My biggest ever batch of soap

This post is going to be a little diversion into soap making, since I do that too and made kind of a milestone batch last night. Generally I made really small batches, my regular loaf mould makes 5 100 g bars, plus I like the variety of making lots of different fragrances and colours. I think the biggest batch I have ever made was about 700 g. However, I recently got a wholesale order from a friend who wants to felt the soap and sell it at craft fairs. She ordered 2400 g of the same fragrance... and of course it is plain and uncoloured because it is going to be inside its little felt cocoon. So I made an enormous 2400 g batch of soap last night. 2400 g is just the oils, the water increases the weight too, but some of that will evaporate off in the curing process.

I initially put the oils in an 8-cup measuring cup, but by the time I got to the final oil I had to move them to my stockpot, there just wasn't enough room. I moulded it in a shoe box that once held hikers....

It is fragranced with oatmeal, milk, and honey from Voyageur. I really like that FO and had sort of been hoarding it, but I had to use up almost all of my supply in this batch. That is the price of doing business I guess! I will have to buy more. :)

I am excited to cut the soap tonight. I still haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do it, maybe I will cut it into loaves so I can use my wire cheese slicer cutting board to cut the bars like I normally do.

I have to make two more smaller batches, one lavender and one patchouli, for the same friend, plus I have orders for another patchouli loaf and a mint/nag champa with pumice loaf (for someone who has really weird soap preferences ;) ). I fear I am going to run out of my base oils before I make all of these.... Why does everyone want soap now that all I want to make is body butter?! It's a good problem to have.