The weather has changed. What was 15°C and sunshine is about 5 °C and grey. “Nature is ready for winter”; I thought when hiking the last mile on Friday. I guess every day without snow is another day with a free lunch for deers and birds. After this year’s long and heavy winter they sure deserved it.

I feel that folks around me are getting ready for winter, too. Marketing folks know about us reaching out for the candles, too.  A lot of cocooning related ads, folks nestling down in beds. The weather lady, too. She warned us of rain on Saturday and recommended staying in bed on Sunday.

Well.

My winter mood shows more in other activities. And as I have to work on a large (like really large) order: I will spend my next days inside, with bottles and boxes. And: We successfully entered Kimchi making groove (love this stuff! right now a bowl with it is getting ready and ferments on the balcony), bread baking (think loooooooooong predough), and ordering fragrant material. I got more rose Carbondioxide extract from Bulgaria (Rosa damascena). This material IS expensive (think 6000 $ a kg), priced somewhere in between rose oil and rose absolute. It is less rich in Phenylethanol, the major constituent of rose absolue, but contains a lot of molecules that you find in rose oil and is quite waxy. In a sense, it comes very close to the natural rose, closer actually  than a rose concrète (the stuff an absolute is made from). To be honest: I have not really made my mind up what to get done with the rose CO2. It is not easy to work with. A soap might be interesting, though. Think: Really luxurious. Really. Luxurious.

Today’s picture: red leaves on a autumn twig, scanned Saturday, before the rain.

So many things happening these days! I have another video for you: Packing the soaps into paper (after having wrapped them in cellophane foil)

Today we finish the first round of 400 soaps. 400 more to go. While packing them I will use the meditative groove to think perfumes.  I will have to have a look at the linden blossom trial. I feel I need to adjust a little bit there. And I want to have a look at the cologne: The one that is matured and diluted, that I called “COLOGNE DU MAGHREB”, a cologne with a woody base, looking good to me so far: I features lines of cedar wood from Morocco, hints of ambrein and cistus and a fine line of vetiver. I looked at the formula yesterday: 19 ingredients. Quite complex already. Among them also rose absolute from Morocco, Petitgrain from Morocco, Neroli from Tunesia, Orange blossom absolute from Egypt … I mentioned it before: This cologne trial is all natural/botanical. And it feels ok that way, no need to add any synthetics there. With this formula in mind, I want to play on the cologne with a sandalwood /rose lines in the background. To be honest: I do not know where I am heading there, but I love doing it, so I do it.

And here is the video. Enjoy…

More on the happy, meditative, nirvana (almost more mandarines scent than you can deal with) inducing soap making: Including a little video showing you two hands and a pile of soaps being packed into cellophane foil.

We sort of improved our pouring process, and the W.-factor built two frames for pouring the soap into. Thus, we can easily make 100 soaps a day on the side. Wrapping them, however, takes a bit longer, because we wrap them first into cellophane foil, then into paper, then into a bag and then we put a sticker on them. The first process step you see below: Wrapping into foil.

By the way: The soaps cannot be bought, we make them for an apothecary where folks will get them as gifts, and these hands are mine.

Enjoy!

Yesterday, we packed a few more soaps, in my little room with a view, and a blue sky with a gentle October sun shining outside into trees in golden fire. When the sun shines into the piles of soaps, cut and ready for their cellophane-wrap and the paper wrap and the PP-bag, then the soaps start to gleam and shine in an all natural gold. The color comes from the essential oils of mandarine and clementine. And as I use a lot, a very lot of these oils, these soaps get a lovely natural color. (that’s we call them mandarines ambrées, by the way)

Before you switch into soap excitement mode, though: These soaps are a gift that a Zurich apothecary makes to his clients at the end of the year. We will not sell it.Yet.

We got the first 150 or so done and packed. But as the pouring and cutting is a bit slow, the W.-factor, quite artfully builds a soap pouring frame and my brother who works in glass produces a glass plate going into the frame to pour the soaps onto. We shall go into heavy duty pouring and cutting and wrapping mode next week. Actually, on a side note: For the frame we visited a local do it yourself shop thing. A shopping tour that I always love. It is such a down to earth environment, no fancy bling bling, but a lot of guys and girls checking out tools and machines and some of the machines are really big and the guys and girls are really butch, although I do not know whether a girl can be called butch. Well, I  guess we loose topic here.

Besides thinking about shades of green, outside of any eau de cologne context by the way, I engage into more textual work over the weekend, writing open letters and stuff.  Thus, stay tuned and visit us again next week. Finally, for those familiar with Spanish: Here’s a lovely take on the ROSE VERMEILLE on a Spanish blog called SHIMMU. Click here.

And here are my best wishes for your weekend, enjoy!

Yesterday was Sunday, and I used the opportunity of a a grey post-jogging Sunday afternoon to run the first series of 50 soaps: To see how long it takes and to make sure that there is enough time. You remember? I have made a deal with a local apothecary and provide them with 800 scented glycerin soaps, called “MANDARINES AMBRÉES”,   a lush rich citrus scent with a hint of ambergris, as a give-away for X-mas for their clients. Thus, we are sitting here with our 100 kg of soap…

In a sense the scent of the soap, together with the orange blossom core in  “eau d’épices”, is the mother of the fragrance “orange star”. Anyhow.

We made 45 soaps yesterday, poured them, cut them into 6×8 cm, 100 gr. pieces, wrapped them in cellophane plastic, wrapped them into printed, prefolded paper, stick them into a polypropylene bag, and seal it with a lot number. Sounds like an effort? Yes, it is. A bit.

But then, I think, it is a great marketing tool and a test run for the soaps again, with a clientèle that has not heard and sniffed a “tauer” before.

And, as we promised to have the soaps ready in a month: You will see me wrapping soap quite frequently these days. And -no kidding!- it is quality time, allowing me to do some serious thinking on a few scents in experimental state. Like the perfume built around Linden blossom, discussed yesterday on Nathan’s blog.

To celebrate the first 45 soaps: I pick (with random.org) a winner of one of the these freshly packed soaps, in the coming days from the comments in this post. If you wish to enter the draw: Just leave a comment here, on this post. If you are the lucky winner, we will contact you by e-mail (you maycheck our privacy section for any question about your privacy, click here). This draw is open…

This draw is closed now (20.10.2010). Thank you to all who participated. The winner is Kelly (4h…@..). Congratulations to you!

today’s picture: a look into the box with the packed soaps.

We are entering in full last minute preparation mode these minutes: Pitti Fragranze is ante portas, and on Thursday we hit the train to Florence (hence the picture, although the train in the photo is the Bernina express train, seen 10 days ago).  In order to get into the Italian grove we went to the movies yesterday and watched “mine vaganti (click here for the trailer)” . Not the average Italian family, though. But it was good entertainment and distraction from boxing and packing.

The next two days see us making more stock , and getting ready for the days after Pitti. Then, we will engage into soap making mode, as I got an order for my X-mas soap that -my efforts paid- ends up as X-mas for a Zurich pharmacy. I consider it a test ground for my capacity in soap scenting and pouring (how many can we possibly make in a day?), and I hope it will turn into a cool marketing return for the brand, and a nice X-mas gift of the pharmacy for its top clients.

They have a lot of clients.

We need to get 100 kg soap and do so today.