Back on the Quail Trail

Like getting back in the saddle after a fall, I thought it best to order more eggs and start trying again with the quail as soon as possible. Consequently I am back in the old routine of turning eggs every four hours.

One was damaged on arrival leaving eleven. They have now been in the incubator for 10 days. After 5 days I candled them and found no cracks and no obviously infertile eggs. All was going well. Around day 7 or 8 Ellie wandered into my room 'So how do you torch eggs?' she asked. I was taken aback, setting fire to them had never been my intention, She agreed that the word she had been looking for was candle. I chose one of the lightest eggs to show her, and she nearly dropped it, 'Aargh , it's moving!' she cried in a mixture of fascination and horror as if the tiny embryo was about to burst from the egg and attack her in a recreation of the scene from Alien. Sure enough though, the little red blob of cells, seen when a powerful light is shone through the egg shell, was moving of its own accord, probably put out by the brightness of the light.
So we know one of the embryos at least is alive and kicking.

The Day of the Snake

It was never my intention to go to Ikea yesterday to buy a snake.

Ostensibly we went to Ikea because I thought they might have baskets that I could use to display my soap in on Sunday.In reality we leapt at this flimsy excuse  because we were bored, and Oliver could do with some entertainment and there would be plenty of warm indoor space for him to run around in. Hmm, should have thought that through a bit more.
All went fairly well until we hit the children's section. Oliver was delighted to recognise his table and chairs and owl and a few other previous purchases. He loved the pop up circus tent that Rosie decided to buy him for his birthday and was happy trotting round examining everything. At some point happy turned to giddy and   seizing the above snake he started ricocheting round the department and also round the restaurant pausing only to take in the excellent children's area there, which allowed me to catch him (and also my breath). I returned him to the children's section and all seemed back to normal. Foolishly though, none of us had thought  to keep a firm grip on him and he was off again, still with snake in tow. This time, he found a short cut to the rest of the store and shot off out of sight. Instantly, I started worrying about paedophile abductions, imagining myself in the paper saying 'He was only out of my sight for a minute'. In retrospect this was needless, any paedophile would have to catch him first and Oliver is fast. I would catch the occasional glimpse of him, running out from behind a sofa, on his way to a room display or hurtling round the wardrobes, all the time trailing the snake. I have known many men who want to speed through Ikea, unseduced by the fantasy of what life could be like if only you had the right storage, and to them Oliver would be the ultimate hero.
 Eventually, I saw him run into what I hoped was a cleaning cupboard, near the restaurant. No such luck, it turned out to be the men's toilets. Ellie had joined me by then, and the two of us stared at the door, left open by about 6 inches, and wondered what to do next. Neither of us wanted to go in, especially as I had seen a man enter earlier. I wondered about approaching a sales assistant or if there was a passing father around (preferably one who looked as if he played rugby). Meanwhile Oliver kept appearing in the doorway and smiling happily at us, snake still trailing round his feet. We tried enticing him out 'Oliver, come and see Mummy now' and we tried commanding him out 'Oliver come out NOW!' but he was too excited to pay us any attention. Finally he decided to come out and was duly nabbed and imprisoned in the first shopping trolley we came across. He protested loudly at this loss of liberty for the rest of the visit.
So after his whistle stop tour of Ikea which mainly took place at floor level, it seemed wrong to return Snake to the display shelves and consequently he will be Oliver's birthday present from me. Suggestions gratefully received for an appropriate name, I'm thinking Speedy at the moment.

Best Laid Plans Upset by Toddlers

Very little productive stuff has been done round here in the last couple of days as Oliver was sent home from nursery yesterday morning for being thoroughly sick. As nursery have a policy of barring children for 48 hours after any sickness, he will now be off until Thursday. Needless to say, he looked completely unaffected and was his normal boisterous self, the only sign that he may have some sort of bug was that he fell asleep in the car yesterday at 4, and slept on whilst I carried him to his bed and took his shoes and coat off. By 7 we had made the decision not to wake him up, but to let him sleep on, which then meant undertaking the tricky manoeuvre of putting a nappy on a curled up child, working by touch only, under the duvet so as not to wake him by exposing him to cold air. He then slept until 6 this morning, annoyingly waking just after I had braved the icy kitchen for a cup of tea and was hoping to take it back to bed and drink it whilst planning my day.
Another sign that he may have picked up some bug is that his mother is now lying wanly on the sofa, vomiting at regular intervals. She doesn't seem to have his robust immune system and definitely not his energy levels.

New Stuff

After complaining about the wet and slushy snow on Friday, we got about 6 inches of dry and powdery stuff yesterday. So we went sledging. We finally fitted together the wooden sledge that I bought Oliver for Christmas, and it's a beauty, going faster and further on it's two wooden runners than the plastic tea tray type. Also, it is a lot easier to get on and off for a middle aged woman, who is not as slim as she ought to be.

In between the Family Stuff and the Keeping Warm (that takes up a fair bit of my time and involves doing very little but with large amounts of blankets), I have been experimenting with lip balms and body butters.
The body butter came out fine:

It is fragranced with lavender and geranium oils, with the idea that if you rub it in after a warm bath it will help you sleep.
The lip balm, I have some issues to sort out. The flavours are great, one is natural, one is lemon (not enough lemon to taste properly) and the surprise one is chocolate and vanilla. I don't much like chocolate in things other than chocolates, cakes and biscuits, I don't like chocolate spread or chocolate cereal and think chocolate yoghurt is disgusting, but subtly in lip balm with vanilla as balance, it is delicious.
My first issue, is probably due to the temperature of the oils and the temperature of the jars causing the balm to miscolour on the sides of the jars;

The other issue I have, with both the lip balm and the body butter is that they have set quite hard. The body butter is definitely the texture of butter taken straight from the fridge rather than butter ready to scoop up and spread over a warm body. The lip balm needs to be scraped out of the pot with a finger nail, although it will spread nicely on the lips after that.

However it does occur to me that with the coldness of the weather outside, and the lack of heating inside, the balms are probably colder than they will normally be. The temperature in my kitchen when I came down this morning was only 6 degrees. I am currently in the living room with the fire on full blast trying to get the temperature up to that of a central heated house of about 17 or 18 degrees, to see how the balms are then.
I managed to get it up to about 14 degrees but then Oliver came in leaving the door wide open and letting the heat out.
Will let you know how I get on.

And What Exactly Does Spring Think She Is Doing?

Where is Spring?
This is what I woke up to this morning:

It is not good enough. I think back in January, I may have said that I loved snow. I should have made that statement, time specific. I love snow from mid December to early February, if it is dry and crisp and even. I do not love snow in March when it is wet and slushy and no good for anything.
This is the end of March, we should be getting bright sunny days with a brisk wind (clothes drying days), they don't have to be warm. They should be the sort of days to encourage me out into the garden, perhaps warm enough to take my coat off after doing a bit of digging, a robin nearby watching for worms, bees flying in and out of the hive collecting early pollen. You get the picture, and it is not what I am seeing from my bedroom window. Traditionally, you are meant to plant potatoes on Good Friday, which I can't see happening this year. They also say, that you should wait until it is warm enough to sit on the plot with your bare bottom, but this is not a test that I have ever done, nor indeed do I have any plans to do so. I am okay with the beekeeper's lore, which says that hives should not be inspected before the flowering currant is in flower. At least, I would be if I knew anyone who had a flowering currant. I have 5 of the common or garden, red and black currant varieties if they will do instead.
In other news, the soap business is trundling on towards its start date. I have now applied for a stall at Leeds Farmers Market. This was delayed somewhat, by my not being able to find my passport which was required for identification purposes. My neighbour asked if this was because I am a terrorist. If I am, then I am a very ineffectual terrorist, my sole terror campaign being directed against an infestation of mice a few years ago. Likewise my mind boggles at the idea of selling enough soap for it to be worth money laundering. Still maybe they know something I don't.

Trying Something New

When I did my balanced scorecard assessment at the end of February, I said I enjoyed writing and would like to do more. I was pushed into actually doing something by Rosie wanting to enter the Macmillan Prize for Children's Book Illustrators. She could have chosen an existing story and was quite tempted by complicated and unsuitable Nordic fairy stories but we decided it would be better to have an original story.
Consequently I have written a story about two woodland creatures who are being terrorised by their own shadows

The shadows, despite their appearance in Rosie's drawing are more mischievous than malevolent and a firm talking to by the girl sets things right. The girl who lives by herself in a cottage by the wood, is not quite an ordinary girl. For one thing, her own shadow can act independently of her.

Although I want to refine and rewrite the story, the bulk of the work falls on Rosie. Illustrating a story is much harder work than actually writing it, I don't feel that the illustrators get enough credit. Would the Gruffalo have been such a huge success without Axel Scheffler's creation?
So given that she is at college and has other commitments and deadlines, not to mention a nearly three year old son, it might not get finished to a standard we think good enough to enter the Macmillan Prize this year (closing date 30th April) but it is something that we will work towards in the future.

Paul Goldstein- Wildlife Photography

Last night was one of my sporadic attempts at personal development/culture/education. I went to a talk given by the wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein.
All the photographs were absolutely stunning, even the ones he had deliberately included to demonstrate what made a dull photograph, but I particularly liked the photos that demonstrated where he had used a very slow shutter speed to emphasize the speed and movement of the subjects

Despite the stunning pictures though the talk itself was verging on the dull. Mr Goldstein was very dismissive of photos that just record a moment, they should be unusual or tell a story but this I think was the problem with his talk. He was a good speaker and said he wouldn't go into too much technical detail but he went into very little detail at all. I would have liked the stories behind the photographs or some feel for the difficulties of the places in which they were taken. One story he did tell us was of two Belgian photographers who accidentally dropped their camera and tripod out of the safari vehicle. Before they could retrieve it, it was seized on by lions. This gave Mr Goldstein his opportunity to take a photograph that has subsequently been sold round the world 71 times:

So amazing photos, but because we have been spoilt by all the David Attenborough documentaries on tv, I very soon glazed over. It became very much like watching someone's interminable holiday snaps. Maybe I would have got more out of it if I was a photographer who had already been on safari, and was comparing my efforts to Paul Goldstein's. Unfortunately I was part of the half of the hall which didn't put their hand up when asked if they had seen a cheetah in the wild, and it is likely I will stay in that half.
That being the case, I wanted to experience it vicariously through Mr Goldstein. I wanted to feel how hot and bored I might become waiting for the lions, I wanted to know about his corner of the Mara and how long he has been going there and about the people who work there all year round. Not getting this and sitting in a warm room, my eyes started to close and my head started to nod before I would jerk back to attention and hope that no-one had noticed. One woman had brought her two boys aged about 10 and 8 and by the end of the evening the younger boy was sound asleep in his mother's arms. I envied him.

Of Chickens ,Soap and Daughters

Yesterday, when I went to let my chickens out of their house, there were three neighbouring chickens waiting outside the coop. I thought it only fair that my chickens should be allowed to eat their breakfast in peace so  whilst letting Amelia and Bertie, out of their house, I kept the door to the run firmly shut,  thus condemning the visitors to pacing up and down outside in disgust.

Although I have no objection to the chickens coming in to socialise, my own chickens have first call on their food.
Later at dusk, I met my neighbour, Shaun looking for a Cream Legbar (probably the one in the centre of the picture above). He said that his chickens had started to enjoy flying over the fence, but that he was going to put a stop to it, and that shortly he would be going out to start erecting and that soon I would be able to see his erection in the garden. I thanked him for the warning and came back into the house.

Switching now to something totally pure, I have made a soap for people with sensitive skin. It has no colour or fragrance and no beeswax ( a very small number of people can be allergic to beeswax), instead it has borage seed oil and apricot kernel oil, both of which are good for sensitive skins.
It is the most beautiful pure white colour, the photo below doesn't do it justice.

Lastly, if you are thinking that I haven't been posting as much recently it is probably because the second daughter, Ellie has come home for the Easter holidays. This takes up my time in many ways, only this morning, I was obliged to spend some time explaining how, although last night's BBC version of The Lady Vanishes was more true to the original book, the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film was in fact much, much better. This somehow led to us watching at least half an hour of it on Youtube. Normally, I am appalled when film makers alter books and add new characters and events that didn't happen in the original, but in this case it made a much better, more thrilling story. Maybe Hitchcock knew his stuff after all.

Next Steps

I have now had the email to say that I have been accepted onto the Enterprise Allowance. I have to wait now for a letter from the Job Centre to ask me to come in for the official sign over from Job Seekers Allowance to Enterprise Allowance. I submitted my Business Plan on 14th February so it hasn't been me dragging my feet but if they could now manage to drag theirs for just a week longer, then I will be moving on to employment after having signed on for 6 months, which means I qualify for various extra bonus payments including a month's mortgage payment. Still this is out of my hands.

Of more interest I have been experimenting with the skin balms (got to start filling all those jars).
Here we are with the Gardener's Balm and the Lemon Verbena.

I wondered if the green was a little off putting? Too much like putting green gunk on your hands? Rosie likes it, she also liked the smell a lot. Like the Gardener's soap, the balm has tea tree oil for antiseptic properties. pine for an outdoorsy smell and lime to tone down the antiseptic smell of the tea tree. I was surprised when Rosie said it reminded her of Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles but I do see what she means.


On Thursday, I received a Mother's Day gift through the post.

Not quite the conventional Mother's Day present, but if I am going to do shows again this is an absolutely essential piece of kit. Standing behind a stall from 10 till 5 means setting up from 8 which might mean leaving the house at 6 (or worse 4 depending on the distance), once everything is set up a cup of tea is essential. Then if it is a cold miserable day, tea is needed for warmth and come four o'clockish when custom is dying away tea is needed to fortify yourself against the packing up and the drive home.

Requiem for a Quail

Having given the quail at least two days past their hatch date, I finally gave up on them today and decided that they weren't going to hatch.
I switched off the incubator and removed the eggs and then because I wanted to know if it was something I had done that had stopped them hatching, I decided to open the eggs and try to work out what age they had been when they died. Last year, when I tried to incubate chicken eggs, I discovered on opening the non hatching eggs that some of the chicks were fully formed and feathered but dead in the shell. I think they died because I increased the humidity too soon for them, not taking into account a power failure during the incubation.
However the quail were nowhere near that stage, rather unpleasantly they were still at the early embryo stage. I think it is likely that they died when Oliver fell on the incubator.
So I have no other option but to disinfect the incubator and try again.

Screen Printing

I never go a chance on Monday to say that the  screen printing went much better this week than last. I was careful this week to make sure that I kept the drawstring of the bag well away from the screen.

Although there was this one that looked as if someone had squashed the bee on the left!

All in all, I was only limited by the number of bags that I had. Now it's off to order more and to work out whether I want them all this size or whether it would be useful to have some in the next size up.
Still no sign from the quail, I have given up expecting anything from them although I will leave the incubator switched on a while longer.

What a Lot of Shopping We Have Bought!

When I was little we read the Ladybird learning to read books, as well as the Peter and Jane series, my favourite was The Farm (of course), Going to School and Shopping with Mother.

Shopping with Mother depicts the perfect 1950's world in a perfect 1950's town. Mother sets off beautifully, if restrictingly, dressed in a tight suit, hat, gloves and court shoes, to walk to the shops with her two children. Their town is still the ordered world where you buy meat from the butchers, bread from the bakers, fish from the fishmongers, hammers from the ironmongers. Having bought something from every shop in town, Mother staggers home with her basket (the pictures gloss over that bit, nor does the text describe Mother cursing over the weight of the basket or the unsuitableness of wearing heels) and they lay everything out on the kitchen table and look on it with satisfaction saying 'What a lot of shopping we have bought!'
I thought about that  this morning, returning from collecting my oils and jars (We go to the glass jar and bottle distributors, we buy jars for Mummy) but as I laid everything out on the table, I was more anxious than satisfied.

Yes, it is satisfying to have a good stock of everything in, that I can get on with making stuff without thinking I'll run out of something, but on the other hand I am saying, that I think I'm going to sell all those jars. In particular, I have just bought a box of 378 lip balm jars when I am not convinced that I will sell more than 6.

I am reminding myself, that when I started making chutney I could not imagine ever selling a thousand jars in a weekend, which we did at our peak (if anyone wants to know why I am not doing chutney again I will tell you that a thousand jars of chutney involves an awful lot of apples to be peeled and chopped, not to mention onions).
Well they are bought now, no turning back, I will just have to make them as good as I can so that they will sell.
No news on the quail eggs by the way. I am beginning to give up on them.

A Waiting Game

Today, at 10 am to be precise, the quail eggs are due to hatch. They are not automata though and a day either side of the hatch time is quite common. Three days ago I stopped turning the eggs and increased the humidity in the incubator to 75%, hence when I tried to take a photo of the eggs it is impossible to see anything due to the condensation on the incubator window.

According to the books, from the sixteenth day (Saturday) a gentle chirping noise can be heard from inside the shell. I can't say that I have definitely heard anything, but it is easy to get confused between chirping noises  from inside the incubator and chirping noises outside the window, in the garden.
Again according to the books, from the seventeenth day movement of the egg indicates that it is due to hatch. There has definitely been no movement.
All I can do is wait and hope.
Ironically as I don't go out very often, I have two events lined up for today. The first is my second attempt at screen printing, where I am due to go for two hours this afternoon. I may make Rosie stay with the eggs and text me any news. The second event, is my first monthly meeting of the Radish Readers Group tonight. Whilst it would be a shame to miss my first discussion, especially as it is discussing The Daughter of Time, if there is egg breaking activity going on in the incubator at 7.30, there is no way I'm going to leave it.
Although last year's experience of watching a chick hatch was that it took several hours and was thrilling and boring at the same time. I couldn't take my eyes off the egg, as each effort made the crack a bit bigger yet in between efforts the chick would rest for ten to fifteen minutes.
As I said, wait and hope.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

The picture is for my girls. When they were young and we used to spend Sunday mornings in my bed, they would try to insert their heads into my armpits (don't know why) and demand to know which one of them was the cutest polar bear. As I have three children but only the normal number of armpits, this could get a bit boisterous. I would generally pick the polar bear cub that was hurting me least, as the cutest. These Sunday morning sessions also included Animal Charades. 'What am I?' said Maddie sticking her chin in the air and falling backwards off the foot of the bed. Turned out to be an impression of a giraffe falling off a cliff,although fair to add that the falling off the cliff bit was impromptu.

A Frugal Failure

Not everything that is cheap and home made and based on natural ingredients is good.
Back in the middle of Frugal February, I decided to make my own washing up liquid. I didn't mention it at the time because from the start I wasn't convinced it was worth recommending. I got the recipe off the internet and it was a mixture of washing soda, soap, white vinegar and lemon juice. I can't remember the quantities and it doesn't matter as no-one will want to make it.
I knew it wouldn't bubble like detergent and I could have got used to that but I found it made the water feel unpleasantly greasy. Maybe I was using too much to compensate for the lack of bubbles. It made plenty, in fact I still have half a tub left:

 And sometimes the cleaning was as good or better than  the bought stuff, in particular lifting tea stains off mugs but yesterday I gave in and bought this:

Why make myself unhappy or at least irritated and annoyed on a daily basis for the sake of 59p?

Back to the joys of bubbles once more.

The Joys of Spring and Soap Labels

I was going to start today's post off with a moan about the weather, how cold and grey and miserable and more like November than March it is. I went on to the Valley specially to take a photo for you of the dreary grey wet landscape but then I saw this

 and this:

 Clearly Spring is on its way, its just having to fight to get here.
The hens weren't having any of this joys of spring nonsense, they looked exactly how L would feel if I'd been forced outside today; cold, wet and fed up.

Only two of those hens are mine by the way, the other two are visitors. I'm not sure from which neighbours garden though, I thought it was the right side but they seemed as if they were about to return (visit) the left side. No matter, they all return to there coops by nightfall.
So today has been an inside day .
I turned out the new batch of Lemon and Lime soap but can't say that it is a more noticeable yellow colour than the last batch:

I think I was a bit too cautious when adding the annatto colour there. Third time lucky I hope.

The new batch of Gardener's soap came out a terrific colour though. I like it a lot and it frees up the subtle pale green colour to be used by Verbena.

 The rest of the day has been spent playing with label design. I discovered Avery do a pack of oval labels on kraft brown background which I was instantly smitten with. I have been trying different fonts and experimenting with colours and here are some of the results:

 Aren't they lovely?
The idea was that I would wrap each soap in brown kraft paper and then stick a label on the front with probably another on the back for ingredients and address and all the legal gubbins. The prototype looks like this:

But then I printed the labels off on cream business weight paper and experimented with wrapping the soap in that with no extra label. It looks better than I expected:

 I think I still like the brown label better though. Both are just experiments of course, if you are thinking that the visible creases and the jagged edge to the paper don't really cut the mustard.
More exciting news is that I have a launch date for my first sales. It will be be more in the way of a dress rehearsal than the first night, as I am sharing a stall with 3 other members of the Leeds Beekeepers Association at Thwaite Mills Industrial Museum on Easter Sunday. I don't know how much room there will be for my products but it will be quite nice to have other people there to ease me back into the routine of standing behind a stall. I'm also hoping that there will be lots of bee chat that I can pick up useful tips from.
If anyone is in the Leeds area over Easter and fancies coming down to talk soap or bees (or quail or cakes or whatever) it would be good to see you.

What the Don't Tell You About Small Children

What they don't tell you about small children is just how much longer doing the simplest thing will take.
Maybe when you first thought about having children, you had a lot of high ideals about how their upbringing would be educational and culturally enriching whilst still being fun and loving. They weren't going to be the children you read about, who spend their time slumped passive in front of the television not knowing what a cow is or where eggs come from. You would take them on country walks pointing out items of interest, they would scamper happily about, bringing you interesting things to identify. In reality you will be freezing cold, shouting 'Come on !'  while they trudge at a snail's pace through the mud until they fall full length, face first in it. You then have to carry the screaming, dripping infant the half mile back to the car as they are too outraged to walk, even after you have emptied their wellies of water and wrung their socks out.
Likewise you probably intended to teach them to cook from an early age, having visions of some rosy cheeked child gazing happily up at you whilst you demonstrate how to make a cake. You are probably wearing matching aprons. It doesn't happen like that , the child gets a chair and stands on it, positioning himself between you and whatever it is you are trying to reach. He insists that he can do everything regardless of what it is, this culminates in him resetting the scales as you are weighing the flour out. Whilst trying to stop him tipping all the eggs into the cake at once and causing it to curdle, it is more by luck than anything else that you keep his fingers out of the electric beaters. At last with a sigh of relief, you slam the thing in the oven and turn to clearing up. Once again you wish your arms were two feet longer as once again he is on his chair, this time between you and the sink. Time for slumping in front of the television. CBeebies is now your friend, you know every show and every presenter.
As you may guess, Wednesday is my day for spending quality time with Oliver. Very little gets done normally. This week I managed to sneak a loaf of bread into the oven and then we made a dozen buns together.

Whilst I was taking a picture of the bread, a little hand reached up and took a bun. Hence there are only eleven.

More About Soap

The quest for perfection continues......
I am for the most part quite happy with my soap recipes, the fragrances are those I like and the texture is good. I have for the moment settled the problem of moulds in satisfactory economical recycling fashion. In the garage left over from when we used to make chutneys and flavoured oils, were 5 wooden boxes used to present a bottle of oil in. When lined with heavy duty rubber sheet (which I also had lying around the garage) these make a good standard mould for the soap to come out in bars ready for slicing.

If demand takes off I shall either buy commercial moulds or make longer wooden ones. I have even reconciled myself to the fact that every bar is different. These are hand made soaps and people are not looking for standardisation in size and shape.

What is bothering me still is the colour. I like the colours of natural plant dyes but some that I have used do not match the fragrance. Lavender (top left hand corner) is fine, the Apricot Skin Softener is the colour it is because it contains turmeric which has benefits to the skin including reducing the signs of ageing (no wonder it is my favourite!).

No, the one that really bothers me is the Verbena. At the moment it looks like cheap cheddar:

It is likely that this orange colour will fade to a soft peach as the curing process takes place, but even so verbena (aloysia triphylla) is a green plant with delicate white flowers that smells strongly of lemon:

To my mind the soap needs to be green or pale yellow. It is a shame that the Gardeners soap came out like this as this is much more suitable for Verbena.

So I have made another batch of the Gardener's Soap (contains pumice, tea tree, pine and lime oils) and tripled the amount of spirulina used to colour it. Hopefully this will give me a much darker green, freeing up the pale green for the Verbena.

The other colour problem is for the Lemon and Lime which is meant to be a fresh zesty soap suitable for the morning shower. When I was making it, the yellow of the beeswax looked so strong that I left it uncoloured, however it has developed into a beautiful cream colour

This is fine and attractive but it doesn't say Lemon and Lime to me (although I've had lemon flavoured ice cream in Italy that was very similar). I've decided to keep this natural cream colour for Honey and Oatmeal (fragranced with a hint of vanilla) and am still working on what combination of natural colours will work to produce a pale muted lime.

Not as Good as I'd Like To Be

Yesterday afternoon was spent screen printing.I was in the Inc.Workshop in Leeds formerly known as Fac4. I love that place. I did a screen printing course there, three years ago but they also run courses on woodwork, upholstery, furniture restoration and picture framing and they have a laser cutter. I haven't quite worked out what I would like to cut but having it available is terrific. As well as courses, you can just go and use their equipment on a pay per hour basis. I'm not sure how much it is per hour as I still have 5 hours credit, but yesterday they charged me £30 for renewing annual membership, £6 for the use of two screens and £3 for a pot of ink.

 I have half a pot of ink left over, and they will keep the screens with the designs on, so my two hours next week shouldn't cost anything.
 My idea was to add value and interest to my soaps, by presenting them in little cotton bags, screen printed to my designs. It is their Unique Selling Point if you like management speak.
It is an excellent idea, and I can see in my imagination how they should be. Getting them to that standard is a different matter.
These are some  of the designs on paper:

 And this is how the came out on the bags

This one is where I was pressing on really hard and over compensated:

It might not show too well in the photograph but there are smudges round the G and the d. I seemed to consistently have trouble round the ds. We joked that if I changed the name to Gilligan Woo, I would have no trouble.
Here is a photo of the screens fixed in place ready to print:

And one of me actually printing

My problem is that  I was there three hours and produced about 6 usable bags. Admittedly the first hour was an induction to the equipment and most of the second hour was coating and exposing the screens but even so it isn't feasible commercially.
However I have booked myself in for two hours again next Monday and there is also a course coming up for intermediates in April. I did really enjoy it so if the worst comes to the worst and I don't improve with practice then I may just keep going as a hobby.

All Talk and No Action

I had the family home for the weekend, Maddie down from Scotland, Ellie over from Hull so there is little to report. It was very much talk rather than action because that is what they do best.and amongst the jokes, stories, film reviews and several people talking at once we gradually manage to catch up on each other's lives. We tease Maddie because once at a family gathering when she was about 6 she leapt on a chair and shouted 'Me, me , look at me!' but sometimes it is necessary to fight for your share of attention.
I did take the time though to take a picture of our frugal equivalent of an Indian takeaway.

I made the korma and bhuna using the same 'Curry in a Hurry' base for both, made the chappattis and rice, fried the poppadums and bought in the starters, cost around £10 for five