Soggy Day

Pretty lousy day yesterday to sit outside and try to sell little bars of suds-making thingies. Thank heavens I brought my big tent. I usually just bring my little striped umbrella, but I knew the forecast was scary, so I took precautions. And of course, the moment lunch hour arrived and people got ready to head out for lunch, the skies opened up and it began raining -- light at first, heading into downright rain, and settling into a steady downpour, right through packing up and inching up the highway home. I hauled out the tent which had been steadily dripping down my neck and car seats the whole way home, dumping whatever water was left trapped inside right down the front of my shirt. And headed inside, leaving the entire rest of the mess in the car to be dealt with once it stopped pouring -- which is what it had developed into by the time I got home. Huge rivers of water racing over the roof, down the downspouts, through my yard. So I gave up, donned my flannel jammie pants, had an early dinner with the kitty and watched lousy tv.

This morning I am cleaning it all up. And then back into the regular groove -- making soap, filling orders, hitting the post office with whatever I can before the weekend.

Tonight a bunch of us are going to see The Da Vinci Code film. I know -- it's lousy. Everyone on earth has said it's awful. And I'm not a fan of Tom Hanks, and I didn't even like the book all that well. The theory was interesting, but the writing was crappy and took quite a bit of effort to slog through. So I'm not expecting much. But I guess it must be done, sigh. At least I can look forward to the fabulous pizza we're hoping to score first at Tutta Bella in Columbia City.

Update: The new test batches I made using essential oil blends didn't turn out as stupendously as I had hoped. Even though I used a higher concentration of scenting ingredients than usual, every one of them is sort of faint and puny. One was anise, lemon and rose -- a variation of a fragrance called "Old Lace" -- which is pleasant and not too "rose-y", but just fresh and floral. You don't even notice the anise, as there is no overt licorice scent, just a little twist that you can't quite pinpoint. The next one was Orange Rosemary. I used 5-fold orange essential oil, which is five times the distillation of orange stuff, and it looks a little more orange than usual, but didn't come out as nicely as I would have wanted. Orange is notoriously volative, and one of the reasons people have so much trouble capturing that freshness in the soap. But even the pungent rosemary isn't quite hitting it's mark. And finally, there was a complicated blend of bergamot, palmarosa, fennel, and rosewood. Which so darn light you can't tell what it is. But there is a whiff of rosey something.

What I'm really hoping for, is that these develop. I'm not sure if I explained this before, but the fragrance actually changes quite a bit during the curing process. And most of the time, it's hard to predict. With fragrance oils, it's easier. What comes out the first day or two is how it usually ends up. Sometimes they fade quickly a few months after curing, but the scent itself doesn't mutate. With essential oils, there is often a few weeks in the middle of curing where the scent disappears altogether, and then comes back as it all settles out and becomes something quite lovely. Anyway, with these new essential oil blends, the following morning, I couldn't smell a single thing. Which could have just been me. But after a day or two, I had a couple of sniff testers try, and they were able to detect the scent, though faint. And now that it's been almost a week and they are out of the molds, it's a bit stronger. So it's still a test in progress.