Back in midwinter, I posted a picture of my new, very beautiful fruit bowl – a Yule gift – filled with winter fruit – oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, grapefruit. Back in midwinter, I posted a picture of my new, very beautiful fruit bowl – a Yule gift – filled with winter fruit – oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, grapefruit.
Back in June, I posted a picture of my new very beautiful Yule gift of this fruit bowl, filled with mid-winter fruit. Now it is strawberries and pawpaws in my part of the world. They make my very favourite breakfast smoothie. (Maybe I lie there. I have many favourites).
I’ve never been huge on growing flowers before. A nice fertile bit of soil and a choice of what to plant in it and an edible has nearly always won out.
I love having a craft activity in my life. Simple, repetitive, meditative hand work. Knitting or hand-sewing or embroidery, whittling or sanding or carving, painting or potting or mosaic. You hear so much of how healthy it is to do daily meditation, but I don’t have the self discipline for it. Life beckons from too many places.
I make soap every year around this time so it is cured in time for Christmas. It makes a gorgeous present – just enough luxury to be special, just enough everyday usefulness to be used, and no tacky consumerism. And getting it all done this early in a lovely social morning is shopping heaven.
This year’s soap is made and maturing in the cupboard, hopefully safe from the mice who think it is literally good enough to eat. It will go whiter as it matures, and by Christmas it will be hard, white, fine grained soap with a nice clean smell and good bubbles. So nice to have so much of my Christmas shopping done already!
I make soap once a year, in time to give it away as Christmas presents. I truly hate the commercialisation of Christmas. Unless I can do handmade presents I feel really yucky and conned by the whole thing. But homemade vegetable oil soap is so luxurious that it makes a great present.
There is a little bit of science to this.