Blooming

The kitty is recovering. Still pretty zonked out, but getting up for food and water at her usual schedule, so that's encouraging. I forgot to mention, that the giant moonflower plant that has been producing at least one, but often two or three blooms every night for half the summer, went completely dark the night we brought her into the vet. Both nights that the cat was in the hospital, and not here, the plant had no blooms whatsoever. And Sunday night, the day she came home? FIVE gigantic blooms appeared. Cool, eh?

I made a bazillion lip balms yesterday while I was tethered here. And spent a rather embarrassing amount of time surfing the internet in between flavors. Which is actually good. Ran across some other really creative soap folks and bath stuff sites. Always inspirational. Found a few new suppliers, I think. Gathering info and prices, and imagining up new ideas for either later this year, or next year. I often don't get enough time to really do that, so it's fun.

And meandering the links, also found some truly great communities of folks in the same business. Style Bakery is a fun site which highlights hip, trendy new website and products, linking to all sorts of goodies. Found lots of great stuff there.

The Switchboards is a community of other like-minded indie creative women with business, who have formed a great little network to share information, help each other out, trade links, etc. In spending just a short time there, what a wealth of great stuff -- a wonderful resource for gals just starting out, and even me, who's been doing this for quite some time. There is always something new to learn. And with the rapidly changing world, internet, and ways of doing business -- it's great to be able to tap into what other folks are doing. The energy and enthusiasm of gals just starting out, experts in areas which I may not have much experience, and just a kick in the buns when I start to get a little too complacent with the way things are.

I found a forum for fragrance reviews, which had a couple of great insights too. I tapped into a new flavor site, and want to add a couple of seasonal flavored lip balms this year. And just generally, realized that my little world of soapmaking had gotten a little insulated -- there is really so much more out there, that I didn't even know existed. I had so much information overload and new stuff bouncing around my head last night, it was hard to sleep. But that's a good thing.