I'm biding my time after a busy, social weekend. Our son and family were up from L.A, so we had some lovely family time. The weather held for parts of the weekend so the twins could do some fishing with their Dad. Saturday night's dinner was the planned wood fired pizza with Sean doing his usual great job as pizza master, as well as the steelhead and salad. One morning Sean went duck hunting with a couple of friends, using the newly built duck blind at the new pond and was in 7th heaven. He has always been more of a country boy.. I helped Nicole a bit with her garden cleanup and helped her harvest some more veggies which she took back to L.A.
Sunday, Sean and Nicole's friend Alan took Jim and I on a tour of his new property. Years ago it was a dairy farm and he's loving the idea of using part of the old barn, which is also being refurbished for goats and making goat cheese. It's an amazing piece of property right at the foot of one of the table rocks with amazing views in every direction. The 100 year old stone house, great barn and out building are going to be quite a show place after all the additions and remodeling. It has a nice pond with bass, which are in low supply due to two otters who are also living in the pond, soon to be evicted. I'd probably be prone to leaving them, since they are such playful creatures who would, I assume, give many hours of viewing enjoyment.
I'm going in for a barium cocktail and some X-rays Thursday morning, so hopefully they'll find out what the problem is. It could be that the hernia surgery undid itself, or I got a second hernia or Lord knows what else it could be. In any case, I'm still avoiding starting any long terms projects till I find out what's up with this body. So I've just been keeping busy with the never ending computer work and little organizing jobs. It seems like my life has been on hold so much the past 3 years and it just doesn't stop. Thank goodness I always have other little, time consuming things I can and need to do to keep my mind busy and my body somewhat active.
Yesterday I decided to go into the studio to at least put some of the recent soap supply purchases away. My soap supplies have now exceeded the space I allotted them on two studio shelves, so I spent time yesterday moving all the scents, oils, colorants, and fats in the house is an area of a flat back cupboard space in the mudroom which makes them easily accessible to move back to the studio or the kitchen. I got my soap notebooks organized, updated my inventory list, and spent time on Pinterest and You tube refreshing my memory of basic soap making techniques. There is so much to learn and remember, therefore lots of note books and to do lists.
Today I found another good soap blog site with some some free pdf downloads for labels, soap recipes that are slow to trace which is very good information since you don't want soap to set before you can do all those lovely swirl patterns. I also download and copied the prep list, and a couple of other charts. I don't know why but she suggested waiting an hour after children or animals were in the soap making area before you make soap. I have no idea about why this is the case.- I also found a recommendation for a soaping magazine. I should have guessed there would be one. It's not available in print, just in pdf files, so I subscribed and ordered an old issue from Etsy that I could download immediately. It has photos and instructions on how to do all those fancy tops on soaps. Modern soap making has become quite an art - quite a change from when farm wives just make soap once a year with wood ash and the lard after butchering a pig in the fall. I've been adding a lot more information to my soap notebooks all afternoon. After dinner I'll run some recipes through a soap calculator and get an idea of how they will work.
With the family up and doctors appointments and household chores, I never did get around to making the melt and pour soap; but at least all my supplies are nicely and newly organized, my electronic devices now have working emails, and JCloud continuea to back up my computer after one or two bad starts.
After buying several soap fragrances I found that some of them don't last very long, but also found that you can purchase something that will keep them from losing their scent too fast. So now I have to find out who sells it and order some. Who knew vanilla scents can turn the soap brown! I know now and ordered some guaranteed to not do that. I found out that some colors bleed, so I have to check the ones I have and see if they are suitable for the swirl and other soap designs I want to make. Maybe I should just stop reading before I find more things that have to be adjusted or added!
Good luck with your tests. You are still doing a great job photoshopping those fish pictures.
ReplyDeleteHey June, like with most things, I think you will find that you learn a lot more once you start making soap than you have learned reading and watching videos.it all helps, but my trials and errors have taught me a lot more,same with pottery right?!
ReplyDeleteHope all goes well with the doc xo
Toes crossed that all the tests go well and that you and docs find what is going on with minimal fuss. Growing older is not for the faint of heart.
ReplyDeleteHaving so many skin allergies, I have to be careful about what soaps I use. I do love looking at modern soaps as little bars of sculpture!