Inman Park Festival: Day 2

Inman Park Festival: Day 2

I had been checking the weather forecast repeatedly up until I left my place for day two of the festival.  Not that it's been accurate for about the last month, but can't hurt, right?  On the hour by hour forecast for the 30307 zip code, the chance of rain just went up and up to 80% throughout the day.  I have a leaky tent and though I sprayed it with scotch guard, I wasn't sure how it would hold up.  It's not like I'm selling umbrellas and raincoats after all.  When I got to the festival at about 8:30 a.m., I saw about four tents on Hurt Street (oh, the irony!) that had collapsed from the rain overnight.  Here's what my tent looked like:

Dirt kicked up onto the side walls of my tent from the street by the force of the rain.

Rain that leaked through my tent onto my tables, soaking my table cloths.

The leakiest part of my tent.

Makeshift roof using a plastic painters tarp from Home Depot.

Created a very low ceiling, hoping to prevent any stray droplets from landing on my product.

From behind my consolidated display.

My consolidated display that was getting dripped on...  was considering switching to lawn and garden displays, except I like making soap too much.

It looked like it was about to clear up a bit, or at least stop raining around 11:30, which was a relief.  I consolidated my display, which I wasn't too happy about, but I figured this way it would be underneath my makeshift tarp roof and if I had to pack up quickly, I could.  It was better than my product getting ruined.  Then about an hour later, the rain started coming down steadily.  I kept moving my tables back, but with a leaky tent, there was really no way to keep my stuff from getting dripped on.  Besides that, all the samples I had out for people to pick up and sniff would just slide right out of people's fingers due to the 100% humidity and the fact that it's soap.  I made a judgement call and decided to zip up my tent and pack up my product in its vulnerable state.  In a panic, I called my friend/neighbor Scott to come and help me cart the stuff to my car.  He came, we packed it up and in an effort to salvage the day, we walked around the festival.  Though the threat of rain loomed for the rest of the day, the downpour never came and I was left feeling guilty and conflicted.  After several requests to validate my decision to Scott, Stephanie, Ben, Peter, Matt, Scott again; I decided not to beat myself up about it.  I made a decision based on circumstances I could neither control nor predict and instead, I feel like I made a hasty decision in a panic.  That's life, I guess.  I suppose I got the best of both worlds, I had a great day of selling on Saturday and then I found some great artists on Sunday.  I bought a ring with white topaz and found my new favorite artist Pete the Cat.

That noise you hear is the rain coming down - it's hard to see:

Repeat Business

At the Candler Park Fall Festival last year, a guy came into my booth, snatched up three bars of soap before I could even say "hi".  I told him he'd picked the magic number, that I was selling them at 3 for $15 and he said, 

"I know.  I bought some from you at the Grant Park Festival.  You make great stuff."

That was a pretty great feeling.  Then as I was sitting in my booth at the Inman Park Festival this last Saturday, a woman came up to me urgently and with purpose, says

"YOU make the best soap!  I was looking for you.  I bought a bunch from you at the Candler Park Festival."

Sweet!  She got four bars from me again.  I think if I kept on with the festival circuit, I could definitely get a lot of repeat business.  The festivals, though rewarding, are a LOT of work.  Long days, physically exhausting, mentally draining...  I spent all of Monday recovering and trying to re-organize my soap room.  I have a whole other blog to write about day two with the rain, with pictures and all, but I've just poured the lye for a batch of Black Raspberry and it's time to start melting oils now if I'm going to make it to my bike ride in about an hour and a half.  

Inman Park Festival: Day 1

Inman Park Festival, Day 1:

I worked Friday night but actually got home in time to get about two hours of sleep before heading to set up.  I ended up getting there around 7:30 a.m. with plenty of time to unload and set up before the official 11 a.m. opening time.  The weather held up pretty well with a mid-day sprinkle and the heavy stuff waited until Stephanie and I were carrying arm-fulls of product back to my car at around 7 p.m.  

I've done so few festivals that it still surprises me as to what I encounter as a vendor.  You'd think with all of the time I've put in behind a bar that I've seen and heard it all, but I think as someone whose hard work, time, energy, effort, creativity, heart and soul are all laid out in a cute display for all to judge puts me in a more vulnerable frame of mind.  Almost everyone that walked by made a comment about my soap cake if they didn't stop to sniff or look more closely at it.  I mean.. even I'm impressed by it.. 

My display before the start of the festival:

I saw some really funny things:  a pre-teen with a sweet, sweet rat tail; the most severe camel toe I've ever seen in person; a guy picking his nose at the corner of my tent with no thought as to who might see; a guy with the fly of his camouflage shorts held together with a couple of blue diaper pins; the hairiest shoulder blades with no surrounding body hair.

The most exciting parade.  Ever.  ..and it paused right in front of my tent, repeatedly.  Witness:

Marching Band of the Abominables

Hollis Gillespie!!! She's a regular commentator on NPR's All Things Considered and the author of a hilarious column in Atlanta's free weekly paper Creative Loafing and one of my favorite books Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch.  I learned that her newest book is called Trailer Trashed.  I can't wait to read it.

A dude on stilts.

Tubas!

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.

The Tooth Fairy!

Sweet dragons dancing by students of Kung Fu.

A spine which was missing four bones as I was informed by my friend Heather, who is a doctor, so she should know, despite the sangria in her hand...

Some sweet electric cars

I know it seems like it was all about the parade, but that was the only opportunity I had to take pictures as I was pretty steady all day.  Black Raspberry, Lavender Aromatherapy and Mint Meditation were the big sellers.  A ton of my friends came out to support me, which was really awesome.  I slept like a rock Saturday night.  I found myself conflicted on Day 2 as I had a leaky tent and the rain returned threatening my product.  I'll fill you in with pictures and details in my next blog - probably tomorrow.  I'm tired (still) and need to go to sleep.

Quick & Random

The Inman Park Festival starts tomorrow and I'm working tonight until the wee hours and will probably not sleep before arriving to set up as close to 6:30 a.m. as possible.  Fourteen hours is a long day with no sleep, but I've done it before and I can do it again.  I never feel ready for these things.  It's so hard to predict what people will want and I always wish I had a more varied product line.  A few deep breaths should do the trick.  My success or failure does not depend solely on this one event.  My tent leaked last year and the weather forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms on both days, so I bought some scotch guard and a couple of plastic tarps.  Everything will be fine.

I rode hard on Tuesday.  I did 26 hilly miles in about an hour and a half.  Not too shabby, but I have not run or biked since and wish I could go right now to relieve some of this nervous tension.  I'm a little stressed about the j.o.b. as well, but things will work out, I guess.  They always do.   And if they don't...  they still will, just differently.  

I haven't felt this stressed in a while, so I'm going to focus on de-stressing about everything.  It's just wasted energy.  I think part of it is that I feel like I don't have a very big support network right now.  Unsure whether this feeling comes from inside or out, but I'm inclined to say it's the former rather than the latter.

I've lost a few pounds, that's good.  I hope it's not my hyperthyroidism acting up again.  I need to make an appointment with the endocrinologist on Monday.

This month I watched Little Children, Juno, Capote, No Country for Old Men, Owning Mahowny and Sex & Lucia.  I highly recommend them all.  I also discovered that I really like the Paolo Nutini cd.  He sings about getting it on in pretty much every song.  Speaking of which, I can't wait to see this guy in June when he comes to visit me.

I am going to take a lesson from my kitty Neko, he has not a care in the world.

Okay, I feel a little better.  Now I shall go load heavy tables into my car.

Spa Bar Re-do.

I've updated Morning Dew. I loved the sea clay element already and as many of my new creations start out, I caught a mistake early, merged it with my original plan, combined it with an added element and then topped it off with a spur of the moment experiment and it ended up a success. There is more of a cohesive theme to this bar. While it remains a spa bar with the addition of Sea Clay and now Aloe, I changed the color to mimic the sea... only makes sense, right? So, Morning Dew is no longer a befitting moniker. I'm leaning towards Healing Waters Spa Bar, but remain open to suggestion. I still have several weeks to formulate its new label.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Oh yeah, while I'm at it...  I added some curly Q's to Cloud 9 to make it look more like wispy clouds under the big puffy ones and look:  a 9!

Newsletter.

Last year I started a newsletter. I had initially planned on making it a monthly occurrence but ended up sending out six issues. They were lookers though. If you'd like to be included on my mailing list, send me an email either from my profile page or directly to openwindowsoapworks@comcast.net

Is efficiency a result of laziness or intelligence?

Oh man, oh man, oh man...

People ask me all of the time if I make lotion and all I can offer them is my Shea Butter.  While it's a super rich nutrient, it can be a little heavy for the summer time or for an all over moisturizer.  I have actually made lotion and I liked it, but most people thought it was too greasy - it was, for the record, but I didn't mind.  Actually, almost any lotion that doesn't have several additives - mostly chemical - probably won't have a widely well received aesthetic quality.  Also, any time you mix water with oil, you have to preserve it, otherwise mold and bacteria will grow in a short time.  It's just a fact of nature.  I did quite a bit of reading on the subject a couple of years ago and decided that making lotion was not for me.  For now at least, it's a form of chemistry that is a bit out of my league.  For the record, I really like this lotion.

My solution to this problem lay in my sugar scrub.  I'd been meaning to take the oil recipe that I created for my sugar scrub and make it a stand alone product for some time now.  I can't believe I waited so long.  I do preserve my sugar scrubs because water inevitably gets into the container even though I try not to let it happen.  The thing about a straight up oil recipe in a pump dispenser is that now I can have efficiently (a.k.a. lazily) moisturize with pure oils - some of them organic - no preservatives necessary.  I knew it was a good recipe, but I just made some with my 'Morning Dew' fragrance and another with a Lavender / Rosewood / Clary Sage / Patchouli (one drop, I swear!) blend of essential oils and I think I'm in heaven.  I am ordering the containers for this tonight and adding them to my website sooooooon! 

Hopefully I'll have them ready for the Inman Park Festival in a few weeks.

 

Great success!

Behold my old, single log molds, crappily made by me about three years ago. I bought a big ol' piece of MDF board and had them cut it to length, only, since they don't cut less than a foot at the Home Depot. My boyfriend's (at the time) father came over with a table saw and cut the rest for me the best he could without a sawhorse, or table for that matter. I nailed the pieces together as best I could. They did their job and only cost about $6. These puppies were not easy to line. I used freezer paper and painstakingly folded each piece every time I made a batch of soap. It's not easy to line something so narrow this way. I guess I could've just laid a trash bag in there, but I didn't want the wrinkle lines on the finished product, nor did I want to trim them off. I will still use them for experimental batches and the like.

PRESENTING:

Notice how the corners are nice and snug? The dimensions are much more even than my single log molds as well. This mold - beautifully made by me - holds three times the amount of my single log molds, so I can make about 48 bars per batch (depending on how many cuts I mess up). I left extra space so that if I found that my pot and mixer can accommodate a quadruple batch, I could adjust. It can't, but I just have to make a couple more smaller purchases and I'll be able to do so. For now, I put hinges on one side (not shown) so that I can get the soap out of the mold with less struggle than the first batch I made.

I used this puppy for the first time on Friday to make a big ol' batch of Shea & Silk. Here's what it looked like:

(nerdy, apparently)

Step 1: Caffeine and eye protection are very important.

Silk fibers 'dissolving' in lye water.

Melting hard oils (any that are solid at room temperature) in 16 qt. stock pot.

reminds me of icebergs...

add soft oils (liquid at room temp) to melted hard (solid at room temp) oils

it turned to soap!

shown after adding fragrance and color

poured in mold

added a li'l texture

24 hours later - it went through gel nicely, didn't overheat (which I was a tad bit worried about)

brushed mica on top :)

I actually cut this one into logs myself, but after doing so (actually, before too) I realized it would be completely worth the money to get a log splitter. So I ordered one the other day and I can't wait until it gets here. I have a feeling that I won't be able to wait for it to cut the Mint Meditation that I made tonight.