Soap, Holistic & Psychic Faire, Betty Yi

The newest soap, The End of Chaos, had to be chopped and incorporated into another batch of soap scented with just patchouli and a drizzle of antique cade oil because I used an extraordinary amount of grapeseed oil, which though moisturizing and conditioning to skin, doesn't make a terribly hard bar of soap. I had Sponge Soap Square Blobs that smelled like something dug from deep in the cold, dark earth. I even used one and it turned gelatinous and squigey in the shower. To remedy the problem, and to preserve the beautiful deep dark essence, I simply made another batch of plain Castile using organic extra virgin olive oil, and shoved slices of the original soap into it -- everywhere. The soap is cut into towers with the slivers of super scented soap poking out of the top, like a weird geometric landscape. The original soap, if you remember from previous posts here, was made with extra virgin olive oil, pressed grapeseed oil (lots and lots of this oil!), and organic unrefined coconut oil, then was scented with patchouli, luban, Turkish sage, ylang-ylang, antique cade (just a smidge as it's on IFRA's dirty list), helichrysm floral wax, champa concrete, a mashed-to-dust combination of frankincense and myrrh resins (warmed and slightly melted), antique saffron spice, and a homemade Egyptian incense blend made with more frankincense and myrrh powders, cinnamon, cardamom, fennel and anise. It will be wrapped and put up for sale at the Renaissance & Psychic Faire scheduled for this Saturday (September 3) at Seasons Gifts & Gardens at 1121 N. Nelson Street, Sanger, CA 93657, ph. 559-876-9000, and the "leftovers" will be posted on Etsy on Sunday.

Holistic & Psychic Faire at Seasons ~ this is the first time for me doing this show, but I have been a regular customer and instructor at Seasons since this past May when I began teaching soap classes there, so I feel comfortable and fairly confident this show will be quite nice. I will be exhibiting the distillation process for hydrosols and giving a brief hydrosol workshop, distilling more of Season's gorgeous white sage, this time taking a bit of the oil off the top for spiritual work and bottling up the hydrosol on site. I will also be selling only two types of soap this year as two were all I was able to get prepared, and I wasn't going to sell any but convinced myself it might be a good idea, and I will also be setting up a small display of Natural Botanical Perfumes.

Shannon, proprietress of Seasons, has just yesterday undergone a major heart procedure -- the timing couldn't have been worse, but her recent declining health necessitated the procedure. She will be in attendance for everyone to talk with and mingle, but she probably won't be doing her usual running here and there and everywhere. I commend Shannon for continuing with the Renaissance & Psychic Faire despite this setback and hope that it brings her more joy than stress, as preparing for these types of events can bring immense amounts of unnecessary stress.

Later this afternoon, it's off to scrub floors and dust door frames as Betty Yi products are in full testing mode. One product in particular, a light castile soap based all-purpose cleansing spray scented with peppermint and thyme, is phenomenal at cleaning darn near everything. This particular formulation was originally made with lavender oil and lavandin hydrosol, but for some reason the fragrance compound wasn't working -- it just wasn't pleasant enough. So we switched out the fragrance compound to something more cheerful and, in the case of the thyme, more bacteria battling. Thus far it is the favorite amongst the customers. It is our favorite as well. The lavender compound smelled heavy and sluggish, perhaps making the cleaning crew drowsy as they scrubbed!