No longer selling soaps or carnivorous plants because of GST

Update: The government has now allowed online sellers the same exemption from having to register for GST as regular sellers. So I am once more selling soaps and carnivorous plants.

This blog is basically about the stuff I am up to at home. When I make artistic soaps because I enjoy making them, I sell the surplus, because there is only so much bathing one can do. When I grow plants (mostly carnivorous, but some others too), I sell those I grow in excess and seeds so that people interested in these hard to find plants can obtain them and grow them themselves. I’ve spent far more than I’ve earned on both h0bbies, but the purpose of doing them was never to do big business. Could I expand if I wanted to? Sure. But I am a loner, thinker at heart. Spending my day selling stuff is not a vision I hold for myself.

Here are three different ways I’m growing vertically on just one wall of my balcony

The little money I did get was spent right back on obtaining more obscure plants. Usually from abroad, because the irony of carnivorous plants growing in India is that even as their habitats die, unlike in other countries, enthusiastic citizens have not taken up growing them in private collections. So today, if you want to buy a drosera indica or its seeds, you end up buying from abroad – a plant that natively grows in India and is, in fact named such. There are a few carnivorous plant sellers. All of them online. There simply isn’t enough of a market nationwide for individual sellers to chalk up say…. 20 lakhs in sales a year. Let alone profit.

There are maybe a dozen sellers in the country – 4-5 that I know of. Perhaps a few hundred enthusiasts to buy from them. Maybe a few thousand. Nationwide. I would be surprised if any of the businesses chalk up stunning profits. This is a hobby of lovers. The sales may make minor profits for those who invest space and money, but for the large part in a country where agriculture itself is a loss making proposition, the possibility of obscure carnivorous plants raking in the moolah is remote. Most of us hobbyists, delling as individuals wouldn’t even need to register a business unless there was a proper nursery involved. Certainly not the likes of me, growing plants in my balcony.

Charcoal and kaolin clay soap scented with holy basil

But the GST is an odd thing. To sell anything at all online. No matter the amount, you must register and file returns. This would involve creating the paperwork for a business, filing GST for every state that happened to have a person buy a soap or two from me, and generally spending more on paperwork than the actual materials I invested in or profits I made.

It is not worth it. The government clearly wants only people who do business in lakhs of rupees only to be enabled for online business or to pay a disproportionate amount for the right to do it legally. It amounts to charging citizens for the right to sell in the country outside whatever locality they are in. This will discourage businesses with a turnover of less than 20 lakhs, which will be prevented from growing from exposure to nationwide sales unless they take the gamble of committing to filing GST foreverafter in order to find out.

In my view, the GST is unjust to small sellers and particularly seeks to destroy small online sellers. But I am not enough of a businessman to make this battle mine.

A healing, soothing, cooling soap with an earthy calming khus fragrance, leaves your skin feeling nourished with aloe vera.

So here is what I am doing. This site no longer sells anything. If you wish to buy, you may come over and meet me locally and buy from me, or get someone to buy locally from me and send it to you. I can pack for shipping.

Alternatively, I can send you gifts of soaps and plants, if you gift me things I covet. No money will exchange hands. Hobbyists trading in things is hardly business. And it is pretty much the scale of what I am up to. Feel free to email me at vidyut@vidyut.info and see what sort of an exchange can be worked out, if you liike something on this site. I suppose I no longer have to limit myself to India.

Also people who help sponsor my writing on aamjanata.com will be entitled to a token gift from here.

Let us see how this goes. Will really be a pity if hobbyists are successfully strangled by the govt.

Thread about the whole thing on Twitter.

So I finally read the GST thing and decided that business is not a viable idea for me/small online. I'll spend more on paperwork than I earn

— Vidyut (@Vidyut) September 21, 2017

Growing vertically in the balconies

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Here are some of my best tips for growing max vegetables in small balcony space and such.

Go vertical

If horizontal space is limited, don’t just think of how much you can put on the floor. Look up the walls, up grills. Think vertical. There are many possibilities. This photo below shows three different vertical systems on just one wall.

Here are three different ways I’m growing vertically on just one wall of my balcony

The first is a modular system you can buy. The pots can be put on the frame and taken off easily and I keep changing them depending on what needs the growing room. I’ve put two sets of these panels perpendicular to each other to conceal a drainage pipe going thrrough the balcony. You can see that more clearly in this photo.

Mint growing in a vertical planter

The three pots on the bottom left are the result of a little half bottle with some sprigs of mint stuck in. Once they needed more room, I gave them more room. If some day I decide I don’t need so much mint, I’ll take out a pot or two or if I need more, I might move the whole thing to a larger tub to spread out and grow. On the right is lemongrass. Now here’s the thing. Above the lemongrass and mint are tomato seedlings! They have outgrown their seedling trays and are perfect for using this size of pot for a while before being planted into something more permanent.

Improvised vertical gardens

The second is a vertical system made of old 2 liter cold drink bottles. Selling them won’t get any money and even recycling wastes resources to transport and process. Why not use them right here at home?

So, a vertical planter doesn’t have to be this premediated, permanent thing that you plant and maintain for a long time. You can use it as an intrmediate pot for a plant growing its way to a larger pot too. Next month, those pots will have something else in them.

Vertical garden from scraps of tarpaulin like cloth pieces

It doesn’t even have to be proper materials. I put this together by tying/stitching up some tarpaulin sheet like material pieces with plastic string. It didn’t last long. Once the plants growing in it were done, I had to trash it too.

Remixed vertical gardens?

The third in that top photo is a hard plastic net I’ve suspended down the wall. I hook any kind of a pot I wish onto it. Right now it is a set of rectangular planters. On another wall, I’ve suspended pots and entire trays for my carnivorous plants from hooks on the wall.

Growing carnivorous plants vertically

Sometimes you don’t have a wall to hang things on. So you can stack pots up.

Stacking pot sets

These sets of stackable plant containers are found commercially for purchase, but you can really stack anything as long as it will stay stacked.

And of course, you can just send cucumbers and other vining plants up the grill…

Using the balcony grill as trellis for cucumber and bitter gourd

This has the added advantage of screening the windows from direct sunlight and helping keep the home cooler in summer.

If I planted all this in pots spread on the floor, I wouldn’t have room to grow anything else! But this balcony faces east and the wall gets great light all morning and is bright all day. So why not…

Container sizes matter

I’ve started these mint cuttings in some sphagnum moss in a bottle cut in half.

In the photo above, I’ve cut a half liter mineral water bottle to make a cup (it was cracked). I put some sphagnum moss into it and stuck some sprigs of mint I’d got from the market. They rooted. I gave several of them around and planted these remaining ones, pinching them back and taking further cuttings from those that grew long till they filled the three bottom containers in the photo with the black vertical garden pots.

Plants grow best when their roots have adequate space. However, when you don’t have a lot of space, it can get tricky to provide plants all the space they need. I have found that this is possible to manage with careful timing and a little extra effort by potting up plants as they grow instead of directly planting them in large pots. This works very well with plants like tomatoes and capsicum, less well with fast growing plants like cucumber. Keeping the smaller pots off the floor allows me to use the space on the floor for the big containers for cucumbers, tomatoes, sweetcorn, okra…

Byblis liniflora and Byblis guehoi seeds are germinating!

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I had purchased several seeds of Byblis, also known as rainbow plants. Of these, Byblis liniflora and Byblis guehoi arrived on the 23rd of Jan 2017. I sowed the byblis liniflora seeds immediately into sphagnum moss (see end for growing conditions) and soaked the Byblis guehoi seeds in Gibberellic acid for a day and sowed them on the 24th. Two byblis liniflora seeds to a cell and one byblis guehoi seed per cell (no particular reason other than the number of seeds I had). By the 29th, I had germination! WOW. That was fast. I was expecting to have to wait for weeks. While several seeds of both types were showing tiny specks emerging, ranging in color from white/cream to a pale green, I could only get a decent photo of a couple of byblis guehoi seeds germinating that seemed to be slightly bigger than others. So here they are.

Byblis guehoi seed beginning to germinate

This was on the 29th Jan. Now it is three days later, and on the 1st of Feb, 2 byblis liniflora seeds that had bare specs of pale green hinting in the name of germination are already free of their seed coats.

Byblis liniflora seedling emerging from seed coat

They are really tiny. Perhaps 2mm or so in size, but they got upright over the course of the day and now look like seedlings. What I find amazing is that miniature as they are, they already have very tiny tentacles with very tiny droplets of dew!!!

Byblis liniflora germinated. The whole seedling is about 2mm in size right now.

On the other hand, the byblis guehoi from the first image….

Over the course of three days, the emerging seedling has become upright and taller – almost half a centimeter, but it is still not emerged from its seed coat.

Well, it is taller. At least 4mm, likely 5mm or more (tough to actually measure in there) and it is more upright, but it is still… emerging. I nudged it very gently to see if the seed coat had actually come off and it was a matter of falling off, but nope. It is still quite firmly attached. The seedling is not done emerging. Reminds me of the process of birth – which it is. You see a newborn and wonder how all that fit in there…

Right now, it is just looking like a stalk. There will obviously be two cotyledons, like the other seedling, but they are either held so tight together by the remaining part in the seed so as to seem to be a stalk, or this is really the stalk and the cotyledons are still to emerge. In either case, it is quite evident that the byblis guehoi promises to be quite a bit taller than the byblis liniflora – if these baby steps are any measure.

Growing conditions for byblis liniflora and byblis guehoi

I have put the seeds in individual cells in long fingered sphagnum that has been well rinsed and is “on the verge” of becoming alive. My previous attempts at growing carnivorous plants have taught me that in our climage, they really do better in live sphagnum, which protects them from the heat come summer as well as provides some humidity with the constant evaporation. However, pure live sphagnum tends to grow a bit fast and smother seedlings, so what I’ve started doing is using long fingered sphagnum that is dried – but not completely dry, so over time it definitely comes back to life, but not fast enough that the seed can’t get tall enough first. This is dried sphagnum that will generally show a few green stems immediately on being hydrated (which I remove to the live sphagnum culture). As it remains moist, over a period of days, weeks, it slowly gets greener (some of this will be algae) and starts sprouting. I figure it is the best of both worlds.

As far as the potting mix goes, both of them have identical conditions. However, my balcony, where they rest is on a slight slope and the side with guehoi is placed toward the higher end so that the tray dries out slightly earlier on its side than on the side of the liniflora. I’ve done this with some success with other plants which prefer more or less wet conditions than their companions and it is a good use for the sloping floor (which I’d otherwise have to compensate by raising the tray on the lower end a bit so that it is level). I did this because all the reading on the internet so far seems to indicate that byblis liniflora seems to like wetter conditions than byblis guehoi.

I will be observing this and using the information to plan the potting mix for their final pots. I have put them in cells on purpose so that they can be individually popped out and planted into a larger pot as a chunk without disturbing their roots. This will allow me to let them grow a bit before having to rush to transplant them into their final pots before their root system establishes. This also means that it gives me more time to observe and plan the potting mix of their final pots.

I use RO water for these. Every once in a week or so, I take the seedling trays out of the water trays and wash the water trays thoroughly and wipe the underside of the seedling trays clean as well to avoid any nasties growing in the water. I let the trays dry out before adding more water – but not for very long. The moss on tip is always moist. No top watering for now.

The trays are open and get good air circulation and about 4-5 hours of morning sunlight. I suppose I could cover them, but every time I’ve covered seeds, I’ve had problems with fungus, damping off and rot – I think something about our climate (warm, humid). So this time I’m keeping them airy.

That’s about it. I can’t think of anything else I did specifically. Feel free to ask away in the comments.

Though of course, germinating these is just part of the battle, and the real war is keeping them alive beyond the seedling stage.

Nepenthes Ampullaria pitcher plants

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My Nepenthes Ampullaria pitcher plants arrived today. These are seed grown plants. And there were surprises. Some good, some… not.

The two plants I purchased arrived somewhat haphazardly packed. But there were lots of pitchers. Someone had put in a lot of effort and time growing them from seed.

The plants were sent in plastic bags with an inexplicable piece of wood added – for support? Can’t say. Didn’t appear to be supporting anything.

There were loads of extra plantlets. All apparently seed grown. And completely mixed up in the sphagnum moss they shipped with. It almost seemed like someone simply got rid of all the nepenthes ampullaria they had. Packed the two plants sold, then just collected the seedling pot and bundled it up as an extra – grown seedlings and newly germinating seedlings all mixed up in the sphagnum potting mix. Summarily evicted. Broke my heart to see it. The seller wasn’t selling anything else at all after I purchased these. I wonder if this was an end of hobby clearance sale. Plants grown from seed take ages to get as robust as the two I had purchased. And yet the manner in which they were packed almost reminded one of a trash bag.

Nepenthes ampullaria plants mixed up in sphagnum moss. You can’t see it in the photo, but the sphagnum moss contains lots of seeds, plantlets, germinating seedlings and such – nepenthes ampullaria in various stages of growth from seed.

Heartbreaking doesn’t begin to describe this. The plants were completely bruised and in some cases, just…. overwhelmed and wilting, broken, or rotting. What a contrast it was to the Nepenthes Ventrata and Mirabilis that had just arrived on the previous day, lovingly shipped in their pots in live sphagnum. Seedlings such as this one were all through the moss. Most of them broken, unlikely to survive. A joyous unpacking of new plants had rapidly turned into a search and rescue mission. I carefully pulled out as many as I could, but I could see that it was hopeless. They were too fragile for this kind of treatment.

Nepenthes ampullaria seedling rescued from sphagnum moss packing

And there were a couple of sundews as well! Completely smothered in the sphagnum and a sticky mess.

I potted them up as best as I could, knowing fully that the seedlings would most likely not make it. One larger plant perhaps may. Remains to be seen. I’ve given it a nice pot and will pamper it a bit. This is what the growing area looks like now.

The rescued nepenthes plants settled in a well lit but shady area of balcony, to rest and recover from their trauma.

Starting to grow carnivorous plants again

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So 2016 had been a pain. With my father ill for the first three months, then dying, Nisarga going through three surgeries and spending five months out of it in a cast in total, personal stress…. my carnivorous plants got neglected and died at some point. For that matter, my balcony too was mostly barren and pests on the few plants that remained. I decided to begin 2017 on a fresh note for my balcony farming as well as carnivorous plant growing. And the start is looking promising. I will be posting updates, but for now, here are some images of my first nepenthes plants to kick things off.

I confess, sick of my barren balconies, I went on something of a spree. These Nepenthes are the first to arrive.

Nepenthes are commonly called pitcher plants and grow in humid, tropical climates. They are broadly divided into highland and lowland nepenthes, depending on the altitude at which they grow. I’m mostly buying lowland nepenthes, given that Nalasopara (near Mumbai) is hardly any elevation from the sea.

All in all

Nepenthes Mirabilis and Nepenthes Ventrata soon after unboxing.

All in all, they were pretty well packed and traveled well. The Nepenthes Mirabilis is the one on the left. Its leaves look a bit worrisome with the dark spots and overall unhealthy look. The Nepenthes Ventrata is the one on the right. It seems just fine – at least to my inexperienced eye.

Unhealthy Nepenthes Mirabilis pitcher plant showing damage from travel.

I sent the pictures of the Nepenthes Mirabilis to the seller, and he assures me that it is just dampness and travel stress and that he will replace the plant for me at no cost if it does not recover. I am supposed to keep the plants in a shady location for a while and give them some humidity to keep them happy. I have just misted them before taking these photos.

The Nepenthes Ventrata seems to be doing fine. The water in the pitcher had spilled during travel, so I put very little distilled water inside it. All my reading indicates that this may or may not be useful and there is nothing conclusive about it, but I figured that if the plant likes humidity, having a dry pitcher may not exactly be fun after travel stress. Don’t we head for a glass of water on returning home tired? So I gave it some :p

Pitcher on Nepenthes Ventrata pitcher plant had lost water in shipping. I put very little distilled water into it to help it settle. I have no idea if it helps.

The pitcher itself looks fine, though many have said that it is common for a nepenthes to lose all the pitchers that it shipped with as it acclimatizes to a new location. I do hope it doesn’t lose this one. On the other hand, it is a good measure of how well the plant is doing, I guess. If this pitcher doesn’t die and the other one just forming forms normally and opens, I suppose I can say all is well.

So, fingers crossed. Hope the rest of the plants arrive safely and thrive here as well.

Some notes on cold process soap making and some effects

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I have learned a lot from videos, articles, tools and tutorials online, when it comes to soap making. Thought I’d pay it forward with some of my own learnings. Please note, this has nothing to do with “how to make soap” type introductory tutorials. This will be useful to you only if you already know how to make soap. And well enough to break rules without going into a panic. If you haven’t made soap before, this post is no use to you beyond curiosity. :p

Neem oil speeds up trace. Adding vanilla is almost instant sieze. How to swirl this?

Found this one out through sheer stubborn. You swirl it with a whisk. Turn the whisk into the soap like a chopstick swirl, but turning whisk as well. You put whisk in, you’ll figure it out instinctively. Pretty much the only way it will work without getting into puree zone. It breaks up rather than flows. Turn it anyway. Then bang down hard to remove as much air as you can. If need be, press down with a spatula. I don’t have a photo of this at the moment (since I found other ways to make a prettier neem soap), but it provides something of a chequered effect in an embed-like circular area in the soap, which looks quite nice (this shape/effect will vary). If the soap is softer, it can provide small rounded circles in that area instead of sharper corners. Either way, it isn’t as much of a disaster as I had imagined.

Curing cold process soaps fast

My soaps don’t zap within the first day or two of making, but for them to harden properly, etc is another story. This is why I have so much coconut oil in my recipes. Coconut oil, palm stearin, palm oil and neem oil. Get ready quite rapidly. Particularly recipes high in coconut oil. I usually don’t see much difference in them beyond a week or so after making. Dry weather helps. Warm weather helps (also encourages a good gel phase). Another thing I recommend with some caution is a water discount. Using less water reduces curing time, in my experience. However, using less water will also make your lye solution stronger, more likely to cause burns faster. It will also result in a faster trace – particularly if you use oils in which are in a hurry (which of course, you do, if you’re in a hurry :p ). Trick then is to ditch the blender and use a whisk or spatula and a great deal of diligence. Please note, it is better to have a sieze and hot process the whole mess than to fail to achieve trace (or at the very least a stable emulsion that won’t separate). This takes more effort without a blender, but frankly, a water discount and fast tracing oils are in a hurry to trace anyway, so it isn’t very terrible, like say… olive oil. I am able to ship such soaps without risking damage (to soap or skin) about a week or so after making when weather is dry. Do note, an additional time goes in shipping before the soap gets put to use.

Creating a frosted effect

Rose frost (The colors are far more subtle in the soap than this photo – my camera insists on adding saturation)

Using 10% or so palm stearin in a recipe superfatted at least 8% and having the lye slightly cooler than the oil. It creates a slight graininess that we usually associate with a false trace and the soap traces super fast (feel free to use a touch more water). But be certain to bring it to trace proper. By then, the graininess goes down a bit (or becomes less visible in a thick trace), but you can bring it back to varying degrees of visibility with some experiments with coloring. It appears as white dots in a colored soap – plain ugly in strong colors, but a faintly ethereal/frosted kind of look in pale colors. The white dots are where the palm stearin solidifies/saponifies in a hurry because the lye is slightly cooler. The soap is skin safe. Done over and over. Every time, as long as the superfat is above 8% in practice, but I’d say aim for 10% till you are comfortable with this. Better safe than sorry. Areas to pay attention – mix, mix, mix very fast when you are adding lye slowly – you want tiny grains not huge blobs – or you won’t get them small before thick trace (don’t ask how I know)

A grunge type look

Grunge look lemon soap

This is actually very easy. Slow tracing oils in a high superfat recipe – 5-8% or more brought to light trace and colored heavily with herbal colorants (this here is a lot of red sandalwood powder). Swirl thick colored emulsion as usual into a pretty liquid mix (more liquid than you’d usually use for swirling). And then jostle it a bit. Not shaking. More like slight sloshing from picking it and putting it elsewhere – a few times. If in doubt, better pick it and put it in another place a few times than shake too much – you’ll lose the swirls – everything is too liquid. Then let it set. The mistake I did with this was unmolding it too early. Should have waited another day. The slight smudged lines are from the cutting. They will vanish in use though the blurred/faded look will remain. Sodium lactate may improve the setting and unmolding situation a bit, but really, waiting was what it had needed and I didn’t give in my impatience. It could probably be done with more coconut and ditching the blender to get to the faintest hint of trace and a little more jostling before it sets – will probably lead to a happier unmolding experience. Will try and update.

Please note, this will not work with any colorant that will form a paste that holds together – clays will fail. Turmeric will work only barely and saturated. Micas will probably fail too. Don’t think liquid colors will work either. You want the grains of the colorant to get jostled out of place a bit. Sort of like bleeding, but with particles of the colorant. Herbal powders only, I think.

How to use hydrosols for fragrance in cold process soap

Dissolving lye in hydrosols reduces the scent to the point that by the time the cold process soap is ready, it is almost unscented. I have learned to do the obvious. A water discount (as little as 1.5 times the lye), bringing to trace pretty fast, and then adding hydrosol to make up the remaining water quantity after trace. Mix, mix, mix. Can be tricky with oils that trace fast, but for the most part, I have got good results. Sometimes you have to hurry. But the scent remains in place well enough for the soap to be properly scented without needing oil. I have found that I can add hydrosol upto the weight of the lye with some honest mixing properly back to a thick trace. More than that, and sometimes I have glycerin seeping. Clays help – both in preventing glycerin seepage as well as holding the hydrosol fragrance better. So I often mix clays in hydrosol and use for coloring the soap made with a water discount. Protects the hydrosol better than otherwise.

Shades of turmeric

Turmeric is yellow in color, but it becomes red in the presence of an alkali. I found that I can use this to advantage. Adding turmeric to lye will give a brick red, adding it to traced soap gives a bright orange-red, adding it to oil before adding it to traced soap (or adding it into oil phase) gives a more yellowy orange (oil probably forms a slight barrier from contact with the lye). Amount of turmeric can further play this into the range of reds, peaches, browns, etc. Oils used for the recipe can be used to enhance this. A peach type color can be created with turmeric in a pure coconut oil base, a more yellowy one with infusion of calendula or with sesame oil in the mix. But I am not yet expert at this, so results can be a bit hit or miss. Still experimenting.

Using indigo

Powdered indigo leaf can give muddy green speckles. This can be fixed by adding it to the lye phase if you’re making a blue soap, but if you aren’t and indigo has to be just one of the colors? I do this a bit ad-hoc, but hasn’t failed yet. Make a solution of indigo in water I eyeball it approximately to 3-5 spoons of water per spoon of powder (mostly because a more liquid colorant allows me to increase color more gradually than concentrated). Add sodium hydroxide in a tiny quantity – probably the weight of the powder (not volume) or slightly less. You don’t need a lot. The sodium hydroxide dissolves the leaf powder, leaving the dye behind (this may need to be done a couple of hours in advance). Using this solution to color gives an even blue. I have not found it to be particularly caustic (and I have a Ph meter), but if you think you used any significant amount of caustic soda, feel free to add a spoonful of oil for every spoonful of the colorant. It will ensure that the color doesn’t make the soap caustic. Though frankly, if you’ve used so much sodium hydroxide for this to be a concern, you’re probably better off mixing a small batch of soap separately for the blue.

Swirling two (or more) soaps instead of using colorants

I don’t do this too often, but sometimes I have these whims. Pure coconut oil is white, sesame seed oil is yellowish beige, olive oil is greenish, neem is all kinds of beige-brown depending on concentration, etc. And then the infused oils (which I don’t bother with – can use them as colorants directly :p ). Not all colors, but some can be done like this. Also handy if you want to really use indigo to the hilt – it thrives in the lye best. Keep everything ready, respective lye solutions near their intended base oils, etc. probably add fragrance oil to the base oils and then mix, pour, mix, pour, mix, pour, done. It takes a bit of preparation, but the doing itself is not actually difficult. You just have two or more soaps in your soap 😉 Most of the times this really comes in handy is to get a good white – nothing beats coconut on this, in my humble opinion, not even titanium dioxide if your oils don’t want to be white like coconut does. So sometimes, it is just easier to mix a small batch of coconut or coconut, rice bran, castor oil and palm and titanium dioxide or whatever whites for accents on the side and not worry about the rest of your recipe wrecking that with whatever oils and infusions you have planned. Takes planning. Not something you can do after reaching trace on main batch and getting a whim for a proper white. Would probably come in handy if you wanted to add a special oil that soaps soft and you don’t want your whole bar soft. Swirl it into what will be a firm bar 😉

Clearly, I am a bit on the crazy side, and color a lot outside dotted lines. Sometimes I warp a process out of recognition (what do you call a cold process thin traced soap thinned back with hydrosol or a hot process soap that gets colored like a cold process in the applesauce stage instead of proceeding to cook?). I experiment a lot, fail some too. As long as it ends with good usable soap, all is good, or there is the hot process batch or a Jumla soap. Thankfully, things haven’t reached those stages too often. Do let me know if you find this useful. Add your ideas too. And I will update if I have anything new to add. As in, new discoveries of my own. General soap making instructions and such, better people than me have done in better ways, many times over.