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Hi!
Gee the time passes. I meant to get back here ages ago.
I’ve taken a while to shake off this bug and also still had markets/workshops etc so I’ve let a few things slide

The Cherry Blossom Tree is at its best… so time for Family Photos!!
Yah… Pip was SO INTO IT!

Not…

(Even dressed Pip up with his little kerchief!)

I’ll be back soon with more garden and soapy photos!!
Hope everyone is having an excellent week!
Cheers!

Above. One drugged and dopey cat.
Took him to the vet for a checkup. He had to have bloods done.
As a standard, I drug him so he isn’t so… er… feisty.
He behaved well overall, low rumbling growls but no hissing or fanging people so that was good!

I’ve been crook all week. Caught a cold. Seemed mild. Took covid test, turned out negative. Was feeling fine so did my soap workshop Sunday.
That night my voice packed it in. Nothing above a whisper for the next couple of days. I can croak now. (in the voice sense not the kicking the bucket sense)

Tomorrow I can finally spend the day slothing about resting doing nothing. Probably half the reason I am not getting better. If this keeps up I might have to go see the doc!

Tasmania has had some pretty horrible flooding. I didn’t get down to the river for a photo – our walking track is well under water right now.
Our last efforts on the chook run haven’t worked well! The water is pooling back on the roof and bowing the laserlite.
Bummer. That will need attending to next week. We didn’t raise the end of course but for some reason, whatever we did… we did it wrong.

Last week I got several soap orders in. So exciting.
This company was fun! Not only did I get my orders but also a heap of random bits and bobs

The tube came with some tools to make interesting patterned soaps

I’ve tried a couple… this one worked reasonably well. (Second batch didn’t go as great)

The main reason I ordered from them was to get this cutter so I could cut my slab mould soap with less hassle and more precision.

I also got this:

I was puzzled about the baking paper…
But it turns out you do use it with the tube mould.
But inside the cool case?

A mad hodge-podge of things! (mmmm that reminds me. I didn’t eat all the minties… back in a minute)

So, Soap workshop. I thought I only had 4, but a last minute student brought me up to my max and we were away.
The above was a demo soap for students to cut.
New fragrance – Black Rose and Oud. (I had to look up what on earth Oud was… apparently a much sought after fragrance taken from a special tree.)

I went for the dramatic colours.

We had a bunch of nice people, even a fellow joined in this time!
Anne chose lemongrass as her fragrance. We used the saffron powder to add some colour… and Anne had fun doing gold swirls to finish things off
Amazing after a day or two how much that saffron colour develops

Krystal was our late addition to the class. Turns out she has an allergy to coconut oil. I changed up the recipe a bit and thank-fully it seems to have turned out well
She went for the black raspberry and vanilla fragrance… and wanted pink for her highlight colour. I assured her the madder root powder would turn pink

I will admit to being worried… but I should know better.
In a few days the colour did indeed develop to a lovely speckled pink (with sprinkles)

Chris is a metal worker and apparently has a ton of bentonite clay at home! So he chose to keep things fairly simple, mixed some clay in, added poppy seeds for a scrub and a lovely citrus and sage fragrance.

Julie chose baby powder as her fragrance and had some fun choosing pretty moulds to go with her lovely fresh green highlighted soaps (Couple of dinosaurs for the grandkiddies)

Jan had participated in a soap workshop with Sharon and myself quite a while back and wanted a refresher.
Since she has made a few batches, I asked if she wanted to try the Taiwan Swirl.
That way the other group members could see another design technique.
It turned out so beautifully! (Lemongrass)

And last but not least, my show off demo soap.

The colours turned out great despite a glitch when my two purples turned out almost the same!! A bit of a quick adjustment with the white and we were good to go
I used peppermint, but if I had cherry, this would be the colour combo for that!
We’ve called it the black forest cake soap

I dropped most of them off today for pickup at basket weaving… although I didn’t stay.
I did however manage to do two batches of soap.
Another Christmas one – hope to cut tomorrow, and one so I could use my soap dough flowers!!

I was a bit nervous doing this!
I thought one of my new fragrances, French Pear would be perfect for this… its lovely and elegant.
I felt like I was all thumbs trying to put these together.
I used a bit of the new mix as ‘glue’
They looked good but a bit unfinished, so out with the gold mica for a swirl on each!

Getting them out of the mould will be nerve wracking!!!
Still… I am pleased so far with the results.

Hope everyone has had a great week and has an excellent weekend upcoming!
Cheers!

Hi!

Looks like the cherry blossom is going to start flowering! Its a grafted tree, so half has these simple little blooms and the other half has the full multi petaled hanging flowers

We took advantage of a beautiful day to get on with bird proofing the chook run. Feed (like everything else these days) has become so much more expensive and we can’t keep feeding squadrons of sparrows and galahs

The first part was tricky. We had to cut back the overhanging crossbeams under the roof overhang. We loosened the screws on the laserlite to get under it. We REALLY didn’t want to remove the whole roof.
It got sorted and we put another facing beam on that side. Failed to get a snap of the finished bit!

At some point we turn around and find we had an audience!

A bit of a bodgy job at the front where the roof didn’t quite meet the end of the structure

Once we got the facing beam on it didn’t matter so much as you can’t see it

Then a bit more work on putting some supporting timber up to attach the bird wire to the big open area at the back

Pretty pleased with getting this sorted.
We had about done with it so we were packing up the tools and whatnot- was away from the coop for approx three minutes and came back to this!!

This doofus magpie didn’t get the memo about the bird proofing!!!
He’d been hanging about (no pun intended) near us getting worms and bugs from the paddock. Nosey beggar!!
He was panicking a bit so I walked slowly over to his side so he eventually naturally ‘shooshed’ out the door!

I hung some material over the gap at the top of the door and shredded old jeans to do a temp soft barrier at the chook entrance
They weren’t keen on using it this morning. All eventually went out but two. I left the door open and will put them in training to use the small entrance and not be scared of my jeans haha
That will slow the birds

Still a fair bit of day left so I went and rescued the garlic patch!
Under the net the weeds had gone mad

Picked them all out and fed the garlic some kelp tonic and mulched them

The potatoes are starting to poke their heads above ground

In the hothouse my winter potatoes are starting to get some size

And we are getting salads again as the lettuce in the hothouse are good for picking now

Some cherry plums starting

Lots of borage and other spring flowers around

This patch just hums with bees!

My rocket is up

The herbs are doing great!
Lots of parsley

And bugs

Tons of oregano and lemon balm

And the beautiful man ferns have newly unfolding leaves

I think they are so cool

So hairy!

In true Tassie spring style, today is fairly awful, so will do some indoor stuff.
Maybe start clearing out the pantry and later reward myself with some soap making (Got some new fragrances in that I am keen to try!)

Hope everyone is doing well
Cheers

Hey there!
Its nice to be back home – haven’t taken time to sit and do more hiking photos, but since I have a couple of markets and a couple of workshops coming up I’ve tried to get more soap happening

Still working on Christmas designs. Above trying to incorporate the ‘shimmy’ with the Christmas tree and colours.
Thought I’d try again with a colour switch and I am rapt with the results so I will stick with the one below

A young cousin (Ange) came over to do some soap with me. She had taken a workshop with Sharon a while back but wanted to see how I do some of my designs

I showed Ange how to do the ‘Taiwan Swirl’ and she chose these colours and the Oatmeal, Milk and Honey fragrance. They turned out so pretty! Esp with the gold swirl on top!

I wanted to try to recreate the ‘Phoenix Rising’ soap and thought it would be a good design to show Ange. We both did the pour and once I showed her how to finish off the design, she did the rest.

The cut turned out amazing. Really love this combo.
The one I did for the class as a demo I handed over to the co-ordinator on Friday and by today she had sold all but three I think! So popular! (There are 16 bars so thats pretty quick!)

Got some new moulds so having fun giving them a go

Pretty colours and designs

Also did a ‘peacock swirl’ in my slab mould with Lemon Myrtle as the fragrance

I should be getting a new cutter that will cope with my slab mould soap. Looking forward to that.

And then… another attempt at soap dough!

Too late I thought it would have been smarter to do a half batch in case I really muffed it up!

Basically you mix the soap then wrap it in plastic wrap and seal in an airtight container for a day or two (discovered that two days is better)
Then take it out, smoosh and knead it so it goes a bit like play dough and re wrap.
A few days later it should be ready to work with

So, in the spirit of ignoring all housework, I’ve been getting in touch with my inner child and making ‘stuff’

I had the leaf cutter doovers, but nothing to cut out flowers… so I free hand ‘drew’ cut and squished into submission the flower design

Dusting with mica and sparkles made them more interesting

I can’t wait to make some soap suitable to pop these on top as an embellishment.
They do take quite some time though, so pricing might be a conundrum!
I really need to do more gardening but now I feel like I want to be sitting inside being creative with soap dough!!

Hope everyone is doing fine – I know a few of you are from the Florida area and I really hope you are all safe and sound.
Take care!!
Cheers

Hey hey!!
How is everyone?? Doing just fine I hope!

Well… clearly my friend Nardia and I got back off the Overland Track in one piece and in excellent spirits!!

Just thought I would swing by with some of the random photos I’ve post processed and tell you a bit about how it all went!

So… Nardia’s husband, Jock, drove us down to the finish point and we dropped off Nardia’s car ready for collection in a weeks time.
Back to Cradle, we took a room for the night then wandered down to the restaurant for a decent meal (and drink) before heading off into the wilderness

And there we are… starting off in true Overland Style… RAIN

All the forecasts totally sucked by the way!

We looked like bank robbers!
It drizzled at first… then it got colder, windier and snowier!!
The best bit was the stinging hail to the eyeballs!!

We were complete muffins and didn’t put our rain pants on until the shelter at Kitchen Hut where we stopped to sort that out and grab a quick bite to eat – and at this point Nardia was probably reconsidering her life choices as our fingers had gone a bit numb!!
(Thanks to Nardia for the above photos)

I’ll pinch more photos from Nardia later as day one wasn’t a good day for me to be using my camera due to the weather. But we made it to the hut in good time, dried out as best we could and watched the sideways falling snow from inside Waterfall Valley Hut.

The next day, heading to Windermere was mostly pretty lovely… a lot less rain anyway.
A LOT of water on the track.

As always, pretty in any weather

Adopting my ruffian look

The new hut at Windermere is well under way. But estimated to finish in Nov. or Dec.

Day three was excellent as usual… changing terrain made things so interesting.
Nardia was loving it

I must admit… it was a long slog through mud for most of the day!

In the end Nardia got the hang of it and started charging straight through the mud and water like I was doing. Saves a whole lot of time and the potential to fall in while balancing on dodgy planks and rocks

Poor new shoes!!

Was really fun having a new Overland Buddy – the only probable drawback was our mutual love of Japan – which meant a lot of discussion of our favourite Japanese foods, which at that point was a LONG way out of our reach!

We bucked the system of taking lots of energy laden dehydrated foods and subsisted instead on cup-a-soups, cheese, bikkies, sourdough bread, chocolate, our friends nut and fruit slice and lollies.
The one real meal I brought I honestly couldn’t even get through quarter of it!

And another great thing about hiking with Nardia… she’s pretty keen on getting millions of photos so neither of us would feel guilty about stopping all the time to get photos.

Selfie! There! Aren’t I glamorous????

We squished two days together. Skipped Kia Ora hut. Nardia went up part way to the Mt Ossa Climb to see ‘The Japanese Gardens’ and we met at Kia Ora, then continued on through the forests, checked out one of the waterfalls and hiked the last hour in the dark with our headtorches on into Burt Nichols Hut!!

We then mutually agreed we wouldn’t take ‘The Ferry of Shame’ back and finish the whole walk on foot.
So we skipped Narcissus and did the extra 5kms to Echo Point where we camped our last night.

A beautiful stretch of the track but had its fair share of squidgy muddy bits!

Was lovely to finish up and get that free five minute shower at the end – we were NOT fragrant hahaha

There is my little proud moment, announcing I’ve now done the track six times!

And here we are together feeling pretty good about getting over the mountains and back in one piece.
Bring on that yummy end of track burger and chips!
Cheers!

Hi!
Sorry I have procrastinated about writing posts!!
I have been keeping busy practice hiking, new shoes and tomorrow I plan to set off with my friend

I took myself around Anniversary Bay one last time – got some lovely weather

The hills felt a little rough but I had planted potatoes the day before and my legs protested a bit!

I actually got around in a reasonable amount of time so was pleased with that

With luck, our Sunday start won’t be too bad, even though its the hardest day (I reckon)

As mentioned… I got the potatoes in

Then used this plot to put some rocket seeds in

Started on the strawberries then decided that was a post-hike job

I have a carpet of oregano!

And here are a few of the spring colours that are currently in the garden

Forgetmenot

Calendula

Borage

Tulips are just starting to appear. Hope I am back home to enjoy some of them!

And my boronia is out!
Hope everyone has a lovely weekend and hope to be back in a week with some stories!
Cheers!

Hello 🙂

I did another soap workshop weekend before last. Busy but fun day.
The above was the loaf I made so the students could experience cutting soap (Kakadu Plum and Bush Cucumber)

I forgot to take my camera in to class so I just have a series of snaps of the results

Marilyn opted to use the decorative moulds with the Black Raspberry and Vanilla fragrance

Sally had fun decorating her Cedar and Saffron fragranced soaps

Christine chose the Lemongrass and Exotic Lime fragrance and we did a lovely subtle wave pattern

Lisa fell in love with the Kakadu Plum and Bush Cucumber fragrance from the demo and used that with her batch

Lots of fun swirls here!

Therese did a drop swirl pattern and used the Baby Powder fragrance… the speckle colour is from madder root powder – really effective

My show off soap I did in fun bright colours. I did use peppermint ess oil but I used an older bottle of it and the scent has kinda just disappeared! Bummer

The ladies collected their soaps yesterday and were all really positive about how much they enjoyed the day and they were pretty happy with their soaps too!

I am trying to get a few more batches done and curing before I go away – there are a couple of markets on in October I want to be ready for.

So I did a double batch of the Cedar and Saffron soap which is always popular

I like how the mixed pour colours come out throughout the soaps

And I had a heart embed that I needed to use so I made a loaf using the Chai Latte fragrance and did a drop swirl pattern.
Very pleased with the results!

Well… thats all the soapy news from me!
Have a lovely week!
Cheers

Hello!!
Yes! Spring is here. Although it was grey and soggy today!
I stayed mostly inside – made some soaps
Oh, I did have to go out shopping, but that wasn’t exciting so…

In between soap making, soap workshops and hiking, I have done a couple of things in the garden that were useful

The blueberry patch needed help

This was the end result – but since then the little darling chooks have gotten in and happily kicked all the straw and sawdust about everywhere!!
Some wing clipping coming up I think!

I bought some seed potatoes but haven’t touched the patch where they are going to go this year.
The ground is so gluggy… so I am putting it off

The four plants in the hothouse look nice

And the side shoots on the broccoli are doing great. We had some of these at dinner tonight

I bought some lettuce seedlings

So I did some tidying up in the hothouse

Popped in some cow poo and mushroom compost

And planted heaps!!
All in their little personal hothouses so the slugs don’t get them

Borage is out everywhere

Jeff got to and split all the big pieces of wood in that pile on the front lawn and stacked it all.

I conveniently arrived home in time to help with the last few barrow loads!!
Now at least a lot of it is an easier size and being under cover will make it more likely to burn better!! Funny that!

I am about two weeks off the Overland start with my friend Nardia.
I’ve been reasonably good at getting out every other day with the pack on.

I am liking the series of views from the top of Fossil Bluff!

Yesterday I upped the weight in my pack to around 18kgs
I felt that extra two kilos!!

Still, even though I was a bit sorer, I still did it ok so feeling reasonably confident about carrying what I need to.

I’ve got most of the gear in my pack now… added some water bottles to make up for the food weight that isn’t (of course) packed yet

I am going to have a VERY weird food collection.
Currently trying to decide how I can fit a loaf of sourdough bread in…

I’ve only got one actual dinner like meal.
The rest is going to be… snacky.

I’ll take a photo before I head out so you can laugh at me.

The plum tree is so pretty right now!!

Anyways, Basket weaving class in the morning so I better go get my beauty sleep!
Hope you are all having a fabulous week!
Cheers!

Hello!
The other day I decided to pop a note on the local notice board for a hike over to Cathedral Rocks. It was short notice and no-one ended up turning up this time.
Jeff came with me and we decided to bypass Cathedral and do the longer loop up Blanfordia Hill and back across the inland track

Here we are all super keen!

I took the fisheye lens this time just for the fun of it!

I had my pack… since I am a month off my Overland start date I wanted to see how I fared on this trek. (A LOT more hilly than the river track)
I had a bit over 16kgs

And even though I am not going to break any land speed records, I think I did pretty well. Felt comfortable in the pack, the weight was fine.

The weather had been awful… I was going to test out all my new wet weather gear.
However… It didn’t rain! I had to take my raincoat off as I was cooking in it!

I love the views on this walk! I never get tired of them

Well, it didn’t rain but my goodness the wind was diabolical! Was as strong as the insane days experienced at Cradle!
It was literally pushing us off the track and at one point we had trouble walking DOWNHILL as the wind was pushing us back up!!

You might be able to see in the above picture all the trees blown sideways!

Blanfordia Hill is annoying… it goes up. You think you see the top and then you see another top. After that you see another top. I think this happens about 4 times!

Anyway, we finally reached the point there were no more tops to walk up, hit the inland track and started back

Thats when the wind got REALLY testy!!

Check out the waves in the ocean!!

You can see the white line on the hill in front. Yes… we were headed over there! Looks a long way in this image!

Not far from finishing now

Has an excellent wintery feel doesn’t it? Even without snow!

A bit of blue sky!
And what is Jeff doing? We spent some time amusing ourselves throwing rocks straight up into the air and having the wind push them about 5 metres inland before they landed!! You might be able to Spot the Rock – Still mid flight to the left of Jeffs head (looks like a white splotch on the hill) – as it gets blown well away from where it was thrown!

Yes. We totally know how to have fun around here!

Cheers!

Hello there!

Dropping by to share what was made at Sundays Workshop!
I had 5 lovely ladies and two volunteers helping me by running about and doing the dishes (bless their cotton socks!)(Someone doing my dishes?? All my dreams come true right there!!)

We start off with some introductions, and some cake and coffee while I… basically talk a lot!!
There is a lot of important info that goes along with it all – so hopefully got all the essential basics without overwhelming everyone.

I have a bunch of soaps at the table for inspiration – plus its just nice for people to check stuff out and see what is possible in the soap making realm.
I have my supplies table where everyone can sniff the fragrances and look through the colours and moulds

Then there is the table where all the action happens. The loaf that I pre made to cut… somehow have missed getting a photo of that!

I pre mix most of the lye and bring it along in jars cooled and ready to use.
I do the one demo of mixing the lye as its critical and VERY important for people to realise just how dangerous this stuff can be and how to handle it.

Then into the soap making – so much fun when everyone gets to choose what they are going to make.

As you can see… quite the variety!
The super fun part is me packing up and balancing all these in the car for the 25 minute drive back home (in the rain of course)
I will come up with a better transport system soon I think.
The classes have filled very quickly and we had to put another one on at the end of the month – and I think there might be a waiting list???
I am feeling very popular haha.

The ladies had a really nice day and I’ve heard some lovely feedback so thats really encouraging!
The soap unmoulded well and I should be able to deliver most of it tomorrow.
(Although there is still the agony of the 4 week curing wait before use)(They all get their full batch of soap that they made which is more soaps than what I have arranged in the photos)

This is Maidie’s soap. Blueberry with a sweet drop swirl and white sprinkles on top!

Debbie chose coconut and lime and we made a mix with the fresh green in some really pretty moulds

Karen settled on the Belgium Chocolate fragrance and made a whole heap of completely edible looking soaps!

Divine!

Kaye selected one of my favourite fragrances – Anjou Pear and Lemon Zest!
She’s mixed a burgundy mica back into the base mix to pour and its turned out super pretty!

A new friend of mine, Kasia, (Met at the avocado carving workshop) joined in my workshop and got extra creative with her soaps

She dusted her moulds with gold mica first, and then lined the flower moulds with some mermaid blue. The result was a gorgeous old world effect.
The speckles in the base mix is from the madder root powder and she’s also put in some oatmeal as a scrub!

As for me… I did my usual show off demo at the end. Kasia has made a video and when thats done I hope to upload it to my FB page so you can take a peek at the process!!

I was actually quite thrilled with this one!
This is a colour combination to repeat!
I used lemongrass for the fragrance as I know it behaves.

Since the community centre doesn’t charge a hire fee for me to do these classes, I’ve decided that I’ll donate the demo soaps when they are cured to them.
Last months batch is nearly sold out which is awesome. So they can raise $80 from the batch and that money can go back into the centre for things they need.
They do a great job doing community based ‘stuff’ everything from gardening to a large variety of workshops.

I’ll be honest… it might break my heart to part with this one !!!
(I must make another one soon while I remember exactly what I did!!)
(Shall we call it ‘Phoenix Rising’ ?? Jeff seemed to think it reminded him of turkey feathers but that name doesn’t have the same grand ring to it!!!)

Hope your week has been fabulous
Cheers!