highs and lows

Over the last couple of months I have had some very unwelcome inhabitants in my soap kitchen. Sometime in a soap makers adventures these little gremlins are present and quickly move on to greener pastures, leaving in their wake a batch or in my case batches of soap that you end up fragrancing your garbage can with. Yup, they are unsalvagable ..... is that a word ...... the ones that result in undesirable or unusable soap. All my mantra's, soap dancing, various genre's of music, silent prayers, loud ones too, and a plethora of threats thrown in for good measure probably had them in fits of laughter, entertaining them to bits and ensuring their stay to be lengthened. And some culprit was feeding them as they went from gremlins to devastating ogres. There were so many different issues that my silent nervous breakdowns were having a hard time categorising themselves.

"Jasmine" in all its glory sporting a crackled effect.

Let me just add here that these are part of restocking my standard line, no new ingredients, techniques or going out on a limb with a different or untried recipe.

"Chai" with an overly zealous attitude to outshining all participants in the crackle contest.

So in between the restocking with a batch here ....hmmph....... and there passing a quality control test, new products in the pipeline that I am hoping to branch out with have also been thrown into the mix; (thanks to all the willing human guinea pigs), sourcing jars, bottles and containers and designing labels etc. And a new addition to the "family" in the form of a website is ready to go, awaiting photos of products. 

While watching available stock levels dwindle, I went from panic to frantic to sabbatical. Not having lined up any markets gave me a certain peace in the decision, and I enjoyed the respite, allowing me to play with test batches of colour, fragrances, palm free recipes and infusions.

 

Last week I upped the ante and started soaping for real and threw out the challenge to the first restock soap that if she plays nicely with me she will get a new name.

Take a bow "Mucking Afazing"!



I'm typing this in a whisper, but I think the soap gremlins have left the building.

 

Greetings from Cape Town

Cynthia