Mittens Not Bombs?

We had a couple of friends over for Friday crafternoon this week (Happy Birthday Melissa!) and made bath bombs. I used a Martha Stewart recipe, but I made them with Witch Hazel instead of water. I like this combination as it's harder to accidentally make a foaming mess. I went a little overboard with the colors so these are pretty bright. There's blue lavender, yellow lemon, and pink geranium. The slight cracking is probably because I put these on the counter by the hot stove and they dried too quickly.

Cake store molds
Martha Stewart recipe



And I did get a start on something mittenish today. It's a lovely free pattern, A Bird in the Hand. (the link is to the PDF) It's hard to tell that this is brown and light grey yarn (darn Wintertime picture taking!) and that was after abandoning my original planned color combo for a substitute from the stash with better contrast. See how it says "fly"?

I really can't get the hang of the two handed colorwork. Does anyone have a resource to recommend? I do both colors in my left hand, and it actually works pretty well other that having to untwist the yarns every so often, but I feel like I am knitting this the *wrong* way, which frankly seems pretty stupid when I say it now, since I like the end result and it works for me.

Fanciful Bombs

Last night I was happily sleeping away, and at about 1am in the stillness of the hot summer night (with the windows open) there came the sound of a bullhorn:

"THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE THE HOUSE SURROUNDED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

then a pause of say a minute, and...

"WE'RE NOT LEAVING. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! (address of a nearby house given) WE HAVE THE HOUSE SURROUNDED!"

(insert amplified weeooooo siren sound here)

Repeat, repeat...

This was taking place just across the alley behind us. An apparent standoff involving a man with a gun. Funny thing, the police don't just bust down the door and wrap things up like on TV, so this racket continues for at least a couple of hours. Crud.

Anyhoo, so today I stopped at the cake and candy making shop on the way home and picked up a couple of molds, so it's more bath bombs. Witch hazel instead of water, no borax, and lavender scent.

The shape of these pleases me ever so! Now if I just could take a nice cool bath I would fall to sleep this instant.

Fizz-tacular

Last night at about 10pm I thought to myself, how about making some bath bombs? I keep needing little birthday gifts and I love to bring hostess gifts to parties.

So I got up and got started and luckily I just happen to have all of the necessary supplies around the house. Many ingredient are things that you might have at home, like cornstarch, oil, baking soda, Epsom salts and essential oils. The things that you might not have laying around are citric acid and the borax. That's pretty much it unless you add a coloring agent.

The hard part really is getting the mixture wet enough to hold together but not so wet that the baking soda and citric acid start reacting with one another and you end up with a fizzy mess. My first batch went well, pretty golden balls with an orange scent.



The green balls in the back are the vanilla scented ones, because green equals vanilla, right? I don't know why they are green, that's just what color I had. You might notice that they are starting to fizz, because I added too much vanilla extract. Even so, I can dry them under a fan and rub them with a cloth to smooth the surface and they should be fine. The other trick would be to use witch hazel instead of water but I have yet to try that.

Usually I mold my bath bombs in plastic ornament halves but this time I just packed them into a ball shape with my hands. Slightly more rustic but I think that's OK and it was less frustrating than cracking the bombs during unmolding. I really wanted this to be a fast and easy project.

Another tip, I always wear gloves when I make the bombs because the straight essential oil irritates my skin. And yes, they will make a mess of your tub but it's still worth it for the skin-softening goodness and the novelty science factor.

Bath Bomb Instructions
Quadruple recipe makes about 12 large bombs
Start to finish, about 30 minutes