Artisan lifestyle, handmade soap and life melting jobs.

Working sucks!  Just thought I would get that out of the way.
So, garden is doing great. The tomatoes that got a good start in the cold frame are 5 ft high  and  gloriously tomatoe-y.

The results of our unusually cool spring and early summer?.... We are getting our asses kicked by  broccoli.  We have so much broccoli right now we cant  keep up. Trying to figure out a way to preserve it without  ruining it.  Neither canning nor freezing sounds appealing. Like my broccoli steamed   and smothered with butter.
I wanted to make  old fashioned lye soap this summer but I don't have the time.  Any soap makers out there with a batch of   cinnamon soap they would like to trade for?  My usual supplier isn't coming through and I only have a couple of bars left. Jimmy suggested we just BUY some cheap commercial soap .... Which brought up a childhood trauma  that I will now relate... which has colored my whole life.  When I was 8 years old I had a bad habit of leaving the soap in the bathtub   which resulted in it dissolving faster.   After many admonishments from my parents,  my father ....none to  gently.. explained to me that he had to work fifteen minutes to make enough money to buy that soap and every time I left it in the tub I was melting away fifteen minutes of his life.  Being young and impressionable and of artistic bent, you can imagine the imagery I associated with his  metaphor.  Since then my association of time and money has been skewed with death,premature aging and biological impossibilities which would make any sci-fi writer smile.  Aaaannnd... soap is always a trigger which makes me cringe.  So, the end result is that I always try to make sure I like what I am doing so purchases don't 'melt' away my life.  The only time the images pop up is when I am doing a job I don't like.... like.... right now.   So, I would rather trade someone soap for something I enjoyed doing so I don't feel resentful toward our cultural obsession with cleanliness.