Lovely Buttery

Yesterday, I made a body butter for my Mum to take to my godmother in Menorca next week. I have made them in the past with varying degrees of success, but I am really happy with yesterday's efforts.

It is a shea butter, coconut oil whip with added avocado butter, fragranced with geranium essential oil, and absorbs beautifully. I hope that she is happy with it. It is good to have as many guinea pigs as possible, and the body butter is something which I hope to sell at some point.

It would appear that spring has finally sprung. We have beautiful blue skies and sunshine today, although there is quite a wind which lowers the temperature somewhat. I spent a few hours potting up seedlings and planting seeds in the vegetable patch. The seeds which were planted a couple of months ago - aubergine and tagetes are doing very well, although the celeriac have died a death. The consensus is that it was too warm for them in the propagator. I have put celeriac seeds in the veg patch to see if they will be any more successful. I can't wait to be able to pick and then cook my own veggies.

The clocks to forward early tomorrow morning. That will confuse the animals.

Soap or Croap

A couple of weeks ago I made a batch of my usual soap, and it was a complete disaster. It was supposed to be my first batch for sale, and the really frustrating thing is the waste of essential oils, which are not cheap.

Today, I decided to bite the bullet and make another batch. Just in case, it all went pear-shaped again, I left it unfragranced, and thankfully it worked. I was beginning to think that I had lost my touch, but it has set and cut really well. I was so pleased with the result that I made a fragranced batch later in the afternoon scented with my geranium mix.

I have also, finallly, decided on my packaging. It has taken a while. I kept allowing myself to get distracted by what other people were doing, but once I had decided on a look for the products it all fell into place. Watch this space, and all will be revealed shortly.

This year, I have taken over Dad's vegetable patch. I am really not known for my greenfingered abilities, but I am giving it a go under the watchful eye on my Mother. The garlic is growing nicely - at least the garlic that my brother's dog is not pulling up. I am not sure that she is digging it, but I think that it is more that she tears around the garden like a mad thing, and churns up the plants.
Last weekend, we reinstated the propagator and planted aubergines, tomatoes, salad leaves, celeriac and tagetes (the tagetes are to keep away greenfly and other such creature) and the cucumber seeds went in yesterday. At the moment, we have two aubergines, one tomato and lots of celeriac and tagetes growing nicely. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks the soil will be warm enough to be able to plant seeds directly in the garden. We have lots of other vegetables to go in - garlic chives, leeks, khol rabi, baby turnips, French beans and other things I have forgotten. I am terribly excited about it, although there is absolutely no guarantee of success.
My soap safety assessment came through a little while ago, so I am desperately trying to finish the website, decide how I want my products to look, find packaging, look for boxes to ship my products in, and of course make the products. Still, it keeps me out of trouble. There is a lot of competition about and I need to make sure that not only are the products lovely, they look great too. Decisions, decisions.
The weather this weekend has been glorious, giving hopes of a summer to come. The sun is shining, and the sky is blue although there is still a real chill in the air. I do hope that we have a decent summer this year, we deserve one. The winter seems to have lingered longer than normal, but that may just be my perception. We are in March and still have frosts.

Winter Blues

I think that Winter is the saddest of seasons. It is joyless with dark skies and short, cold days, the leafless trees and the plants awaiting warmer weather before they appear. There is little to recommend it to the uninitiated and I yearn for the warmer weather, particularly as I have just received my gas and electricity bill. It will be nice to fling open the back door and not have to shiver while the cats sit and chatter at the birds sitting in the tree which overhangs the alley, desperate to get at them and unable to. I am sure that the birds know that, and sit in the branches just to tease them.
On Friday evening, while I was driving home, the sky looked as if it was on fire. The most intense reds and burnt oranges lay low over the horizon with small grey wispy clouds floating above. It was a beautiful and vivid sunset.
There are signs of Spring in gardens and in parks. Snowdrops are showing their small white bells, and daffodils are beginning to show above the soil. We have had snow again this weekend, and more is forecast for later in the week.
I planted garlic before Christmas, and it is doing very well. It is standing inches above the soil while other plants lag behind. Apparently, garlic likes to be hit by frost to be successful, and it has certainly had plenty of that. At the weekend, Mum and I planted flower and vegetable seeds in the propagator in her greenhouse. I decided that I wanted to grow my own vegetables this year. I am not renown for greenfingers, and do have a habit of killing all that I touch, so we will see what happens. It would be lovely to be able to go an dig a vegetable out of the soil, peel it and cook it the same day.
It was great to see British success at the BAFTAs last night. Usually awards go to the strong American contingent, but it makes a great change to see the British on top.

Obsessions

I have an obsession I should probably admit to. Soap. Not that I am obsessive about washing, although I like a good soak in the bath, and I do have a bit of a scrub in the morning. No, I am talking about making it.

I had been thinking of trying for some time, but when you look at on-line tutorials, those demonstrating soap making look like they are dressed in hazmat suits. Luckily, I received plenty of encouragment by people who know what they are talking about, and late last year I gave it a go. I loved the results, and so do the people who have been acting as guinea pigs for me. I like knowing what is in the products I use and I like knowing that they have not been tested on animals. Since I started making my own soap, despite the cold weather we have had over the winter, I have used far less handcream than I would usually have done.

I have had some success with my soap making, although it took me a while to get the colour right. I tried some alkanet root a while ago, to see what colour the soap would turn out and loved the result. It looked like chunks of Welsh slate. I tried again with the last batch I made with a little less of the alkanet in to give it a paler colour, and it looked like cat vomit. Not what you would call much of a success and not one which will see the light of day.

I have just applied for my Safety Assessment, which is very exciting but scary at the same time. I need to think of how I package my products, and look for ways of selling them. Each time I think that I have decided I know what I am going to wrap the soap in, I see something else and then change my mind.

I made a whipped shea butter today for a pregnant friend. Actually, I made two, the same recipe but two different methods. They have turned out very different indeed. One looks like lightly whipped cream and is mousse like in texture, and one like stiff whipped cream. One took two hours and one took half an hour. I will send them to my friend, and she will no doubt give me her honest opinion. This the first time I made whipped shea butter, so I have much to learn. I really enjoy experimenting and it is great fun even when it does not quite work.

We are in for a cold snap later in the week, with accompanying snow. I thought that we had seen the last of the white stuff for this winter and I am not looking forward to more.

I'm a Cataholic

My name is Suzanne and I'm a cataholic.

Yes, I admit it, I am completely addicted to animals of the feline persuasion. I have a house full, and even the vet calls me "the mad cat woman".

Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs. I grew up with dogs, and as a small child if anything was bothering me, I told the dogs. Not that they were any use. Part way through unburdening myself, I would get a look that said, “Alright, enough where’s the biscuit?”

The quirks and idiosyncrasies of cats, keep me on my toes. They tear through the house like little tornados, scattering things as they go, usually with a thud and occasionally with a crash and the accompanying shower of glass shards. They disrupt my work. I can be beavering away at my computer until (depending on whether I am using the desktop or laptop) a head blocks my view of the screen, or a bottom parks itself firmly on the keyboard.

Heaven help any plants I bring into the house. Within a couple of days, any shiny green leaves have been munched, and I am left with a few bare stems. Do they touch the herbs that I put on the kitchen windowsill specifically for them to eat? No. Why should they when they can destroy my houseplants?

I saw a fridge magnet that said, “When you call a dog, it comes running. When you call a cat, it takes a message and gets back to you.” Nothing can be closer to the truth. Cats are the hedonists of the animal world. They have never forgotten their status as gods in Ancient Egypt and live to be waited on. They insist on the warmest, most comfortable spot in the house. My cats allow to me to warm the sofa before requesting, ever so nicely, that I move so that they can make themselves comfortable.

I have one little darling who likes to sleep on my pillow. She sits on my face if I don’t move my head so she can curl up in the warm hollow, with her bottom wedged firmly into my shoulder. I have lost count of the number of times I have woken in the morning to find that I am clinging to the edge of the bed, while the cats are stretched out all over it. I did not realise that such small animals could take up so much space!

I have had cats now for ten years, and I am still not quite fluent in cat. I am constantly surprised by their approach to life, and how they manage to wrap me around their small paws. I would like to think that I am mistress in my own house, but I am deluding myself if I do. These beautiful, little creatures know how to get what they want almost without me realising what they are doing.

So, who are the little beasties who have so easily turned my life so firmly around? First in terms of nuisance factor is Lily. She is heads above the others when it comes to disruption, knocking things over and the general troll factor. It is Lily who sits, with little cogs turning, looking for things to get up to. She is a bright little creature, and she quickly works out by looking at the other cats, which buttons to push, and then delights in pushing them. This, quite naturally, leads to a great deal of hissing and looks that would curdle milk from her “siblings”.

Her sister Mia is as different as you can get. They are littermates but the only thing they have in common is that they are both black and white. Where Lily looks for things that are going to get her into trouble, Mia is content to curl up on my knee (usually when I am just about to get up for something).

The only boy in the house is Taz, devil in name only. He is a complete mummy’s boy, scared of his own shadow and a real couch potato. He jumps at the slightest noise, yet he will sit on the windowsill and watch fireworks tracing their trajectory over the night sky.

Finally, there is the latest addition to the feline family, Willow. I met Willow at a foster home where she had been taken from the local rescue centre, as she was pregnant. She had three lovely, lively little kittens, but it was three-legged Willow who I fell in love with. The disruption her arrival caused seven months ago is ongoing. Lily decided that this new arrival was perfect for being mean to. Unfortunately, Willow is yet to work out that running is the worse thing she could do, and to Lily it is a great game. Willow is not so keen on being pounced on, and retaliates and a full-scale catfight ensues.

There you have my feline family. Four completely different furry babies with personalities as big as houses. Life is never dull, and I no longer get a lie-in but I would not change a thing.