April 12, 2003

Not a whole lot of news to report on except a couple of trial recipes and some changes to the site. :) Been busy lately... I finally gave up on writing my own links manager when I found one that did everything I wanted, for free. (Wahoo!) It took me a little while to get it working, but once I did get it, it's been great. So all of the Links and Suppliers stuff is in that, now, and you can vote for your favorite links, and it keeps track of which links are the most popular, and all kinds of stuff. I'm really pleased with it.

So I've got two current big projects for the site now. One is redoing the BBS with a better Forums package which will allow me to have different forums for different topics (one of which I will use to replace the current Recipes pages, so that'll be easier to take care of), and which will allow folks to sign up for a username so they can keep a signature and avatar and stuff on the forum for when they post, and keep track of what stuff they've already read, all kinds of cool stuff. It's by the same software design firm that did the Links package, so it's also free. Yay for people who give their software away to not-for-profit sites for free. :-)

The other project is finally finishing the Book Reviews section I started about six months ago. I just got distracted with the Links stuff and never finished it up. So I've got two reviews up now -- "The Soapmaker's Companion" by Susan Miller Cavitch and "Soap" by Ann Bramson -- and need to put up about another nine or ten. Fortunately I've read them all a million times, so writing the review is pretty much a matter of flipping back through them and reminding myself what I liked and didn't like, so hopefully it won't take another six months to finish.

I also signed up for the Amazon.com Associates program, which lets me put links up here to buy things through Amazon and get a cut of the purchase price. It's a pretty tiny percentage, but it's something. And since the site's traffic has been going up lately, my hosting bills aren't getting any cheaper. :) So that's something to see if I can get anything to defray the costs of running the site. I never want to put banner advertisements up because they're just so ugly, and I don't really want to start asking for donations because I'd probably have to declare that as extra income and deal with bizarro-land income taxes (well, technically, I have to declare any Amazon income as income too, but at least it's all on one form, assuming I ever get more than $10, which is the minimum to have "earned" before they send you a payment). I might end up putting a PayPal donation button up at some point, but I'd prefer not to unless I really need to. At least with Amazon, folks are going to buy books anyways. :)

Tomorrow afternoon I'm headed out to Northwestern University to do a demo and talk about soaping to a group of students who are doing a project. Should be fun, so I'm looking forward to that.

Ok, so on to recipes. :) Whipped shea butter seems to be all the rage at present, and so I succumbed. I made this really delightful blend a week ago that's 2 oz. shea butter, 2 oz. jojoba, a couple of capsules of vitamin E, a smidge of almond FO, and because I couldn't resist, a dash of mica for sparkle. I melted the shea and mixed all the ingredients together with my stick blender. I was expecting something slightly fluffier, but the stick blender didn't come through on that. Now, I really like that blend,it melts as soon as you dab it on your skin, and soaks in really well, but it also seemed to wear off fairly quickly. I wanted to come up with something with a little more staying power. So, for the second experiment, I tried mixing 2 tsp. soy wax, 2 tsp. shea butter, and 2 tsp jojoba, with a little vitamin E and one drop of rose otto (trust me, you don't need more than one drop -- it's strong). That stuff I whipped together with a whisk, and it turned out nice and fluffy. It melts nearly as well -- actually better, since it melts slightly more slowly, so it doesn't melt and slip off of the curve of your arm or whatever -- and is so light and fluffy it's really cool. Also, I think the soy wax did help contribute a little to help it stay on your skin. It's fabulous, so I'm thinking about making that for a swap I'm going to participating in coming up soon. I got these perfect little low-profile jars from Kangaroo Blue for it, too -- they're low and squat, with a 3.5" mouth, so you can just dip in for a little of the cream, without having to dig in like you would into a traditional jar when you started using it up. I just need to figure out how I want the labels to look, and which swap I'm going to make it for. :)