with soapmaking. 

The Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers has just finished and, while most of the indoor events were cancelled, the Bromeliad Show still went ahead. As if we don't already have enough bromeliads we bought three new ones and, for my own records as I always lose the identification tags, I will record their names here. On the left is Neoregelia Blushing Zebra, Neoregelia Purple Glaze and on the right is Neoregelia White Hot Embers. Yes, the pathway needs weeding. Ha ha!

When I posted some photos a few weeks back of the Queens Park gardens not long after the planting had been done I mentioned that I had no idea what the supports in the above photo were for.

Well, this is the end result. This stacking of potted plants is often seen in Laurel Bank Park and the effect is quite beautiful. I didn't go to Laurel Bank Park during the Carnival as it took forever just to drive past due to the crowds of tourists trying to get a park. As usual the gardeners did a great job and the Carnival was a resounding success. 

I am really not liking this new Blogger 'interface' or whatever it is called but it looks like I can't revert to the old way of writing a post so I guess I will just have to get used to it. I recently bought an iPad so have had to set it up myself and all my Blogger settings have been changed so one of these days I will get it back to normal. I am still using my old iPad and know I should get used to using my new one but I really don't like change. LOL! It is dying and has to be charged every day so one day I guess it will just say goodbye and I will have no choice but to use the new one. It hasn't been easy to find any iPads to buy so a couple of months ago when The Good Guys said they had one in stock I grabbed it before it disappeared as, at that stage, my old one would just shut down without any help from me. Of course, now it is working perfectly apart from having to be constantly charged. 

I have been a bit slack and haven't been keeping up with everyone's blog posts so I hope you are all keeping well. We have few pandemic restrictions here in Queensland but that could quickly change as we all know. 

Have a great week everyone!