First

Made it to London, and to Trafalgar Square and seen the plinth for the first time.

I have seen a few of the other plinthers in action at various points during the day, who all seemed to have attracted a fair crowd. Had a nice chat with a couple from North London (a writer for The Bill & Midsommer Murders and a sculptress) who had come to see what it is all about.

Also been to the Science Museum (spotted another Antony Gormley sculpture) and for tea at Hard Rock Cafe.

Feeling quite nervous now, less than 12 hours to go and hoping for good weather so I can make the bath bombs. Now in my hotel room
wrapping some soap samples to give away .

Dave had hoped to update our website with details of what I am doing, but alas our web site can't be updated from the i phone. I will put some more details of my master plan on here later, hopefully people will find it and understand what is going on.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed and left blog comments wishing me luck, it's what I need at the moment.

You're fired!

Just watched The Apprentice which this week had the two teams making soap and was absolutely facinating from the perspective of a soapmaker.

Everything they had to do was instantly recognisable as we've been through every single one many times over. It was also interesting that a lot of essential parts of the process were missed out, but I suppose that's TV and back up from a huge manufacturer, e.g. there was no sign of product certification being carried out.

I must admit that I was encouraged by the many disasters which befell the teams, it gave a bit of perspective to the difficulties we have to go through to get everything to come together.

I won't relive the whole programme but the best bits from the perspective of a soapmaker were.

*One team marketing their soap as 'in touch with nature' but stamping on crabs while collecting seaweed to put in it.

*The other team thinking a lump of honeycomb with the honey dripping out makes a nice addition to a bar of soap.

*Costing products without including the cost of your employees, large factory etc.

*Agressive selling is as ugly on TV as it is in the real world, - and that's why we don't do it.

*Essential oils are expensive, some are very expensive! You need to know that before you add them to your product.

The choices the teams made for their products was also interesting as they were similar to some we make at Barony, although ours are far superior even if I do say so myself.

Our Soothing Honey and Oatmeal bar has the honey thoroughly mixed in so that it doesn't drip on the floor and is soothing on the skin. Although we don't collect our own honey we do get it from a local beekeeper.

Our Soothing Honey & Oatmeal Soap

We also have a bar containing seaweed (All Along The Foreshore) which has lots of minerals which are good for the skin.

Our All Along The Foreshore - Seaweed Soap

Our Sandalwood Soap contains a sandalwood fragrance rather than essential oil. One reason is the cost as highlighted in the show. The other is that good quality sandalwood essential oil is extracted from trees that are at least 50 - 80 years old and concerns have been raised that over extraction to meet demand is badly damaging a lot of trees. Why would anyone want to contribute to damaging these trees when you can choose a cosmetic copy and get the same scent?

I won't be seeking any business advice from the apprentices any time soon, but I am considering applying for next years show ;)

Wrapped & Packed

I told you all on Friday that my task for the day was to wrap and pack all the soap for the weekends stall. Well, here it is...wrapped & packed.

I love the sight of it all ready to go, all neat and in order. This box is holding approx 24kg of fine handmade Barony Soap. We usually take 2 or 3 boxes like this to market, more if it's a large show. This doesn't include all the stall build up stuff (stall table, cordless drill, duck tape, strong clamps, string etc).

I was a delicate little flower before I started having to humf this lot around (who am I kidding?). I probably got a very good training for lifting huge, heavy, ungainly boxes from my time working in the Virgin record store in Perth (oh, my yoof!). A tray-box full of CDs is not so heavy when you just lift it but by the time you have carried it from the stock room, down two flights of stairs, through a shop full of people and deliver it to its destination... now that's heavy. It's much the same with soap. I don't have rock hard biceps but I can fairly tackle a stuck top on a jar of pickles!