The path

I knew I shouldn't have posted yesterday morning while I was still exhausted and crabby. I have absolutely no manners at all. I neglected to mention that sales were pretty darn good, and actually up quite a bit from last year. And that some of the most fabulous folks made the trip over just to see ME, and to wish me well, and to stock up on soaps for the year. I had lots of nice conversations with some truly wonderful people over the last couple of days -- the kind that make you feel like all this work is really important and appreciated. So a HUGE thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth at U District! Sheesh, I made it sound like painful torture, instead of a pretty pleasant way to spend the day and make money while I was at it.

You know the saying "can't see the forest for the trees"? Yeah, it's like that. While busily working away each day like a hamster on a wheel, it's really easy to lose sight of the big picture. In occasional odd moments, a glimmer of light will shine through and suddenly a new perspective appears. That has been happening for the last few months with my soap scents.

I've been tossing around the idea of changing up my soap menu, a lot. I'm tired - really tired - of about half of them. Ones that I started out with and are a little quirky, or was requested to do them, but I don't care for them much myself. They just don't work any more. I want to toss out a handful of them and make brand new ones. I've been brainstorming groovy new essential oil blends for them, wanting to re-direct the fragrances into more all-natural scents than the fragrance oil scents that have sort of taken over while I wasn't really paying attention. I've made up so many seasonal scents, and since they tend to lean towards florals, fruits and fantasy stuff - essential oils have kind of gotten pushed aside. And I've been regretting that. I truly like the more natural scents myself anyway, and it just fits more with my whole philosophy anyway. Some of the synthetic fragrances mixed in with the bunch are alright. There are an awful lot of really nice things out there, and I don't want to limit myself. But as far as the standard list - the day-in/day-out soap list - I want to return to the essential oils that I love. So today I'm going to do a few test batches that I narrowed it down to while I was jotting notes on little scraps of paper. And I'm kind of excited to see how they turn out. I'll keep you posted.