Meow! It only seems fitting that as I type out todays blog, that it be cat themed.
First, I've been making cat soaps for the upcoming Fall Fair here on Salt Spring Island (Sept 6th & 7th) and second, yesterday I saw a live, full sized, very active cougar in our back yard!!!
Both are very exciting prospects to chat about but I think the live cougar kind of wins the contest for most fascinating. I had someone say to me that they have only seen a cougar in a zoo context and they have lived on the island their whole life. So in that sense, I feel very blessed to have seen one in full daylight in my very own yard. Do I have a picture, you ask? Absolutely not. It happened so fast. I barely had time to process what it was before thinking I should document this and it was gone. My brain had to go through figuring out what I was actually seeing, expressing that verbally and then trying to remember any details. It honestly was a blur in my memory. Basically moments and gone. Very cool, very unsettling (again please refer to only seeing such animals in a zoo type setting where my brain had a sign telling me what I was looking at, time to find it laying on a branch and then soak in what I was looking at) but I was watching it from my upstairs window as it stalked and chased a deer in the yard. I am happy to report I have seen the deer this morning so she is fine. She did however stomp her feet at it when it was literally 20 feet away from her. The only thing that triggered the pursuit was a motorbike coming into the driveway that broke the stand off and the deer turned and ran and the cat followed closely behind. I saw a brown patch in tall grass that the deer was acutely interested in. I wasn't sure what it was and thought perhaps a neighbourhood kitty or perhaps a small predator. I did NOT expect a full grown giant cougar. Talk about close up and personal! This all happened about 60 feet from the house. It was crazy while being ever so cool! Wild kingdom is alive and well on Salt Spring Island. I'm looking forward to my next wild life sighting being some Orca while I'm at the beach.
But not too much beach time is going on (though there is quite a bit), as I'm in full prep for glass making and product making for the upcoming Fall Fair. I figured I would start off with an easier challenge which is my kitty cat soap. I am so glad that I did as there were some obvious tips and tricks that I had forgotten about coloring cold process soap since I'd downsized my soap selection to mostly all natural, no scent or color soaps. These are my most popular sellers and are so wonderful on sensitive skin. But there is a soap judging section for the upcoming Fall fair and though I will enter my all natural soaps, I felt that I needed to really raise the bar for enteries by getting creative and entering (and then selling) some cool color designed soap. To be clear, I have never sold such designed soap and am enjoying the challenge. As all things on the internet, videos can be watched that show how it's done but all the critical information like soap recipe that works best, quantities of soap to be used while splitting it up for coloring techniques and design making are all missing information and things one has to figure out on their own. The designing and mathing of it all, gets quite complicated. So I dove right in after figuring out how much soap I needed for the mold being used that worked with the design scraper to be used. Then I had to reverse math it to divide it up for two different coloring techniques with one being 60% of the loaf and the other pour being 40% of the loaf. Color additives needed to be reverse split to account for the not full batch being made as did the scent being added and when and where it was best to do so. Do you have a headache yet? lol I pretty much did too. Trust me, this is the easy one too.
Anyhow, the first rendition turned out well but my blue skies became a light grey swirl that is almost naked to the eye. It's like the scraper maker knew I'd do this and provided a Meow stamp to make up for any goof ups when pouring. So my grey skies got a Meow stamped over them and the soap turned out really pleasing. I honestly thought I would have to toss the whole batch and was kicking myself for not remembering which blues work in cold process soap and which ones morph and disappear. Then I moved onto my second attempt and it turned out so well. It's the pic at the top of this write up. I am very pleased with this pour as it is very close to what I was going for. It's not as white fluffy clouds as I would have liked but the swirls of white in the blue is really pretty with this batch so I'm going to call it a success and move on to more designs. Next up will be my sweater design soaps (for Fall) and then I want to try a pumpkin embed design that I think will be very cool as I'll use coloring to create the ribbing and shape of the pumpkin. This will be a huge challenge as pumpkin is notorious for turning brown over time so I'm going to have to figure out a way to scent the pumpkin soap without it morphing out of it's lovely shades of orange. Wish me luck!
And in the meantime, of course, I'm waiting on glass molds to come in so that I can start fusing all sorts of hearts and pumpkins and farm animals in the form of key chains and night lights for the Fall Fair and then online. It's so much fun to be this creative again! Here's to the second half of 2025 seeing the fruition of all the planning of the first half of 2025!
Sending all of my love from Salt Spring Island!
Lana