A Brief (Ha Ha) Update

Good Morning All !
I realise that it is several weeks since I wrote, and that fact has been languishing on my conscience and featuring daily on my to do list (or facienda) for at least the last week. The trouble is that the longer I left it the more there is to write about and the bigger the task appears. I think I shall just have to write an overview today and then write several more in-depth blogs. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for heavy rain, a perfect day for sitting at a computer.

Firstly the soapy business, the Great Yorkshire Show was very hot and very busy and a little like an endurance test, I was there from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm being pleasant and chatty and basically saying the same thing over and over again 'It's all made from beeswax, an amazing natural moisturiser. I am a beekeeper you know' By the end of the day I was sick of the sound of my own voice and pitied my poor neighbours. Like at Bramham I met an amazing bunch of entrepreneurial women and in quiet periods the marquee was almost like a study group or tutorial. The key topic of discussion was Twitter, some were old hands, some just starting (ie me - @Gilliganwood feel free to add me if you are that way inclined) and some were complete novices.  Whilst on the subject of e-marketing my website  www.gilliganwood.com is now open for business. I won't say the website is complete, the pages on the benefits of beeswax are looking very bare and the 'What we've been doing' page is also in need of updating (another candidate for a wet Monday) but should anyone have an urgent need for a beeswax based skin balm they can now buy online.

Secondly the poultry, so much has happened here that they will definitely need a post devoted to them. Una the quail has started laying! She now lives in a hutch with Goldie, Tim being separated, in another hutch, both hutches in urgent need of more females. I saved up Una's eggs and made mini scotch eggs for us to take on a beach picnic. They were very cute and had the huge advantage of not having as much egg as a normal scotch egg. Amelia turned broody so I bought in some fertilised eggs and let her sit on them. She (or I) timed the whole thing really badly as they were due to hatch in the middle of the Great Yorkshire Show, which led me to refuse the opportunity of going for a drink with the words 'No, I must rush home, my eggs are about to hatch', the ladies eyed my dubiously and agreed that they mustn't hinder me. Two out of the five eggs hatched, a black Orpington and a Brahma. If that isn't enough poultry excitement, last Sunday I collected three ex battery hens and brought them home to recuperate and provide me with eggs. More about all of them plus photos, tomorrow.

The bees, also have kept me busy, partly this was my fault as being occupied with the business I left them to their own devices, which inevitably led to swarms. One of the swarms decided to settle at the top of the hawthorn tree that I didn't prune last winter. Remembering how I felt when I was pruning in the winter I asked my neighbour, Dave who is a climber for help. He involved his son, Kris and then in the way of our street, my other neighbour, Nicky came out to offer advice and ended up filming it all on her mobile phone. If possible I shall put this too on the blog in days to come. The next step I have to tackle in beekeeping is harvesting the honey. Last year the weather was so bad that there wasn't any honey to harvest but this year I have at least one full super, undoubtedly there would have been more if I hadn't let them swarm. Although there are ways of extracting honey without using an extractor, my plan is to put my name down to borrow one from the Leeds BBKA.

I'm afraid I have neglected the garden a bit this summer, all the hopes I had for growing my own veg didn't really happen. I have a few potatoes and carrots, a handful of tomatoes and one courgette. There are some onions in the plot but I have neglected them so much that I don't know how they are doing. It has been a reasonable year for fruit though, I picked a pound of red currants and added it to a pound of rhubarb I'd stashed in the freezer earlier and two pounds of bought strawberries and made a surprisingly tasty jam. The gooseberries have reached their peak of ripeness this weekend. I have been watching them carefully as I adore gooseberries that are ripe enough to be sweet whilst still keeping their crunch. I think the only way to achieve this gooseberry perfection is to grow them yourself. Promisingly there are berries on the cranberry bush this year that are looking pretty big, although still green. Hopefully there will be enough for home grown cranberry sauce at Christmas.

There has been work done on the house, as I am totally fed up with how bad my internet connection is and I am going to seek a new provider. However, I have suspicions that although the loss of internet for 12 hours at a time, is the fault of the provider, the extreme slowness of the system is probably down to my wiring. If I am going to let a telephone engineer into my bedroom to sort this out, then I would rather that he did not have to pick his way over sewing machines, spare computers, soap ingredients, wool, clothes and everything thing else that has found a home on my bedroom floor. This tied in nicely with the Mortgage Free in Three's challenge to chuck 100 things in 10 days http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/forum/the-100-things-in-10-days-challenge/  After several days work I can now see vast expanses of floor, I reckon by next weekend I should have it all in shape. Rosie is also busy throwing things out as she is moving into a flat for part of the week from September and is in the process of reassessing her belongings in a what to take, what to leave and I wouldn't wear that again if you paid me mode. So far she has managed three bin bags of clothes to charity shops and several bin bags of rubbish. I think I will write more about Rosie's flat in future if she will let me as it is going to be an interesting challenge to take a  basement  student flat furnished with basic necessities and turn it into something homely and creative on next to nothing. Her eldest sister Maddie has already crocheted a blanket for her. Incidentally since I showed the WIRE ladies, some blue genitalia that Maddie had knitted for a friend, she was ever after referred to as 'your daughter, the obscene knitter'.

Finally on the health front I remember mentioning in January that I needed to drop a size by summer so that I could fit into a wetsuit I'd bought in the sale. Frankly this never happened and by Bramham I had mysteriously gone up a size! I don't know how that happens, I take my eye off things and the weight just rushes on. So I have finally started dieting again and since Bramham have lost a stone. I don't want to say too much about this though, as other people's diets are not interesting. I will just say that having worked in an office where people were always counting points or on red days or green days or having complicated regimes where they couldn't mix carbohydrates and proteins, I am simply cutting back on my food. I do realise however that on a limited intake every calorie has to pull its weight so I am trying to go for healthy foods high in vitamins and minerals.

Phew! I think that is the end of the update. I bet you're glad I went for the brief version with no pictures or involved stories. I will save those for the next few days.

Where did the time go?

Somehow life has got frantically busy.
I have my first show on Saturday which is the Otley Show. It is so I hear a good show, about 40 minutes away, busy and popular without being scary like the Great Yorkshire Show. Preparations were going okay. Well to be truthful I had a mental block in my head that said 'I can't do anything until I get the labels sorted out'. Then last week someone asked for samples saying they would call round the following night, I said that would be fine and then spent the next day sweating over the label design and totally forgot about what prices to quote her. I then spent the next morning writing up a price list in a three fold little brochure. This is good as it will be going out on the stall at Otley.
Having finished the label design all I had to do now was order the rest of the labels and buy a laser printer which I did on Monday. My internet was down again so I had to do this from the library. The printer is due to arrive today, the labels, I don't know when, sincerely hope it is before Friday.
So my list of things to do for the show was to finish fiddling with the labels to make sure they print out aligned  properly, to cut and label the soap, to make and label the balms and body butters and to check the set up for the stall, tablecloth, lighting, display etc. It seemed a full programme but manageable but then this happened:

That is a sealed queen cell and means that unless I do something quickly, a swarm is imminent. I took advantage of a small burst of sunny weather to do a quick inspection yesterday and found that in hive 2. You should be impressed that I managed to take a picture as punching a security code into a touch screen phone whilst wearing leather gloves is not easy. Nor is holding the frame in one hand, the phone in another and somehow managing to press the shutter button again in leather gloves. I didn't want to take the gloves off as the bees weren't happy and there were a lot buzzing round and crawling on me.
Now I have to do something fairly quickly here, I have two options (three if you include doing nothing and then possibly watching a swarm flying away), making up an artificial swarm in a separate box to the side of the hive or following the Demaree method and separating the queen cells and most of the brood from the queen by putting them in separate boxes within the same hive.
I like the Demaree method, it has the advantage of not splitting the colony and letting the flying bees work away as usual whilst the new queen hatches and is mated and starts laying. Also if I have read things wrong and these are not swarm cells but supersedure cells where the colony has decided to replace a poor queen then I haven't lost anything as the colony is still basically intact. I have two problems, the Demaree method calls for a brood box with the old queen in it topped by a queen excluder, then a super, then a Demaree board and then another brood box with the queen cells in. I don't have a Demaree board, which is like a queen excluder but with a hole cut out of the side to allow the new queen to leave the hive and mate. I could probably get by with using a spare queen excluder for the next few days but I haven't got one of them either although I can buy one tonight at the LBKA meeting. My other problem is that I have not yet seen the queen in this hive.
I don't have much time to decide what to do, if they haven't swarmed already the bees will swarm between 10 and 4 on the next fine day. Fortunately it is due to rain until 3 today so I can probably risk leaving it until tomorrow morning when Oliver is at nursery.
Meanwhile the the two male quails are practically fully grown now and need to be out of the brooder box. I have been bidding on ebay for the last two weeks for an old rabbit hutch which could be converted for quail. I was finally successful on Monday getting one for £19 which I picked up yesterday. I could do with getting it out of the back of the car, cleaned out and put inside somewhere to let the quail acclimatise to life without the heat lamp before transferring it to the hen coop. This may not happen before Sunday as I have to prioritise the Otley Show and the swarm.
Finally Mary laid her second egg yesterday (I think). She still doesn't know what a nestbox is for and laid it in a heap of dust.

Today's the Day!

Apologies for the recent lack of communication, our internet has been distinctly patchy recently. Frustration with the lack of service has driven me to the local library to use their internet. Whilst very grateful for the free access, I am being driven to distraction by the loud chatting indulged in by librarians. Whatever happened to silence in libraries? The seven people using the computers and the two or three browsing for books are by contrast totally quiet.
I felt I had to post today as it is the first official day of the Gilligan Wood soap business. I did the official sign over at the Job Centre yesterday where I found out that my business plan had actually been approved on 1st March so God knows why they then kept me waiting for 5 weeks. My first task when I got online this afternoon was to register with HMRC to pay self employed National Insurance contributions and taxes by self assessment.
More to say regarding bees (good) and quail (bad) and whether to go ahead with the Otley Show but I think this will really have to wait until I have the peace of my own computer.
Hope to fill you in tomorrow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Frugal February Looking Forward to March Madness

White Rabbits once more! I know February is the shortest month, but it seems to have gone by very quickly despite a cold grey period in the middle, when I just wanted to stay in bed until it was warm again.
Now it is warm again, well, 8 degrees compared to 2, does feel warm, it's surprising how small a rise in temperature is needed to make the change from shivering under the bedclothes to being up and about doing things. Better still, it now gets light at a reasonable time in the mornings and the dawn chorus is singing away before six, encouraging me to get outside as there is stuff going on. This morning they encouraged me to hang my washing out at 6.15 am. It was still dark then, but it is a task out of the way and the washing should dry now, during the day, at no cost to myself or the environment.
February, was all about the February Frugal Challenge, which was very much about battening down the hatches and getting through the dark days of winter, spending as little as possible. On food spending I did pretty well, the total spend for the month was £72.83 nicely under our £80 budget, but overall I am £50 over budget. This is pretty well accounted for by £26 on a new tyre for the car, £12 on buying an extra pack of computer ink to gain a £4 discount and £10 more than budget on new pyjamas for Oliver. None of it is exactly frivolous stuff but I am still annoyed by the day I was late for my business course and was charged £13.50 for 4 1/2 hours parking by parking where I knew. The following week, a bit of time taken to research parking, found me in a nearer car park for £4.50. A total waste of £9.
I am not too concerned about the overspend though, as my overall spending was still pretty low, including mortgage, insurances, energy costs etc, the spend for February was about £800. Adding £200 as a security net for contingencies, I now know, that I need to generate about £1,000 a month to cover costs, which does not seem too unreasonable. My previous salary was £35,000 but I will be much happier on £12,000, having to watch the spending and make all the economies, is more than made up for by the freedom to spend my time as I please.
Looking forward to March, the emphasis will be on how I am going to generate that money, and hopefully will be a whirl of activity on the soapy business, ready to launch ourselves on the unsuspecting world in April.
As cold process soaps take 4 weeks before they are safe to use, (time for the caustic soda to become fully neutralised), this means I have to make all the soap I want for the launch, this week. Yesterday, I made a soap for the gardener. It has ground pumice stone in it to help clean off the engrained dirt after a gardening session and tea tree oil, which is a natural antiseptic for scratches and prickles. I wanted to colour it a subtle green using spirulina, a sort of dried algae, but I don't think I used enough and given the base colour from the beeswax, it is now an odd sort of dirty grey yellow. I'm hoping it will mute nicely over the four weeks as the lavender soap did. Today's Soap of the Day I think, will be lemon and lime, a nice zesty soap for early morning showers.

Aaargh!

Just a quick post, to say that I am doing as I promised yesterday, and getting stuck into the soapy business, in particular the designs for the packaging.
And it's hard.
I will have 6 soaps, 3 lip balms, 2 skin balms, 2 body butters and about 7 different gift bags for combinations of the above. When it comes to design I am a perfectionist who will agonise over whether it should be Lavender or Lavender or whether the font should be Bookman Old Style, Century, Copperplate Gothic or Poor Richard. I'm leaning towards Poor Richard at the moment as I like the name.
As I have about 20 designs to do (leaving out the debate as to whether the jar lids should have a design), this is going to take a while.
I'm also having doubts about whether to change the recipe of my soap. I made a soap called Apricot Skin Softener as it has apricot kernel oil in which is my favourite to date but it is not the recipe I was going to use for the range and as it also contains shea butter it is about 50% more expensive to make. I have three choices 1) Leave the range as it is 2) tinker with the recipe adding small amounts of apricot kernel oil or shea butter or both 3) Make the apricot kernel oil soap as well and sell it at a higher price. I'm favouring the latter choice but that will ruin my strategy of having all soaps at the same price thus being able to sell any three in a gift pack.
Decisions, decisions, hence the title.

The Balanced Scorecard- 2013 to date

It is cold and grey and I have been feeling more than a little lethargic recently so I thought it was a good time to review the year to date and see what progress I'd made in the main headings.
The balanced scorecard is a concept from accountancy which means setting targets in areas of the business rather than just financial ie no good congratulating yourselves on record sales if your safety record is dire and customer service appalling. When I worked for a clinical waste company that tried to implement this, the drivers had to record if they had missed any collections and why (normally accidents or traffic holdups), it  then amused me to discover that they were allowed to input a code meaning tactical miss as if it could every be a part of a company's tactics not to service its customers. In practice these were occasions where to stop at a clinic to pick up one bin of waste would make the driver too late to pick up 20 from a hospital. Still no tactical misses allowed here.
So the headings on my scorecard in no particular order are:
  Poultry
  Bees
  Garden
  Frugal Living & Food
  Soap Business
  House & Garage
  Personal Development
  Crafts
  Wildlife

Possibly I should have one for health and wellbeing but I think the list is quite long enough so I will roll that in with personal development

Poultry
This has been going well, there was the sad loss of Amelia (or was it Edna they looked very much alike) but to offset that Edna is laying well and I managed to partially roof the run and also get their wings clipped. In the incubator upstairs are the 11 little quail eggs, committing me, should they hatch to sorting out first a brooder box and then a cage for them. The brooder box would also be able to be used by chickens in due time.
Bees
I'm also satisfied with the bees. Truthfully there is little I can do in winter apart from ensure they have enough food and the hives are protected from mice and woodpeckers but to see all three hives were alive and active mid February was encouraging. I have also booked to attend the British Bee Keeping Association Spring Convention in April which I'm sure will fire my enthusiasm to learn more and there is my name down on the swarm collection list for summer.
Garden
Progress has been made, seeds have been sown, currant bushes pruned, larger trees cut back at risk to life and limb. As always there is much more to do, more seeds need sowing, the greenhouse needs cleaning, the prunings need chopping up and disposing of, the vegetable plot needs digging and preparing but I can take satisfaction from the fact that I haven't been ignoring the garden throughout the cold weather.
Frugal Living and Food
Here I think I may have been concentrating too much. I have done terrifically well on my frugal food challenge but possibly at the expense of other items on the scorecard. I have already posted that I seem to be baking everyday and as I write I do have a carrotcake in the oven (made with dried cranberries instead of raisins for a change and because I had them in the cupboard). Going forward the challenge will be to try and turn the efforts I have made since Christmas into normal routine but  to keep them in their place. I want to keep on making my own bread and cakes and biscuits but to make the freezer take the place of the convenience store. As Rosie has decided that she does like Chicken Korma, the Curry in a Hurry curry base will become a regular in it as will other dishes that allow me to concentrate on other things some days.
Soap Business
The other things will mainly be the soap business which I am ashamed to say has not made huge progress since Christmas despite being my hope for an income this year. I have attended a course at the Chamber of Commerce (run on a Wednesday which is why postings can be scarce on that day) and I have had regular meetings with a business mentor who has been helping me with my business plan and cashflow forecast to be submitted to a board who should approve me receiving Enterprise Allowance. I feel that all this guestimating future sales and doing market research on the natural cosmetic industry has distracted my attention from the important parts of the business namely making a good product with attractive packaging. Must try harder.
House and Garage
I haven't been doing too much in this category either, I have done some mild decluttering, bought a new freezer which will reduce my energy bills and we now have a working shower once more. There is much decluttering left to do and a list of DIY projects as long as my arm but I am relaxed over this, I am sure I will do more in the warmer weather.
Personal Development
Well this is quite a wide category, I include it, as it is part of the balanced life that I should keep learning and keep trying new things. Writing the blog has been very pleasurable and I would like to do more writing in future. Joining the reading group will also be good for me as it will make me read books I would not have chosen myself. I have also agreed to go on a dry stone wall building day, I can't see any immediate use for that knowledge but it will be interesting. I suspect that I am falling back on the health and exercise front since Jess left. The compulsory twice daily walks were getting me fitter and keeping the calories at bay. I shall have to do more about this before summer as I need to drop a dress size having bought a wet suit in a sale that was a size too small. Ho hum. I've also learned that I am not a dog person, although Jess left us because she was not getting on with Oliver, I didn't find enough compensation in having a dog for all the work and time involved. I may have liked the image of me strolling through the countryside with a dog at my heels but not the reality. Jess is now living with someone who finds having a dog all over you every time you sit down, enjoyable.
Crafts
I am a craft person, I enjoy almost everything that involves making things with your hands. Sadly I am not artistic, I can't paint or draw but I can sew and knit and embroider and hook rugs and generally have a go at anything which involves reading a set of instructions and visualising what they mean. In the last few years I have been extending this to try to tackle DIY projects ie plastering, fence building. Last summer shocked by the price of a new one, I attempted to build a bee hive which is basically a series of wooden boxes. I managed it but also discovered that I can't cut straight. As I need two more bee hives (or at least brood boxes) and a quail house and a broody house then I think I will be learning a lot more about woodworking this coming year. I was going to go on a course but had to cancel as I couldn't leave Jess alone in the house for two days. Likewise I couldn't do any knitting whilst she was with us, as she kept pouncing on the wool, but I have wool and the pattern for knitting Oliver a sweater.
Wildlife
The part of having a dog that I did really enjoy was being forced out for a walk and seeing wildlife. I really enjoyed seeing the small changes that happened almost daily. I can't do anything about this as the twice daily walks were taking up too much time and leading to other things being neglected, but I am going to make the effort to get out once a week at least. I have my tree spotting to continue and I am of course missing the kingfisher.

Apologies for the very long post but I have found it helpful, it has reassured me that really I have made progress since the start of the year and it has pointed out areas where I need to spend less time (food planning) and areas where I need to spend more (soap business).

Oh the Business, Things are Beginning to Hum!

The title is taken from a song my mother used to sing, probably some Victorian music hall song learnt from her father. My sisters and I have all been imprinted with the songs and sayings of my grandfather to the extent that we find it impossible to leave the house in weather such as today's, without declaiming theatrically 'Cold, cold, it blows across the moor!' which isn't too bad for me in Yorkshire, but a little inappropriate for the heart of London.
To return to the matter in hand, I thought I would post an update on my plans to start a business. I have now had my official meeting to apply for the Enterprise Allowance which will give me £65 a week for 13 weeks followed by £33 a week for the next 13 weeks. Not a lot of money but every little helps. I also get a business mentor from the Chamber of Commerce although in actual fact I have been working with Donna for a few weeks now.
I am currently struggling to produce a cashflow. As my mood swings between huge optimism that everyone will love the product and complete depression over the number of soapmakers already out there and what makes me think people will want to buy mine instead, estimating sales is proving a little difficult. My first cashflow was on the ultra cautious side, Donna looked at it and said 'Don't show them that when you apply for Enterprise Allowance, they'll think you are running it as a hobby'. So now I have gone to the other extreme and am planning on selling at events (Great Yorkshire Show, Country Living Fair, Countryside Live) which would probably mean making soap non stop to keep up with demand. A balance will be struck.

Liquid Soap

So I thought I would have a go at making liquid soap from some left over scraps of my Apricot Skin Softener Soap. It was quite a fancy soap using apricot kernel oil, almond oil and shea butter and scented with geranium and orange but these were what you might call offcuts, the bits at the side of the block that didn't look too good. Anyway it was very simple and the result is hugely satisfying, bottled in a recycled liquid soap bottle as you see above.
At the moment it is sitting on the kitchen windowsill by the sink being used everytime I come in from the chickens or after cleaning up after the dog and my hands are in sore need of softening, however I think it would also be useful as a substitute for shower gel. Maybe I will make some more for the bathroom, possibly with my favourite lemon verbena.
Here is the recipe if you fancy having a go.

100g soap grated or in scraps
300g water
1 tsp glycerine

Put the soap in a jug. Boil 200g of the water and pour it over the soap, whisk until dissolved. Add the remaining water at room temperature and the glycerine and whisk with a stick blender until smooth. Allow to cool and pour into a sterilized bottle.
I made mine using a double boiler and just let the soap scraps dissolve slowly whilst I got on with other things.
This would be also be a really useful way of using up the slivers of soap from the end of a bar and I think this was actually done during the war for that reason.

A New Life

Welcome.
Join me as I craft out a new life for myself.

 I want to  find a way of living that is fulfilling. It is about self sufficiency but also about how that ideal can be adapted for those of us who have to live in the city. I can’t wait for that elusive lottery win to buy my dream home in the country, I need to start living life as I want it now. It is about being frugal as frugality means  freedom from money grubbing but not to the point when I will be eating nasty food just because it is cheap.

A year ago I was in a well paid job. I had financial security but nothing to look forward to until I retired. Everything I liked doing had to be squeezed in evenings and weekends and the list of things I would like to do if only I had the time was growing longer and longer. I don’t want to go back to living like that; I need to forge a new life where time is more important than money.

So there will be a lot of decluttering, a fair bit of baking, some knitting, some desperate diy ,much gardening, a lot about chickens and bees, a good deal about soap and setting up a craft business and who knows what else.

It will be about growing it and making it and doing it yourself and not just because I have no money but because I find it satisfying to look at a completed item and say ‘I made that’.