New things, all the time

So, it's been over a month since I've posted. Been very busy with trying to keep up with three Etsy shops so I consolidated my jewelry shop into my yarn shop. Since my jewelry is made using thread and a needle, I figured "The Savvy Stitch" still applied.

I moved twelve items over - some of my nicest bead embroidered work.

This is a lovely Druzy Agate surrounded by fringes made of goldstone and Swarovski crystals.

And here are some beautiful Jade chandelier earrings.














We've also been busy making more soap. Starting to get ready for the holiday season, which seems kind of far away, but not so much. Building up inventory. Found some nice gift-like shipping boxes and some confetti and have drafted up five gift box ideas to cover the range of customers - men and women, in a little bit of a range in prices. I don't know if I'm going to offer gift wrapping or not because I'm not a very good wrapper. :(

 I found some amazing artists in Korea and Taiwan that make these amazing molds for soap and candles. I bought a few and  here are just a couple. It's tricky to get the shapes to come out without bubbles and we aren't always successful.

This woodland Goddess turned out nice though.

 Coco Chanel cream and brown swirled soap with flowers all over it. Very pretty and a large-ish bar.

I made this amazing soap with Rosewood essential oil, strawberry seads, lemon essential oil, and some colloidal oatmeal for good measure. It's smells wonderful! A little patchouli -ish but with that deep rosewood aroma it takes it far beyond what any patchouli can do (I'm not a patchouli fan)








Amidst all this my yarn shop was neglected. BUT, it is now being revived. I placed two orders for a bunch of materials last week and the spinning wheel is out again! I feel that I've got enough soap inventory built up to take a break from that and work on making some new skeins.

This is new, an apricot colored textured yarn made of Leicester Longwool, a very long, slick, strong fleece. I purchased these loose locks from a terrific supplier who prepares her fiber so nicely.

A story for this shawl. I love working with bling fiber art batts. I love the surprise as it comes off the batt and onto the spool on my wheel. I just never know what's next! Well I really enjoyed this one and when I was done and it was yarn, I kind of wanted to keep it. But I've got so much yarn, really Heidi?

So I knit it up into this simple triangle scarf and THEN added some cream fringes to match the white in the shawl, and every here and there I added some Amethyst beads to the fringe. It's hard to see in the photo how awesome this is but I'm really happy with it.

I went ahead and listed it in my shop but if it doesn't go anywhere and winter arrives I might just keep it for myself!

50/50 Merino Silk blend in vibrant colors. Very soft. 

Also going to give a go at making a snood for Applejack, our puppy. I figure I could make him a sweater too but Jim says he'll eat it, so I may have to go commercial for that. If the snood turns out I may offer some of those in my yarn shop.

Cell Phone Cozie and Other Fun Stuff!

My newest creative endeavor has been to make cell phone cozies! I don't know how it all came about, possibly as a branch off of my soap cozies. The first one I made I kept and I LOVE It. It keeps my salt soap and I use it to wash my feet every night; it's like a nightly ritual for me and I so look forward to it.

One of the first soap cozies - 100% cotton yarn - really simple.

Then I thought, geez, I have all these small quantities of handspun bling art yarn that I just love but is too small an amount to make anything out of, other than a skinny scarf with a bunch of them, which I've already made a bunch of, so I made these phone cozies with drawstrings.      



First cell phone cozy =>

Then, I bought some needles and a book and started needle felting flowers and other simple images on them. I really like the dimensionality the felting brings, and I have all the materials already - loose locks, roving, etc. I don't think I'm very good at it yet but I ended up keeping one of these too and the more I take it in and out of my purse the better and better it looks - the motion kind of helps felt everything down :) 

Also just listed two new bars of soap and they are so awesome! This black pepper basil with poppy seeds smells utterly wonderful, if you like spicy. It's a nice white bar and the poppy seeds offer the perfect contrast. 

Then, the uber successful experimental bar - lemon cocoa. We made some lemon mint lip balm and I really like the flavor so I decided to use some lemon essential oil and and cocoa powder in a soap and it turned out amazing! We sprinkled some cocoa powder along the tops of the bars and it looks really pretty, smells really yummy, and it's a great bar of sudsy creamy soap!

Lemon Cocoa Soap!

<= Lemon Mint Lip Balm

Coming up later this month are a washcloth set, a vanilla cocoa soap (another fun experiment with cocoa powder), and a dead sea clay soap for The Savvy Soap. And I think I'm going to spin up some bling fiber into a single ply art yarn. Those always turn out so unique and fun and then I can offer a full skein of all this fun yarn that I make all these little projects with!

Helpful Relevancy Team

I just joined a new team to help with my Search Engine Optimization called The Helpful Relevancy Team. Check them out!

http://helpfulrelevancyteam01.webs.com/ 

New Puppy!

Meet Applejack, the newest member of the family!

Finally some time to chat

Amidst our adventures in making handmade natural soaps, we have managed to enjoy some outdoor time, watching the grass slowly grow and the leaves in the wood behind the house ever so slowly turn, well, not yet green, but thinking about turning green. 

I've managed to eek out some new yarn .... 

This is a lovely 50/50 Merino silk from a roving I purchased from a fiber artist in New Zealand. Beautiful colors, deep purples and super soft. 

I also managed this boldly colored skein in 100% Merino. Usually I turn 100% Merino into a thick and thin because often in the past I have found it difficult to spin, but my skills and knowledge have improved with time and I am able to now spin a nice, consistent strand of single ply Merino.









In between skeins Jim and I have been mad chemists in the kitchen making a new batch of soap about one every other day. I opened my new Etsy shop, The Savvy Soap (how original, I know) and although the shop is not fully stocked, there are racks of soap waiting to complete their curing process so that I can put them up on the site. 

Many favorites ... smells, aromas .... and some that just don't turn out. And then there are some that are really horrible until they finish curing and they are wonderful, like the coffee vanilla Neroli batch that will be finished curing in a couple weeks. Lovely brown color with spots smelled horrid for the first two weeks (and while we were making it). The horrid smell has finally left it and it smells great!

The batch here to the right is made of Moroccan clay and other amazing ingredients formulated for oily skin. I think this would make a fantastic facial bar. Swirled with a natural brown pigment for a lovely effect. 

And then, we discovered BATH BOMBS!!!

Now I want to take a bath every night. They are so amazing! Drop one into the water and it fizzes for a few minutes and then the water is super soft and smells utterly wonderful. Since we tend to goof up about half of each batch - the mixture is resistant to sticking together and tends to therefore get stuck in the mold when I remove it - I have been able to indulge myself. And so has my family. We've all had a bath bomb bath in the last week!

Our bath bombs include Dead Sea Salt, which makes the water feel light and leaves your skin feeling soft, and usually some oils such as olive oil, grapeseed oil, or sweet almond oil, which leaves just a slight silkiness to the skin. So instead of the bath drying out your skin, it moistens it and feels wonderful! 

My yarn shop thus feeling neglected, I spun up some destash bling batts and loose fiber and along with some sari silk crocheted a beautiful fuchsia infinity scarf. 

Please do visit our new shop. And I promise to keep spinning. I still have a pile of roving, including some bling batts and some 15 micron Merino that I will spin into thick and thin (because it's so lovely that way). 

Next in the soap making business is lip balms! Placed an order yesterday and should receive the ingredients mid-week and maybe our first batch will turn out?? 

New Yarn!

Organic Polwarth and Mulberry silk single ply handspun in lovely dusky hues. Sport weight with 402 yards!

I blended blue and pink Cotswold locks with some green Wensleydale for a single ply arty yarn in spring colors. 105 yards of fun curliness!

THE SAVVY SOAP!

The Savvy Stitch will be branching out May 1st, opening a sister store - The Savvy Soap!

Initially we will be offering handmade, natural vegan soaps ....

with tentative plans to branch out into lip balms and lotions later in the year.

Here are our first batches. 

This is a Rose petal infusion with Rose colored clay added along with some old English Rose scent. 

One of our very favorites. The color is a nice, matte rose.

Rose clay is good for a soft detoxification of the skin. 

Himalayan sea salt citrus blend. Heavy spicy citrusy scent. 

Somewhat exfoliating. 

This soap was a bit of a challenge to make. You add the same amount by weight of salt as you do the oils and when the salt is added the mixture turns into a solid in about two seconds, during which time you have to mix it all up and pour into the mold, or else, your finished. 

There are a few chunks of unsalted soap in our salt soap, but overall it really turned out ok. Scent is a little strong but at least it's so lovely. 

 Handmade soaps take 4-6 weeks to cure after the initial preparation, which takes about one hour from start to finish including set up for a small, 8-9 bar batch. Our first two batches are now ready and we have distributed them to all the bathrooms in our home and everyone is raving about them. They can even be used as shampoo (!).

My husband had these scaly patches of dry skin on his tummy and after two days of using the handmade soap the scaly dry patches are gone!

This batch was attempt to make a unisex scent using Vetyver as a sensual base note and a fragrance called Amazon Lilly Rain as a top note. Evidently I overdid something and the bars REEK (IMHO). 

I was telling my 25 year old son about it and he said, "oh, teenage boys love stinky stuff like that, you can market it to teenage boys" so I asked him for a good name for the soap and thus, "Extreme Herbal Musk" was born. My goal is to let parents of teenage boys know about this soap. :)

Other than the smell, it's very pretty. Green tea was used as part of the liquids, giving it a nice, tan color. 

 Just Soap.

This is our first batch. A mixture of Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, sustainable Palm Oil, and Shea Butter. No scent. They turned out beautifully.

Amidst all our happiness and success we did have a fail batch 

that was totally and completely my fault. I don't even know how I

 made such a ridiculous mistake; I calculated the water and 

sodium hydroxide incorrectly and the soap never solidified. 

We went back and added the correct amount of oils, 

but the water was still way off (too too much) and it still didn't solidify. 

So my husband, who evidently struggles with failure in the lab, 

is trying to boil the water out of it today. I think he's finally ready to 

admit defeat and toss our first "fail soap".  

Another favorite - we call this one "Manly ish". 

The company we purchased the raw ingredients from sent a free sample of a fragrance called "Tobacco and Bay". Not being a smoker or a fan of tobacco in any way, I was skeptical to say the least. It's amazing! The scent is absolutely wonderful. I therefore went and did some research on tobacco scent and evidently it is a complex fragrance including citrus and a myriad of other deep notes. 

We used black tea as some of the liquids and then added two tea bag's worth of loose tea to the mix, making the soap turn out spotted. It kind of looks like leopard spots.

This soap also includes Bergamot essential oil (citrus) and a fragrance called "Sea Moss". I like the smell, not as strong as the Extreme Herbal Musk, but still probably in the deodorant-ish soap category.

This is a wonderful Pink Clay bar with a citrus fragrance called "Energy" which is supposed to be uplifting and light. I know I love the smell of it and often find myself picking up a bar and putting it to my nose for a sniff. 

Batches not yet pictured include a Lavender Rosemary conditioning bar - we just cut those bars last night and they are sitting out to complete the curing process. We used essential oils and some ground Rosemary for a creamy, somewhat lightly spotted bar. 

And another unisex maybe men's bar with a Karma blend which is supposed to be very popular. We tossed in a bag of loose Earl Grey tea into that bar so it too is creamy and spotted. 

Tonight we are making a Hawaiian black sea salt bar with Lavender, Ylang Ylang, and Plumeria. Wish us luck, the salt bars are tricky!