Birds are Gathering

The birds are beginning to gather and practice their formations in short spurts. I haven't quite seen the huge flocks of starlings that come each fall to the trees next door, descending like a plague of locusts, darkening the sky as they flly over and making such a clamour, cheeping and chattering, peeping and squawking as they roost just over the fence for a while in the late afternoon before jetting off like an explosion to some other corner. This week of warm, sunny weather is a little respite in the inevitable march of autumn. I'm going to take a couple of days off towards the end of the week and head to the beach for one last fling.

Yikes, it's Tuesday already. Did the clock speed up? The past few days have been a blur. Saturday was spent mostly in the car -- restocking shows and then tearing down the Lord Hill one in the evening. There is not one road, one highway in the entire Puget Sound Region that is not doing some kind of major road work, I swear. From south to north, there is constant construction projects. And the driving is a pain in the rumpus.

Sunday was supposed to be a bit of a free day for me. But I still had to work, unpacking and inventory from Lord Hill, which turned out to be a good show. Attendance was down just a tad, and it showed up in the sales just a little bit. But quite nice overall, and I know some artists did very well indeed.

Yesterday was another commute down to Puyallup for the final time, to pack it all up and head home at last. I took just a few minutes on the way home to gloat. My sales there this year were more than double the previous soap vendor's top number. I know -- beginner's luck, the newbie bump, yada, yada. I'm not getting a swelled head. Just wanted to feel really good about the accomplishment and to acknowledge the outcome of all that hard work, if only for a few minutes. So more unpacking, a few more orders, catching up on some bookeeping, whipping up another batch of soap.

I'm working on some of the christmas soap batches, and it's sort of hit and miss. Usually I like to take the opportunity to come up with new blends out of the little bit of leftover fragrance oils I have on hand. Because the holiday season requires so darn much soap, lends itself to fantasy and whimsy, and frankly there is just so much leftover stuff to get rid of before the big January inventory (for tax purposes). There's a mountain of bottles that have just a small amount of stuff left in them. And it's spendy stuff. I'm basically frugal anyway, but in this business you have to use up everything in order to maintain the facade of a profit margin. So I'll throw in a little leftover lemon something, mint something, berrry something, spice something. Add a little more cinnamon or orange -- and then rustle through my well-thumbed list of holiday notes, hum along a few christmas carols and pull a new name out of the hat. There's been "Jingle Bell," "Jack Frost," "Winter Wonderland" and the silly "Holiday Hoopla" something or other. Last night's soap was a little fruity vanilla, candy mint, red berry and cinnamon spice which was starting to smell a little like a sugar plum or candy thingamajig. I'll have to see how it mellows out in a couple of weeks before the name settles in. Sometimes it turns out great, and sometimes it's a bomb.

The bomb's you will not see on the list. I just sneak them into a couple of shows and if they really don't go anywhere, they end up in the sale bins by next spring and summer. The good ones end up in the newsletter and become a bonafide seasonal soap. Today is another little experiment - but this one has to be a definite go. It's Mexican Cocoa (working name, may change). I've got various types of chocolate fragrance left over -- from several years of a Hot Cocoa soap that is always popular during the holidays. And I'm adding some cinnamon, orange, possibly a titch of almond. A yummy, spicy chocolate soap, which I think will do well. What do I know? I usually guess wrong. But I've discussed this before. How can my instincts on what will do well be so bad? Yet somehow I've come up with enough good stuff or I wouldn't still be in business and doing alright. The bottom line? It's a crap shoot. And I could spend all day long second guessing myself. Or just keep pumping it out and what goes, goes. And what doesn't makes the bargain bin hunters happy. :)