Voyaging

We drove out to Langley yesterday to Voyageur Soap & Candle. You know how much I love a shop with supplies for making things, don’t you? They do mostly mail-order business but although the bricks-and-mortar store is kind of hidden in an industrial strip mall, they are very welcoming to walk-in shoppers. Since I much prefer the hands-on experience if I can get it, I beg a ride out there at least once or twice a year. No, it’s not all soap and candles either. If you’ve ever had a hankering to formulate your own shampoo, make-up, nail polish, lip balm, bath bombs, skin care creams and lotions, diffuser oils or the like - this is the place to get the ingredients. And the packaging to put it in too. It’s amazing. If you have no idea where to start, they also offer classes.

So what was I after, you might ask? Apart from my usual pound of organic refined shea butter, I got some Turkey red oil to use perhaps sometime this summer in a Turkey red dye experiment. (I finally found a hopefully functional recipe so more on that when it happens.) Plus I picked up some essential oils to try to formulate a refill for my Saje reed diffuser. The original is their Rain Forest scent and really pricey at $28.95 for 30ml. Helpfully they give you all the ingredients but of course not the proportions! That will be fun to experiment with, huh? I managed to find all the essential oils on the list and (even with the vetiver by far the most expensive at $12.15 for a tiny bottle) it was a lot cheaper for a much larger volume. Now I can play mad scientist. Mwaa-ha-ha!

However, the real reason I wanted to go to Voyageur was to pick up some more jojoba oil and organic beeswax pastilles to combine with the pine rosin I ordered from another company (Voyageur doesn’t carry it) to make some waxed cloth wraps to use to cover containers in the fridge instead of plastic wrap. I experimented a little already:

It works pretty well to stick to the bowl especially if you hold it for awhile with warm hands. The waxing was a bit more fiddly than I expected so I have some more experimenting to do before I pass on the how-to’s. I think maybe slightly lighter fabric would mound better around the bowl too. We’ll see. The cool thing about this is that you can make sizes to fit every container you have. You can also sew little bags and packets for non-wet snacks. You can wash the cloths gently in mild detergent and cool water. If the wax wears off over time you can always re-apply. This is another one of those things where the pre-made store-bought version is much more expensive. I’ve seen them for $18 for a flat set of 3 squares in different sizes.

And now for the OOTD:

Still hanging out with the loom! That’s my Seagreen Seamus Tunic that I just finished last November with a vintage purchased black turtleneck underneath. The pants are my TNT bootcut stretchies in a really nice French terry. They’re actually closer in shade to the naturally-dyed wool sweater than they look in the photo. I wove some more on the blanket today but still the end is not yet nigh. Darn.