Sleepless Nights

The come down after a big event is rough. Both mental, and physical. You spend so much time in a heightened sense of panic beforehand – prepping, labelling, packaging, remembering and forgetting things every hour – that the return home is more of a collapse than anything else.

Bushfest was great. But it came on the tail end of making a huge amount of soap for wholesale clients (YOU GUYS ROCK), and keeping all of their orders straight in my head, making sure I had quantities enough for what everyone requested — and look, I use a lot of lists. I have my wholesale order lists pinned where I can see them and mark everything off. But I also have ADHD, and it is A LOT OF EVERYTHING to keep running smoothly.

The relief I felt when my biggest order was delivered was palpable. The next two orders to go out felt like rocks being lifted off my shoulders. Now there’s only a measly 20 bars of soap waiting for collection, and I am DONE for the XMAS wholesale rush.

We have one market to go (Hobart Handmade Makers Market – 14th December, 10am – 3pm – Lindisfarne North Primary School, Geilston Bay) and then I might be able to breathe again. HHMM is one of my absolute favourites however, so it’s always a good day.

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On Sunday, during Bushfest, the MC was walking around, interviewing stallholders. He walked past me three or four times during the day, mostly when I wasn’t busy, and dismissed our stall as unimportant.

It got me thinking about the worth we place on businesses run by and ostensibly for, female-presenting-people.

Soap is for everyone. At the very least, every single person should use some sort of product to clean their bodies. Obviously I am a fan of soap rather than shower gel, but everyone showers, everyone uses things to clean themselves.

And yet, my entire business is seen as “for the women”, and frequently sneered at when I’m attending events that are either ungendered, or geared towards men. It’s a bit disconcerting to be dismissed as unimportant because our business revolves around soap and skincare.

But it happens. All. Of. The Time.

Women’s things (businesses, hobbies, luxuries) are considered less important. Because our soap smells nice, and looks amazing (if I do say so myself), it isn’t considered practical enough, or blokey enough to take seriously.

I grew up in the bush, fairly close to off grid. I helped cut and split wood, light fires, debark trees, build our house. I also learned to cook, and kill and clean animals. I’m fairly proficient at a number of activities, none of which I’d really consider gendered.

All of this is to say, I’m fairly comfortable at an event like Bushfest. I’m fluent in the language of rural life.

And yet, there we were. Dismissed as being “for the girls”.

I wasn’t interviewed all weekend. No on-air promotion for the soap stall. And it shouldn’t rankle, because honestly, I had amazing customers of all genders, all weekend. The people who buy our soap ROCK. And we sold a lot of hand cream to all kinds of people – nurses, concreters, cooks, plasterers and bushmen. Because taking care of your skin and your hygiene should not be a gendered thing.

But there you go. Gender is a construct and the sooner we start to break down the walls of what people are allowed to enjoy, the better. Not just for my business (everyone deserves good soap in a smell they love), but in general.

Please don’t think this is a complaint about Bushfest in general – the event was excellently organised, and always very well run. But it’s always interesting to pay attention to the demographic of an event, and how that impacts our interactions throughout the day.

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I spent all week watching the weather forecast. Clicking, repeatedly on Saturday in Bothwell, hoping that the forecast would change.

But no. There it was. “Winds: 40kmph. Occasional showers…”

“We can cancel if we need to…” I said. “If it’s awful when we get there, we can just come home…”

Highlands Bushfest is on every year at Bothwell, a lovely initiative by the Central Highlands Council to get more people to the town – even if it’s only for a weekend.

And there we were, booked as stallholders, with ridiculous wind forecast. Nothing fucks a marquee faster than wind, and we were still considering going.

All the sentiments in the world – we can just leave if its too bad – ignores how hard it actually is, both to set up and pack down an event. Let alone to do those things in the middle of Weather. And in any case, spoiler alert: We Did Not Leave.

Even when we looked at the marquee, with its walls bowing and twisting, and made the decision to pull down the walls, letting the wind rush through, we did not leave. Even when we knew that the roof had to come off if we had any hope of saving the marquee bones itself. We did not go home.

Mum – Kim Foale Ceramics – stood there and served customers as I wrestled down the walls. She held the marquee at its centre to stop it moving, and hoped for the best, as the customers were three deep, seemingly oblivious to the fact I was trying to prevent sure disaster (a broken marquee is both dangerous and expensive).

And so I ripped the walls down, and took the roof off ON MY OWN, which is no mean feat with wind gusts of 80kmph and a roaring gale rushing through. While husbands of customers watched, and women shopped, and I did not hit anyone in the face with my marquee roof, and my marquee did not break and bow and bend and smash into all the brand new display cars parked opposite me.

Afterwards, when we spoke to other stallholders, this was a common theme. A few marquees broke, a few lost their roof canvas, a few buckled entirely, shattered and broken. And still the people wanted to buy things in the middle of disaster.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful for how well we did – but I dislocated my shoulder and collarbone, popped them back in, and still took my roof and sides off while people watched like I was the entertainment of the weekend.

We worked the rest of the day under a naked marquee frame, in the roaring wind. A running joke: “You lost your roof didya?” Laugh. Slightly less funny: “No, we took it off before everything broke.”

Oh. The two women working alone: Sensible. Surprising. Also: Lucky – some other marquees buckled a lot faster than ours did, leaving their owners no choice in the matter.

I am still incredibly windburned. So windburned.

It was an excellent weekend, wind notwithstanding. I enjoy talking to locals, and country women are my favourite women. (Sorry everyone else)

But: The comedown after a big weekend event is intense. We traded both days, and today, while I’m exhausted, I’m also twitchy and feeling like I ought to be doing more than writing a blog post and adding progressively more moisturiser to my windburned cheeks. After the intensity of the weekend and the work, to be home today feels odd. Not bad, just odd.

Markets are a particular kind of hard work. I tell people “I worked a market this weekend and I am exhausted” and I’m not sure they really understand just how exhausting it can be.

But! Wind aside. We had an excellent weekend.

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It’s almost Christmas.

Well no, that’s a lie. But when you’re a soap maker and everything you make has to be planned and prepped 8 weeks in advance to allow for making/cutting/curing/packaging, then Christmas is not far away.

I’ve just let my wholesale clients know that they only have a week until the cut off for Christmas orders, and even then I’m going to be pushing it – I’ve got orders in the works for 20+ varieties of soap right now, and I’m frantically making so everything is cured and ready before the end of November, and also so we don’t run out of stock right as we have our own Christmas rush and markets.

Our studio has been open to the public every Friday and Saturday (where possible), and people are slowly starting to drop in and pick up soap in person. It’s very cool, and I will still admit to being excited every single time we have a car stop.

It’s a chaos time of year, made trickier by a number of Paed appointments, as well as school performances, and various other things my kids absolutely need me in attendance for. Paed appointments wipe me out for 2 days – the combination of physical and mental energy it takes to prepare, then the effort of getting into the city, and then recovery. It’s not my favourite. But we’re slowly sorting out a few issues which needed working on – Amy has a shiny new ADHD diagnosis FINALLY, and she is trialling medication to help.

At this rate, I won’t be hatching any quail until the summer holidays. I’m just not sure how I would actually find the time to look after brooder babies right now. Maybe it will seem calmer in November when I think about setting eggs. Maybe.

We have 8 baby chickens on the ground right now – thankfully being raised by their mothers, and another two hens just went broody and have been given two eggs each. I guess if we end up with a ridiculous amount of poultry we can always sell them like we do with the roosters.

I keep reminding myself that it will all be okay – working steadily will see all the orders ready and curing, and as long as I don’t exhaust myself too badly, it should be okay. It is the end of Term 3 however, and I think we’re all running on empty. One more week until school holidays and sleep ins, but at least we’re not waking up in the dark anymore. The fruit trees are flowering, the sun is (mostly) shining, and if they’re predicting snow to 600m tonight, well. I can always ignore that. (We’re at about 220m).

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As a soap maker, I work with essential oils a lot. Part of my job is to handle hazardous chemicals in a safe manner, and use them (SAFELY) to make amazing products with correct dilution rates.

Fragrances, Essential Oils, and Caustic Soda are all part of my job, and all are hazardous to human health in their raw states. This goes with the territory of bath and body products, so we have a lot of personal protective equipment, and we try not to injure ourselves.

Last week I was bringing freshly washed utensils back to the studio (we don’t have running water out there yet, so I wash up inside the house and spend a lot of time carrying buckets of things backwards and forwards.) Anyway, I noticed one of my spatulas was damp around its join, so I dried it with a paper towel, before pulling the spatula head off to dry it properly.

Big mistake.

It wasn’t filled with cold soapy water, it was filled with lye water, which I flicked up the back of my hand and all over my work space. You see, Betty Crocker spatulas, which are usually amazing for soap making, have removable heads, which is frankly a shitty design, and this one had previously been used to stir lye, not soap.

I was not expecting lye water to flick everywhere, obviously. I was not expecting my spatula to be full of caustic liquid still – not when it had been washed twice, and I was sure I’d taken the head off it and rinsed it. Obviously not.

I washed my hands and arms well with lots of cold water, cleaned up my work space, and was all good. No burns, because I knew what I was doing to clean up the mistake. I will not be using those spatulas to stir lye again.

Essential oils are frequently touted as “totally safe, made by nature, omg amazeballs!” But they can be just as dangerous as unexpected caustic soda flicking everywhere, although MLM resellers will frequently not mention that bit. I use gloves when I work with essential oils and fragrances, which is both best manufacturing practise, and a sign of respect for my lovely unburned skin.

I made bath salts today – all essential oils. My joints are playing up, so I elected to mix the salts in my stand mixer, rather than mixing by hand. Why have good tools if you don’t use them?

Bath salts are amazing. We don’t use more than 1% fragrance load in a batch of salts, which makes them safe and gorgeous smelling. When diluted in a bath they smell wonderful, and carry close to zero risk of injury because they dilute into the water. I say close to zero risk, because life is not a zero risk game and someone is always going to be allergic to something.

I have made a lot of bath salts, and know that I frequently end up with a fragrance headache at the end of making, so I had two doors open – one at either end of the shed. I was wearing gloves. I was well ventilated, I was geared up. I was careful.

What I did not count on was how the stand mixer would be much more effective at dispersing the initial load of essential oil within the salts mix, which in turn, managed to send microscopic bits of essential oil coated salt into the air around me, which I breathed in. Do. Not. Recommend.
Salts are safe, once they’re mixed, but the initial minute of mixing, when the essential oil is clumping still, and nothing is uniform? That’s where my problem was.

I was working with tiny amounts of essential oil, well diluted, safely measured. And I still managed to fill my mouth and nose with tiny bits of oil, which made me sneeze and itch and have now given me a sore throat.

THIS is why anyone with an ounce of sense asks you to not drink essential oils. THIS is why we practise good safety when making lotions, or creams, or scenting soap. This is also why I will be buying myself a very nice breathing mask at the hardware store, because it turns out, even all the sensible safety precautions may not be enough.

Now I was working with fairly human safe essential oils in the scheme of things. I’m pretty sure it was the lemon myrtle I breathed in, but the lavender has also given me a headache. Once I realised what was happening I irrigated my eyes and nose, and rinsed my throat with coconut oil to dilute the oils.

I am still going to have to wear the consequences of basically poisoning myself for the next few days, and I will not be making salts without a breathing mask again.

This is why we bang on about essential oils and safety. Just because essential oils come from nature, it does not make them perfectly safe. They are highly concentrated volatile chemicals and I urge you to be safe about using them. Research your oils – and listen to experts who do not work for MLM companies. Lots of things are safe at tiny doses, and toxic in slightly higher doses.

Learn from my mistake, because honestly, what’s the use of making mistakes if we can’t all learn from them?

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