Alkanet Root Powder

I received my order of soap supplies which included Alkanet root powder - a natural colorant to create shades of purple to blue.  As you'll see below, I'm not sure what color to expect!

I started off positive that I was on the right path to purple. The color of the oil appeared to be a deep burgundy.

When I reached trace, the mixture turned into a nice dark purple - feeling pretty good about now.

Whoa! What happened?   I read that the soap could turn gray before cooling down and returning to purple, but this wasn't gray, this was charcoal, almost pewter.  Hey, I like pewter, might not be a bad thing....

Since I had no idea what color this soap would become, I didn't use any fragrance but I did decide to play around with embedding the soap with swirls from the madder root soap I made earlier and then used a heart shaped cookie cutter to make little hearts.

Doesn't look very pretty now but I am HOPING the soap does indeed morph into at least a dark purple.

The Next Day:

I removed the hearts after I posted this yesterday ... couldn't really see them clearly anyway.  So the soap remained a dark almost black purple which in some cases, would be nice but it runs dark purple when you use the soap.  I know some people won't mind that but I think it's too much.  

I cut them into bars and the embedded swirls didn't work out as the hot process soap can't really flow into them as with cold process.  Looks cute but I will rebatch using a combination of 3/4 of the madder root soap and 1/4 alkanet for hopefully a better shade of purple.