Soap and its challenges

  I had planned to make a simple recipe, that I have made before.  My husband was out of town, I had the place to myself and I was raring to go.  ......Not so fast, Charlie.   I had already made a gallon of my favorite hand cream in the morning and I knew that I would have enough time to complete my intended soap making project. I laid out my supplies, the oils, my scale, my pots, the lye, the distilled water, my crock pot.....Oh, did I mention I was going to do HP soap?  That is where you actually cook the soap.  This process allows you to be able to use the soap sooner than the normal 4-6 week waiting and curing time.  This was going to be a man's soap with Norwegian Woods fragrance and mild green colorant.
  So, I dumped the oils into the crock pot, added the lye water and turned it on.   Easy-peasy.
 After about two hours, something looked awfully wrong.
 I had cottage cheese, albeit green cottage cheese, but, cottage cheese, none the less.  Not good.  I also noticed an awful lot of liquid. Hmmmmm!  This is the first time I had ever had this happen, so I was not prepared with an idea of what to do next.  I stirred it and it appeared to go back together to a pudding like trace. After another hour of cooking, I decided to pour.  And wouldn't you know, this was going into my antique sewing machine drawer lined with mylar and plastic.   (Another NO-NO).  Way too hot for plastic........It melted and poured right out of the bottom of the drawer.  Luckily, this was in my laundry room where I have two sinks. The drain got cleaned out as this was lye water.  Hunh? you say.  Now let me tell you the reason.
  This big dummy left out a major oil from the recipe.  Close to forty percent.  How I managed to do that, I'll never know.  The weird part of it is that I didn't figure this out until the next day.
  Luckily, I have reformulation skills from my position as QC chemist and R&D chemist.
 I dumped the semi hardened cottage cheese log back into the crock pot, crumbling and breaking it. I then weighed out the missing ingredient, added a slight more distilled water and calculated lye to the mix, and cranked up the old crock pot, again.
   After thoroughly stirring the mixture and cooking on medium for two more hours, I had what looked like normal crock pot soap. I used a different mold to pour into. It looked great.  By the next morning, I cut it.
  Would you believe the Norwegian Woods fragrance survived?  Of course, it has a pretty high flash point.
  The soap is hard, good color, great fragrance and no lye zap.   Saved by the seat of my pants.