Wow, October has been quite the month! I’ve been working on a few things I hope you’ll enjoy! (And doesn’t my baby Sasja look adorable!!!)
I’ve been working on a few series for a while now – combining emollients, esters, and silicones – that rely on each other to make sense. They all came together in a big knot and I had to untie it to see where to start. I think I’ve figured it out, and it looks like I have the next section of the combining emollients series ready to go for a week or two from now with all kinds of formulas. When that part has been posted, I can continue with the esters series, which has many many parts that are not only written, but have formulas to go with them. Yay!
I’ve also taken a bit of time away as I haven’t been feeling all that great physically, and because I’ve been working on figuring out my workload, eliminating a few things here and there, to create a much better work-life balance…which is super hard when your hobby, your passion, and your job all the same thing! But I’m trying! As I said a while ago, when something stops being fun, I’ll stop doing it, so I’m pruning away the non-fun or non-happy-making things, and focusing on the things that give me joy, as you’re seeing in this post!
What about the Newbie Tuesday/Formulating Friday series?
If all goes well, these will resume next week, and we’ll focus on Incroquat BTMS-50 as the emulsifier for the month. I’m trying to get them all written in advance, polished, and ready to post with photos and everything before sharing even the first one so I can ensure there are no breaks.
The photos are killing me as they take so long! Raymond does most of them, but in the time it takes for one or two, I could have written a few posts!!!
And there’s a new e-book, Conditioner bars you will love!
If you’re a $10 US subscriber, click here for the coupon for the new e-book of the month, Conditioner bars you will love!
It’s a massive e-book 75 pages, nearly 26,000 words, with 22 formulas for making conditioner bars, including a pre-wash conditioner bar, and formulas for making greener, plant-based, vegan, and naturally compliant products.
If you’re not a $10 US subscriber, you can buy the e-book from the shop for $20 Canadian, or you can upgrade your membership and save yourself a whack of money! Make sure you’re logged in, then go the levels section, and choose the $10 amount. It’ll charge you the difference, and you’ll be able to download the e-book once we add your name to the coupon list. (We have to do it manually, so give us a bit to get that done.)
Questions & answers?
If you have questions about something, the only place I can guarantee you’ll get an answer is the monthly Q&A. (I try to get to the comments on various posts, but there’s so much to do every single day, it’s hard to get to them more than once a week, if I’m lucky.)
I’m not answering questions on any social media platforms, public or direct messages. If you write to me there, I’ll suggest you go to the monthly Q&A instead. I honestly don’t have time to offer one-to-one consultations, and many who contact me that way are non-subscribers, taking even more time away from the blog. It’s a great deal of work to answer a question properly, and if I’m going to do that, it’s something I want to share on the blog because others are likely to have those same thoughts.
If you’re using Discord, you may ask whatever questions you want, but please don’t demand answers or get upset when you don’t receive them. Please look at it as a bonus if someone wants to share their knowledge, and thank them accordingly. If those who take that time to share are shown some gratitude or appreciation, they’re more likely to do it again, so send them an emoji or a quick “thanks” and make their day.
As well, you might want to look on the blog as it seems like a lot of discussions, like do we pour the water into the oil in a lotion? or how do we mix lotions?, have large posts devoted to them.
If you have time, check out what’s under the “resources” tab in the menu. I have all kinds of things, including equipment reviews!
What else is happening?
We are working with some developers to make everything more stable, and we’ll eventually be leaving our current web site host because they are terrible and have broken everything and don’t listen to us, but I’ll let you know when that’s happening.
The first of the month should be better. If there are problems, we’ll know about them, so although I appreciate you letting me know the site isn’t working, it’s very stressful to be hammered with messages on every platform all day long, so please know that we hear that you’re frustrated and are working on it. (Believe me when I say I was so frustrated too!)
There have been a lot of issues about these coupons over the last few months. These are given by our suppliers, Lotioncrafter, Windy Point Soap Making Supplies, and Voyageur Soap & Candle, as a gift to you as their way of supporting me and the blog. Because people have been sharing the coupons or using them when they stopped being subscribers, we are taking some steps to ensure these are being used properly.
Please don’t share the coupons with anyone who isn’t a $10 subscriber, and if you aren’t a $10 subscriber any more, please don’t use the coupons.
If the code isn’t updated yet, please don’t message me for a new one. I update them when I get them, so if it isn’t updated, I don’t have one yet. And please don’t make up a code based on the previous month’s code if there isn’t a new one. (Okay, I admit it’s funny to see what you come up with…)
It’s a hard time for suppliers and everyone else financially right now, and we’ve already lost discounts to other suppliers for various reasons, so every time something like this happens, it makes it more likely we’ll lose these amazing gifts. Please don’t be the person who messes it up for everyone.
Am I doing any Zoom workshops? Honestly, I don’t know at the moment. I miss teaching so much and really enjoy them in the moment, but they take so much work – easily 10+ hours to prep, then all the clean up and such on top of it – and there’s a lot of stuff that happens around them that’s incredibly stressful and tipped the balance to the category of “nope, not again”.
Truthfully, it’s very stressful to be constantly hounded about sharing the video, then having to deal with people’s feelings and criticisms when I don’t share it. “No” is a complete sentence, and as much as it’s nice to hear you want to see them, it’s just too much to have to tell dozens of people over and over again every single time on every platform before and after that I’m not sharing it.
Can you tell I’m working on boundaries? I know, us former family counsellors are great at offering that advice, but kinda sucky at taking it!
Please be good and kind to each other. We’re living in the kind of year you’ll tell your children and grand-children about, and they’ll read about in history books. Life is very different than it was even nine months ago, and we don’t know when this is going to end, which adds even more stress. On a scale from 1 to 10, pretty much everyone around the world is at a 5, and some of us are up to 9 or 10 every single day, all day.
If you’re about to say something on the blog, on social media, or in Discord, ask yourself if you’ve phrased it in a way that you would be okay to hear. If you think it might be misinterpreted or you’ve said something less than kind, re-write it until you get it right. Yes, it can be hard to interpret tone through text, but if you take the time to write it well, maybe phrase it as a question, add an emoji, add a few kind words, like “please” or “thank you”, or do something that make your intentions very clear, it’s less likely to upset or offend. If you want to ask a question or challenge someone’s science, asking a question and putting a little smiley face or thing at the end to let us know how you’re feeling is important. And if you can’t figure out a way to say it, then maybe it’s better left unsaid?
Okay, that’s enough out of me. As always, we thank you so much for supporting the blog so we can continue to share all these formulas, posts, concepts, processes, equipment, and everything else with you!