Friday Crafting

I like Fridays.
In my work-from-home routine, they are they day where – provided I’ve got everything else done, and sometimes not even then – I get to blog as much as I like, the day I’m most likely to throw together the kind of dinner that requires a bit of forethought[1], and the day when I do most of my devotional stuff (officially – unofficially, things can wander a bit).
It also means that I’m slightly more likely to actually get to see, and hang out with, my lovely wife – who works multiple jobs, herself, but all outside of the house – for the next couple of days. Which, seriously, I fucking miss my wife. And miss fucking my wife. All of the above.
 

This particular Friday is mildly momentous. I finally dug my beeswax (I had some left!) out of the Work Room (which has been stuffed full of too much stuff for going on three months at this point) and have started re-stocking my at-home-use tea light candles. It’s about freakin’ time. O.O
 
So I have a dozen of them firming up on the counter, and will be making a few dozen more over the course of the day. (I used a heat gun for the first time today, and it does a really good job of melting wax out of candle holders and tea-light cups… fyi).
 
My altars are lit up again – for the first time in, like, three weeks – and I’m feeling pretty good about that. I cleaned up some of the worst of the wax build-up, too (see: heat gun) so I can re-use it for making more candles. And also keep my altars from turning into massive fire hazzards. (Pro tip. ;-))
 
I also experimented with felting soap today.
Basically, like most castile type soaps, my home-made soap starts getting gummy and delicate (the silicone starts seaping out of the soap, basically) after a week+ of use. So I decided that I’d try this felting business to see (a) if it really works as well as All The Felters keep saying it does (easy lather, handy built-in scrubby, pretty colours, no falling apart…) and (b) if this could potentially be a way of holding the scent of a given soap longer and also making it easy to differentiate between different soaps when they’re on display.
 
Yeah. As mentioned before, I’ve been poking at Ye Olde Crafting Business again. I’ve got a coupon code set to drop on August sixth, and I’m trying to sort out how to make things visually appealing when their main selling point is scent and skin-feel. Felting might be the way to go. (I can see doing my Winter Solstice soap in very dark green accented with whisps of white and turquoise, for example; my Apple Spice in the ambers and scarlets of autumn; and my classic unscented in a mix of undyed brown-and-oatmeal natural rovings).
 
Anyway. I’ve got a PBP13 post to write and another dozen candles to create, so off I go. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.