Saponification Sunday Etc...Etc..Etc...

I thought no one would notice, I thought no one would care, I thought you had probably gone on to those blogs brighter and shinier and far better than mine and then, I ran into J.

J. is a neighbor
J is a fellow farmer
J is my favorite stalker.

She does not comment on my blog, she does not even read other blogs but when I ran into her yesterday at the FFA Fair and Home Show. ( FFA is Future Farmers of America for my non USA followers) The first words out of her mouth were:

"You haven't blogged since Tuesday!!"

Busted. I was so busted. So J. this post is for you. Thanks for following me, thanks for caring, thanks for stalking me. It makes me feel so needed. Because I am warped that way.

The last 5 days have indeed been full.

More piglets were born while I was mailing out soap to winner Jenn in Ontario
for winning our last "Let's make a squeal " contest,

Many more customers to our farm store, and three brand new raw milk customers.

An op-ed piece to write for the NY Times about confinement hog farming,
(I can't share it until I know if they are going to publish it or not),

 More rain, more snow ( just a tiny bit) which has made it messy to work outside.

Preparations to be made for the booth at the FFA show yesterday, (not for our farm
but for a group I belong to, The Stewards of The Land),

An elderly aunt to visit, a family dinner to attend, and a price list to update on our website
and in our store.

And in the middle of that I just didn't get around to blogging. But it is important that you know...
I thought about you everyday. So, lets just forget about last week and start this week as I always do, with Saponification Sunday.

I recently completed a soap trade with Tanya Chappelle of http://titaniasdreamydelights.blogspot.com/       How exciting to get soap from Australia!  Not only did she send bubbly stuff  (4 bars!) but she also graced me with this perfectly crafted handmade soap dish created by her father. IN ADDITION she sent me a  beautiful glass bead which I have put in my safe deposit box as in the event I ever lose an eye, that bead will be placed in my head as a replacement. Yes, it is that gorgeous.

Tanya's bars were sweetly wrapped and just as sweetly scented. I was thrilled to get one of her beer soaps since I make one of those myself. How grand of her to make a soap bar in honor of her father. The shapes are nice and chunky and you can see by the torn label of her Latte bar that I perhaps have been sleeping with them too much. I can't help it. It has glitter.

Another bar, pretty purple and wrapped like the gift it was, complete with the well crafted wooden soap dish, was sprinkled with poppy seeds. The top was wavy and a perfect catchall for the tiny black dots.

Sales of my own soap in our little farm store continue to go well and on Monday I gathered  all my cured ones and lined them up for labeling.

Not quite ready to say goodbye to Winter, since it never really arrived in this area, I made a peppermint/wintergreen soap colored with maddor root powder and titanium dioxide. It is extremely FRESH smelling. I love coloring with natural roots and herbs as it is so experimental. Different oils and lye solution temperatures, cause the shades to vary and one never knows what one may end up with. This time one ended up with this:

The block in the back? It's a 10 pound hunk of Himalayan salt I bought primarily for picture taking. Now if, I can just figure out how to use my new camera, I might be able to do the salt block and future bars of soap, a little justice.