WE HAD FUN AT THE SHEPHERD'S HARVEST FESTIVAL!!

My daughter and I have been attending the Shepherd's Harvest Festival for years and this year I decided it would be fun to apply to sell my soap there. All artists are juried so I was ecstatic when I got in. It's always nice knowing event organizers love the look of my soaps as much as I do. 

Here's my daughter Maya bundled up in the morning before the sun warmed up the building. 

The Shepherd's Harvest Festival is always held over Mother's Day weekend and due to covid the festival was cancelled in both 2020 and 2021 so it was super exciting to not only be selling there this year but also being able to see so many people at once in the same place. It was such a wonderful time with all of the positive energy swirling around us. Everyone was happy and just glad to be seeing the sheep, alpaca, and all of the yarn and raw fiber for sale. Of course we didn't just sell, we also bought. When you knit, spin, and weave there is no way you can leave the Shepherd's Harvest without buying a bunch of fun things to play with. 

Here's the stash I walked away with:

My first knitting bowl.

Fun fibers to experiment with on the spindle.

I bought this yearn from my vendor neighbors. Stitch Stuff Yarn is run by a mother daughter team in Wisconsin. They currently run their business out of their basement. They were so very nice and extremely helpful. I'm not a fantastic knitter so they gave me tips on how to improve and even bought some soap. They had some of the prettiest yarn at the festival so I bought to hanks. One hank is currently being turned into a hat for me by a friend who is much more skilled at knitting than I so I can't wait to share it here.

One of my favorite fibers to spin: Superwash BFL (Bluefaced Leicester)

And life is not complete without raw wool. This is a blend of several fibers: 1/2 Teeswater, 3/16 Romney, 5/32 Blueface Leicester, 5/32 Suffolk.

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HOMESCHOOL COMING TO AN END

It's hard to believe that we started our homeschool journey in 2013 and it's now 2021. I wasn't very good about keeping up with posts on here about what did and didn't work for us with home education but I think I'll post more about that soon. As for right now my daughter is in her last year of homeschool because she has decided public school is where she wants to be starting this fall. I'm very excited for her to begin anew where she can meet lots of new people and participate in activities she hasn't had available to her due to the pandemic restrictions. So this will be my last homeschool photo of her.

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SOME FUN SPRING SOAPS ARE HERE!

I was feeling extra creative recently so decided to make some fun designs.

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IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR: HOLIDAY SOAP TIME!!

I love this time of year so much because of all the wonderful holiday soap fragrances that come out and then thinking of cool soap designs to go with them. The following are some of the soaps I made this year. My favorite is the fruity gum drop batch. I just love the bright colors and that gum drop mold is too cute! I intended on making 12 small batches of soap before December 1st but didn't quite reach my goal.  Maybe next year 😀🎄⛄

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SOAPY TIME!

 I've been working on a few batches of soap for autumn but got sidetracked on the designs. I really need to be making soaps with colors like orange, black, yellow, green, and using embeds like fall leaves or ghosts but I ordered some new and interesting fragrances, molds and glitters so I wanted to give them a try and my design ideas didn't fit the season very much. I have one batch of soap that screams autumn and that's this one (below). It smells like pumpkin souffle. 

This what the 2nd design idea. I coveted the honeycomb mold for a while and was finally able to get it so of course I had to use the honey, milk, and oatmeal fragrance with this.

I finally ordered some eucalyptus spearmint fragrance which I love, love, love. I wanted to make the design simple since all I see when smelling this uplifting scent is a spa and what color fits spa better than a light calming sage green. 

This batch idea came after the glitter arrived. Little stars just seemed to fit perfectly with the autumn fig fragrance and dark grey/blue mica. My daughter named it starry night because she said it reminded her of Vincent Van Gogh's painting by the same name.

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THE JOY OF VISITING NORTHERN MINNESOTA & GOOD FRIENDS

 Spent a day visiting a dear friend in northern Minnesota a week ago. My friend lives completely off-grid on over 80 acres of land in the middle of the forest surrounded by the most diverse wildlife (plants and animals) you will find in the state of MN. It truly is a little piece of heaven at his place. It was a great place to escape to for the day.

Here is my daughter and my friend checking out a wolf den.

We found some bobcat scat.

My friend showed us how to identify wild ginger by sight and taste.

We explored around all the beautiful trees growing on his property; sugar maples, aspen, cedar, white pine...

My favorite part was walking for hours in the woods taking in the awesome autumn smell in the air and learning about our surroundings.

Thank you, Barry. 

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TIME FOR AUTUMN SOAPMAKING!

It's that time of year again. I love Halloween and autumn, it's  my favorite time of year.  My first batch of soap is Halloween Harvest, scented with Bramble Berry's pumpkin souffle, my favorite pumpkin fragrance oil. I used Van Yulay's cute little jack-o-lantern soap mold. 

 

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ANOTHER REVIEW - BRAMBLE BERRY LYE

On May 17, 2020 I purchased more lye from Bramble Berry. I've not had very good luck with their lye lately, hit and miss on whether it ruins my soap recipe. It took a long time for me to figure out what the problem was because the problem was so inconsistent so this time I purchased a brand new container of lye and this is the result after mixing the lye and distilled water and of course my tried and true recipe came out soft!!

Lye should never be this weak. Even Bramble Berry admits this on their website.

https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/tips-and-tricks/expired-lye/

I've had terrible luck with Bramble Berry products lately and considering I've been buying from them since 2007 it is really a shame to have this experience. All of the fall scents I purchased also smell very weak for the first time EVER and I'm hoping that is not the case when I make soap and candles with them.

I definitely won't be purchasing lye or silicone molds from them again in the future, I'll post about the fragrances in a couple weeks. 

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NEW SUMMER SOAPS

Sharing some new soap creations that I'm really happy with.

I've had this little fish tail for a while now and had an idea how I wanted to create the soap but I was using a fragrance I'd never worked with before so I wasn't sure how the process would work out. The base of the soap didn't exactly become what I wished for, mainly because I used shredded luffa, something I now know I hate, but the rest of the soap turned out great! The little pearls and the eco glitter were exactly what I needed for this project. So cute!!

My daughter wanted me to make some Pride Soap for her friends. I find working with multiple colors challenging when trying to create the perfect layers so I kept putting this project off. Finally I made it. I didn't get the perfect straight layers but what I did get I thought turned out awesome! :-)

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LOVING THE JOJOBA BEADS

I made some yummy scented peach soap a couple days ago and added some jojoba beads to the top. It turned out beautifully. The color is perfect, the scent is to die for, and the design is exactly what I wanted.

Here is the soap

Here is a close-up of the tiny jojoba beads

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PRODUCT REVIEW

I made several batches of soap recently and was really pleased with the fragrances so I wanted to share my thoughts here.  All FOs are from Bramble Berry.

Electric Lemonade is #1 because it is one of my favorite BB fragrances. It smells so fresh and uplifting and it soaps really, really well. No ricing or acceleration at all and the scent holds a long time in the cured bar.

Pineapple Papaya is #2 because it is my second favorite. I am not sure if others like it as much as I do since I never really get too much feedback on this fragrance but I love working with it because it smells so good. It does accelerate trace though so it doesn't leave a lot of room for design time.

Chocolate Mint is #3. It's not a BB fragrance, it's actually two of their FOs blended. I used their dark rich chocolate and blended it with candy cane. It came out perfectly. No ricing, no acceleration and it smelled exactly like I wanted, like a peppermint patty.  Their dark rich chocolate is to die for.

Blueberry Jam is #4. I love the fragrance. It smells just like blueberry jam. I am not pleased with the design of my soap though. It didn't turn out at all like I planned and I don't remember why.

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RASPBERRY TRUFFLE SOAP

My latest creation: raspberry truffle soap. I purchased this fragrance from Bramble Berry. It soaped up beautifully. No ricing, no acceleration. The chocolate scent is much stronger than the raspberry which comes through lightly. I love the way the colors and berries came out also. I was nervous at first since the FO was suppose to color the soap brown but initially it looked like a mustard color. After a couple days it became the brown you see in the pic.

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