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Administrator on June 23rd, 2007
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I swore I’d never, ever do it again, but here I am, moving my business again! We have been using every square inch of the area that I’ve been renting for over ten years and there’s just not a speck more of space to be found. Our gift basket inventory has us bursting at the seams, so when a place opened up just down the street with a nice back room that will be perfect for building our gift baskets and a selling floor that’s set up much better than what we have to deal with now, I just had to take it. It almost seemed destined to be.
Of course now, in the midst of the madness of packing whatever we can move while still remaining open, arranging for all the services (telephone, electricity, alarm system, etc.) to be shut down or relocated, getting the new store ready, trying to assure that we will have enough help on hand to move the showcases, shelving units, etc., I almost wish I’d never seen that “For Rent” sign! On top of everything else, I’ve developed a severe case of “sticker shock”. It is astounding what people charge to move a few door switches and an alarm panel or to take a sign down from one building and put it up on another. One of these companies wants to charge $145.00 just to have one of its employees walk into the town hall and pick up a permit (and that doesn’t even include the price of the permit itself)!
Hopefully we’ll be out of crisis mode in a couple of weeks and life will return to some semblance of normality. In the meantime, the veggie garden is being neglected and the insects are having themselves a feast at our expense.
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Administrator on June 5th, 2007
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Finally had a chance last week to get most of my seedlings and seeds into the ground. Unfortunately, sometime during the process I managed to pick up two hitch-hikers —- deer ticks, to be exact. I felt something on my back and grabbed one that was still roaming around. When I asked my husband to check my back, he found another that was already dug in and yanked it out for me. It would have been nice if that had been the end of the story, but within a day the whole area around the bite was red and swollen and it hurt quite a bit. The red area kept enlarging and eventually started to show a faint tell-tale “bull’s eye”.
As of this morning I’m to take two heavy-duty antibiotics every day for a month! Well, that’s a lot better than ending up with full-fledged Lyme disease anyway. If you or someone you care about should be bitten, you might want to check out this site Lyme Disease Association for useful information about tick borne disease. (The content of this page itself is mostly about the association, but the links to the left will provide both text and photos.) Even if you don’t generally work in your yard or walk in the woods, you can get these little devils from your pets.
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Administrator on May 4th, 2007
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Now this is downright embarrassing! I have some great ideas for Mothers’ Day gifts for other people’s moms, but I’m tearing my hair out, trying to come up with a good one for my own Mom!
Since she’ll soon be turning eighty-one, it is getting more and more difficult to find something that she would like that she doesn’t already have a dozen of.
She likes to travel, but refuses to go by herself (even though she usually ends up going on one of those package tours with lots of other elderly people). I wish we could buy her a travel companion, but I haven’t seen any of those up for sale lately.
If anyone out there has a brilliant suggestion, I’d really love to hear it!
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Administrator on April 30th, 2007
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These days I never hear much about the old May Day celebrations, but I do remember that as a child I used to make a May Basket for my mother. I’d either find or make the basket and fill it with wildflowers and/or candy. I don’t remember the part about ringing the doorbell and running away (perhaps because for me “run” seemed to be a synonym for “fall down”), but I do remember that she was supposed to be surprised. Just why she would be surprised every year as the same event occurred, I don’t know!
I’ve never seen a Maypole dance, but after doing a search on Google, found that such celebrations are still being held here and there throughout the world, including at least one college campus in the USA. Here are a few links that you might find of interest: May Day celebration, New Haven, CT , a brief history of May Day celebrations, an English child’s view of May Day.
It’s a bit late to plan on giving someone a May Basket, but don’t forget that Mothers’ Day is looming on the horizon. If you don’t know what to do for your Mom, you might want to take a look at the gift baskets for Mom page on my Silver and Stone website
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Administrator on April 13th, 2007
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Just had another birthday and am having a hard time believing that I could really be that old. Everyone keeps saying
It’s better than the alternative.
and so far that is true!
All in all, it was rather a nice birthday despite the fact that I spent the majority of it working at my store. My husband had the day off from work and prepared a three course meal for us, culminating in a made from scratch Chocolate-Orange Cake with Apricot-Grand Marnier Sauce. Yummy! I’ll have to check with him and see whether or not he used a recipe or if he can remember the amounts of ingredients he used. If possible, I’ll post a recipe for it here soon.
Another nice birthday surprise came when my accountant called, sang me a couple bars of a birthday song and announced that we would be getting a decent tax refund. Alriiiight! Now that’s a present we can both use.
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Administrator on April 3rd, 2007
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The candle making techniques you will find in this article are for use with gel wax. The transparency of the gel makes it an ideal medium for making unique candle creations using embedded objects; however, these objects often create problems of their own.
For safety’s sake, no flammable object should be put near the wick of the candle as it might then become a second “wick” and cause the candle to flare out of control. The exception to this rule would be when wax embeds are used and meant to burn along with the gel, as in the many “fruit tart” and “pie” candles on the market. Special care must be used to keep the gel temperature below 175 degrees when incorporating wax embeds. Pouring gel over the wax at higher temperatures will melt the wax and you’ll end up with a mess of cloudy, “marbled” gel wax.
I recently used wax cherries to make Manhattan candles and found that the best way to achieve the results I wanted was to make the candle using three separate pours. I first filled the martini glass up to about one inch and let the gel cool. After placing the cherry on top of this gel, I poured just enough gel to cover the cherry. Once that was cool, I filled the candle to the top. One of the reasons for doing it this way was so that I could clean up any globs of melted “cherry” that might occur before filling the glass. The second gel layer seemed to protect the embed just in case the final pour might be a little hotter than I’d intended. Using an initial small amount of gel wax can be a good way to get an embedded object at the height that you want.
Other problems that you might find with embedded objects include the production of too many bubbles, discoloration of your gel caused by leaching dyes or paints from the objects, and difficulty in getting the objects placed where you want them. You can sometimes prevent your embeds from generating bubbles by coating them first with gel. Porous items such as wood and shell are likely to form a lot of bubbles as the air held inside their structure is gradually released. I have seen instructions to soak such materials in mineral oil for half an hour prior to using them in gel candles and this makes a lot of sense; however I have yet to try it.
Unless you want your embed to sit at the very bottom of your candle, it is imperative to avoid heavy items. I make “garnishes” for my cocktail candles out of oven-baked clay and nearly pulled my hair out over the clay “cherries” that insisted on disappearing into the depths of the Pina Colada candle. I now make the cherry with a crumpled tinfoil center, thus producing a much lighter object, but have found that even with the lighter garnish, I must use a thin layer of paraffin over the gel to keep the cherry on top of the candle. If you want to have an assortment of items at different levels in your candle, there are a few techniques that you can try. One of the simplest is to glue your items to the glass, but beware the bubbles that generally result! Another way to position items is to secure them with thread before you pour the gel and then to pull on one end of the thread loop once the gel is set. The main problems with this candle making technique are that it is very labor intensive (especially if you are using a lot of embeds) and that the thread leaves a “trail” in the gel as it is removed. The third positioning technique that I have tried is to simply fill the container with multiple pours so that objects can be set at particular levels within the candle. This seems to work well as long as the objects are light weight and heavy density gel is used. You can sometimes see a mark at the point where one layer touches the next, but it doesn’t usually stand out all that much.
Finally, we can’t talk about gel candle making techniques without talking about bubbles! Sometimes we love them and sometimes we hate them, but with gel wax, they’re always around. I have seen some “experts” advise us to pour at the hottest temperature possible to avoid bubbles and I have seen some advise exactly the opposite. In my own experience, a cool pour will produce LOTS of bubbles— exactly what I want in my champagne candles and exactly what I don’t want in a
treasure candle. If you want to avoid bubbles, never use any wooden implement to stir your gel. Although you don’t want to lose a lot of your fragrance by leaving it on the heat too long after you’ve added the fragrance oil to your gel, letting the bubbles caused by stirring dissipate before you pour is a good idea. I’ve noticed that candles made with leftover gel that’s been reheated tend to have fewer bubbles than those poured from a “fresh” batch. Get your ladle or pouring spout as close to the container as possible before you pour if you don’t want bubbles — pouring from a height will tend to churn up your gel and put more air into it.
Okay, despite doing everything right, you still have more bubbles in your candles than you wanted. Now what can you do? If you are making candles without any embeds, you can put your candles, with the wicks still tied or wrapped around their holders, on a cookie sheet and place in a cold oven. Set the oven temperature to 250 degrees F and turn the oven on. Leave candles in for 30 to 45 minutes (you can check on them every so often if the oven door has a glass insert). Turn off oven, check to make sure that your wicks are still in the right place, and leave candles in the oven until completely cool. This candle making technique will not work with candles with embedded objects for obvious reasons, ie wax embeds will melt and make a mess, unsupported embeds will fall to the bottom of the candle, polymer clay embeds will produce yet more bubbles on being heated and may also “craze”. Now for the final way to get rid of unwanted bubbles —- cover your candles to keep out dust and store, making sure to keep them upright and level. That’s it! Over time the bubbles will disappear on their own. If you are planning on giving your candles as gifts or selling them and you don’t want bubbles, just make them up at least a couple of months ahead of time. Of course, this also means that you don’t want to make up an awful lot of candles that look best with lots of bubbles and then just let them sit around or you could end up, for instance, with lots of “flat” champagne candles.
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Administrator on March 21st, 2007
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There are a few things that you should know before you start learning how to make gel candles. The candle gel, which is actually polymerized mineral oil, comes in three different densities; light, medium, and heavy. I would advise you to stay with the medium and heavy varieties as most people want to make scented gel candles. While the medium and heavy density gels can safely hold up to 6% of an appropriate fragrance oil, the light can only take up to 3%. If you try to add more fragrance than the gel can handle, it can separate and the entire top of your candle can ignite, a hazardous situation in more ways than one! You must also be careful that the fragrance you choose has a flash point of more than 170 degrees F. The easiest way to be sure that your fragrance is safe to use with candle gel, especially when you are just learning how to make gel candles, is to buy your fragrance from a source such as Nature’s Garden where the fragrances are all coded for compatibility.
If you wish to embed anything in your candle, the heavy density gel is the best choice. You must also be very careful not to place any flammable items close to the wick of your candle, though it is possible to use some of these items right up against the walls of the container if the candle is wide enough that they will never come in contact with the flame.
Gel candles are usually made in glass containers so that the transparent quality of the gel can be enjoyed. Very thin glass or glass that is heat sensitive, as some colored glasses are, would definitely be unsuitable for this purpose.
In general, it’s best to have a wick for every three to four inches of the candle’s diameter, although there are instances where this would be impractical. Wicks should never be placed too close to the edge of the container (it’s generally best to leave an inch or so of space between the wick and the glass). A wire core wick is the best choice as it is much less likely to “droop” into the candle if the candle remains in storage for long periods of time. Using a wick tab at the bottom helps to anchor your wick and also prevents the wick from burning down too close to the bottom of your container.
You may use either the solid block type of colorant or a liquid color which is compatible with an oil base. Colorants meant for use in soaps and cosmetics cannot be used. It is not a good idea to use crayon shavings or to use an excessive amount of the solid colorant as this can foul the wick and prevent your candle from burning well.
You may melt your gel wax in a regular pot and use a ladle to fill your containers or purchase a special melter with a spout for pouring from a candle supplies company. You will also need a thermometer to monitor the temperature of your gel wax. The type that is used for candy making is just fine for this purpose. You should never let the gel wax get hotter than 300 degrees F and will usually be pouring at much lower temperatures than that.
Cut your wicks a couple of inches or so longer than the depth of your container. The extra wick will be tied to a skewer or other holder which will be placed across the top of the container. This will keep your wick in position until your gel wax sets. If you don’t want a lot of bubbles in your candle, drop your wicks with the wick tabs attached into your melted wax and let them “steep” until no more bubbles come out of them. I use extra long tweezers to pick the wicks out of the hot gel and place them into their containers.
Once your wicks have been placed in the containers, add your colorant to the gel wax and stir it in completely. Pour just a little into the bottom of each container and let set. Now tie (or in the case of wire core wick, wrap) the extra length of wick to a skewer, pencil, or other holder placed on top of the container. Make sure that the wick is straight and in the position that you wish it to be once the candle is finished. Add your fragrance to the gel wax in the pot and make sure that it is completely mixed in. Pour the gel up to the desired height (usually up to a quarter inch from the top of the container), make any needed adjustments to the wicks, and then sit back and let them cool.
Be very careful while handling the hot gel wax. It is possible to burn yourself quite badly as the gel will cling to your skin instead of running off like water would. Keep children and pets away from your working area to avoid accidents.
The above information is a basic guide on how to make gel candles. I will cover finer points (like how to get more or fewer bubbles in your gel) in future articles.
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Administrator on March 12th, 2007
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Last year I posted a picture of the family of wild turkeys that was visiting our yard periodically. I’m amazed that they are all still together. Actually, I’m even more amazed that all but the one who disappeared early on are still alive! They have a well-deserved reputation for stupidity and we have witnessed this particular group doing kamikaze runs across the road. They seem to wait in the underbrush until a car is almost even with their hiding place and then burst out into the road right in front of the vehicle. Of course, where the first one goes, the rest just seem to have to follow. My husband nearly put himself through the windshield trying to avoid hitting them.
The group is now back up to seven, as apparently a male has joined Mom and the kids. It’s hard to tell, as the coloration of the feathers of all of the group looks the same to me, but at least one of this flock has started to act more like a male, fanning its tail and "gobbling". One of them (again, probably a male) apparently took exception to my brother’s car a couple of days ago and chased it part way down the street, yelling its fool head off. According to all of the articles I’ve read, including this one: Wild Turkey, they have full color vision. I guess he must have decided that the bright red color of the car meant that it was challenging him!
Here’s a picture of some of the grown-up wild turkeys, strolling about our yard again. I’ve sometimes seen them inside my veggie garden, but they usually seem to just be eating seeds and I don’t begrudge them as I generally have a lot more than I need.
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Administrator on February 3rd, 2007
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Okay, now that we’ve had a month to recover from the last spate of holidays — here comes another one! Granted, most people don’t get so frantic about Valentine’s Day, but I really wouldn’t want to let it go by without getting a Valentine gift for him Nor would I be terribly thrilled if he forgot to get something for me either! It kind of hurts to be forgotten or taken for granted all the time.
Anyway, my current dilemma is that I haven’t managed to come up with a good idea yet and time’s getting mighty short. All I’ve thought of so far is a new optical mouse for the home computer as our current mouse seems to be have developed Alzheimer’s — poor thing IS pretty elderly. Since we’d all use it though, it wouldn’t really be a present just for him. He got plenty of dark chocolate and port at Yule though, so now where does that leaved me? If anyone’s got a good idea, please leave a comment! This is NOT an invitation to the sellers of online pharmaceuticals, fake Rolex watches, and other comment spammers. Such useless comments will be deleted as usual.
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Administrator on November 29th, 2006
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Anyone who has ever worked in retail will know that this time of year is crucial. This is generally when the profit for the entire year is made, so it’s “make it or break it” time! Since I’ve been in business for just over 21 years, it’s beginning to wear me down. Managing to keep my “brick and mortar” store going, keeping up with the production of my handmade gifts, AND managing to bake all the holiday cookies, fetching and decorating a tree, wrapping presents, etc., etc., etc., is beginning to seem overwhelming. At least I’ve been able to do most of my own holiday shopping on-line this year, which saves a lot of running around time!
I’m assuming that everyone is familiar with “Murphy’s Law” (the perversity of the universe tends to the maximum — otherwise stated as “anything that can go wrong most certainly will!”) I’m a firm believer myself. For instance, since my martini candles have been in demand over the last couple of months, I placed a large order of martini glasses with my glassware supplier. Now, suddenly, there seems to be more interest in the Pirate’s Treasure candles and other drink candles so I need to shift gears, order different glassware, and try to find a few more hours in the day in order to keep up with it all.
Somehow we all seem to muddle through this crazy time one way or another. To all of you who also feel that they are chasing themselves around in circles, stop — take a deep breath, and if at all possible, just take a little time out to be good to yourselves. The holiday madness will be over again soon. I’d like to wish you all a cool Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka, Happy Kwanzaa, or whatever holiday you may be celebrating.