Soap Making Day

Today is a soap making day. We'll be making it to 'serve' to our students on Saturday after making another batch of the same soap for demonstration. The scent formulation is fairly simple and straight forward -- petit grain sur fleur neroli is the main raw material, then there's orange oil, lemon oil, patchouli, and a wee bit of labdanum. We made the scent potion last week and it's been 'stewing' ever since. We're hoping to have a full house, upwards of 20 students, and instead of what I usually do, it's going to be a straight demonstration type class. Usually, I allow students to measure and mix, but with a class this size, it won't work out. People bump into each other, everyone wants a turn at the hand blender, plus I am required to provide aprons, gloves, goggles, and sometimes paper face masks. It's too much of an expenditure when I cut the price of the class as low as it is now. This area is a hard sale area -- I've charged anywhere from $40 to $65 everywhere else that I teach this soap class, but here, I'm lucky to get $20. It's not the fault of the good folks who live here, it's the fault of the local economy. You know something isn't right when you drive through town and a huge billboard (more than one, actually) proclaims: "50% of (blank) County is on Medicaid". I haven't quite figured out if the billboard's message is condemnation or praise of the current health care plan provided by the state, but one thing is for certain, if 50% of the residents of this county actually are on medicaid, then something's wrong with the economy here. Under these circumstances, it's a miracle anyone comes out to learn any kind of craft on a warm Saturday morning for more than $15 a person.

I am looking forward to it. These days I'm lucky to have some creative work besides writing to do. As some of you know, I'm rewriting the natural perfumery course at the Natural Perfume Academy where I teach, and it's turned out to be quite the challenge. For example, there is literally one topic left to complete before the edit, final edit, and addition of a full teacher's manual, slide shows, videos, and audio files to the course, and I'm at a standstill. I worked and worked and worked yesterday, poring through books and notebooks, writing and rewriting, researching online, doing everything I could to get this cohesive piece of work done, and I got nothing. What I wrote, I erased. I was confounded by lack of sleep, too much on my plate, and grandbabies busting in shouting, "Grandma!" every 10 minutes. I'm hoping to get back at it tomorrow with a clear head and new perspective. Working in the arts is a moody occupation -- you can be simultaneously depressed and tortured over the outcome, and at the same time feel intense exhilaration from the act of creating alone. A double-edged sword.

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