Drachenwald A&S Exchange - Received

I've now obtained permission, and have updated my previous post with the name of the recipient of my A&S gift. And having made my gift for the exchange, you may wonder what it is that I received.

My gift was made by Lady Ameline de Leeuwe; two beautiful hand dyed skeins of merino fibre for spinning. Yes, I've taken two pictures here, the one on the left with flash, but it's necessary to show off the wealth of colours in the fleece. The linen bag to hold the fleece and my spindle, is embroidered with yarn that was itself spun and hand dyed! The stitches are so soft and even it's almost impossible to stop stroking them.

Thanks to an outbreak of Real Life, it actually took me a week after I'd received my gift to take pictures to share on the Drachenwald A&S exchange group, but I actually started spinning with it right away. It's coming together so lovely and fine, I don't think I've been able to spin this evenly before. Just goes to show the quality of the product ;)

Tokens and gifts

I've been wondering a while what I could give out as tokens. I wanted something handmade, something that reflected something of myself, but something that was still easy enough to turn out. Inspired by tokens I'd seen through the year, I settled on hand made soap and wash cloths.
 

The pattern for the wash cloths I found as a free pattern on Ravelry, and made up six from a single ball of DK cotton yarn.Then I was delighted to have an excuse to get my soap making supplies out, given that it's been so long since I've made any. My first batch didn't turn out so well. I tried making a chamomile soap, but I used the wrong oil in my calculations and ended up with a lye heavy batch. I managed to save this by rebatching, but rebatched soap never turns out as pretty, so I'm hesitant to give this away as gifts.

 

For my second (and third) attempts, I picked up some silicon molds so I could make up pretty hand sized soaps. I made up two 500g batches this time, a rose scented goats milk soap in rose shaped molds, and then an almond milk soap with almond scent and ground almonds for added scrubbiness, made up in star shaped molds.
 

So that's twenty-four soaps and several wash cloths still to be made up. With a few given away already, that'll keep me going until I get indecisve about my tokens again. 

How to say you care

Like many people, there are times when I'm lousy at keeping in contact with people. I'm not very good with keeping birthdays either. I tend to miss birthday, but occasionally give random gifts to people, because it occurs to me to make something they might like.

On this occasion, I made a Tree of Life pendant, using this tutorial, from Miscellanea Etcetera.


I used a 1mm gold wire for the outline, and 0.6mm gold wire for the branches. In hindsight, this was a little too thick for my inexperienced fingers to manipulate easily, but it still came out well I think. The stones I used were amethyst, rose quartz and mother of pearl chips.


Now, I'm a bit of a perfectionist at the best of times, but the lack of a perfect circle in the finished pendant above? Doesn't actually bother me. There was something so wonderfully relaxing about this project, it didn't feel like it could go wrong, every chip placed was where it was supposed to be, and no other pendant ('cos I'm sitting on a few more ideas) will ever be the same as this one. And that's wonderful.


But this was the first, and this one was made with a special person in mind. To let them know how much they mean to me, and how much I've been thinking of them, even if I haven't been in contact.

I actually delivered this pendant in person today, an extra touch I wasn't expecting. I didn't say all that I could have said; there was other company present, and the words probably would have gotten caught at my teeth anyway. But I think its new owner likes it, and maybe it, with this post, has said what I couldn't say out loud.

The wrapping, baking and mixing is complete, meaning I'm as prepared for Christmas as I'm gonna be. As money and ideas for presents were short this year, I turned to some home made ideas for people who I knew would appreciate them.

Part of these gifts were a series of body-scrubbies, destined for different persons.And here's how I made them:

Orange & Lavender Sugar Scrub

-350g white sugar
-Zest of half an orange (if your orange is small, use the whole orange. The one I was using was huge!)
-1-2 tablespoons fresh lavender flowers
-20 drops lavender essential oil
-15 drops orange essential oil
-25mls almond oil
-100mls olive oil

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Add the essential oils to the almond and olive oils and mix - this helps distribute the scent evenly. Add the oils to the dry ingredients, mix well, then spoon into a jar of your choice.

Orange & Cinnamon Sugar Scrub

-350g soft dark brown sugar
-Zest of half an orange (yep, the other half)
-15 drops orange essential oil
-3-4ml ground cinnamon
-2ml ground ginger
-25mls almond oil
-75mls olive oil

Mix the ingredients together as above for the other sugar scrub.This recipe uses less oil as brown sugar usually contains more moisture that the more processed white sugar. Be careful not to overdo the spices if you decide to add more than I have listed above, as too much ground spice can act as a skin irritant.

When I had finished these scrubs, I cut the orange into thick rings and placed the rings into my fan oven at 100oC for over an hour to dry them out. When they cooled down they were still a little sticky, but also begining to singe at the edges. I used slices of these to decorate the jars as above, with a cinnamon stick on the brown sugar scrub and a couple of sprigs of lavender on the white sugar scrub.

Peppermint Salt Foot Scrub

-200g salt
-1g finely grated cocoa butter
-40 drops peppermint oil
-25ml olive oil

Mix the ingredients as above for the sugar scrubs.



A note about the cocoa butter - this was really arkward to measure. I grated the cocoa butter with a tiny little grater, so the fine little curls caught a lot of air. The pile in the picture to the right just about tipped the scale at 1g, so this is what I've included with the recipe. I felt it was just enough to add a little extra luxury to the mixture, but you can add more of less as you like.



All of the jars above came from my local Ikea. The scrubs I made are just moist, which is the way I prefer my scrubs. If you prefer a wetter mix, just add more oils. I used a mix of olive and almond oils as I find pure olive oil too heavy on my skin, but experiment to find the mix that's right for you! Jojoba and castor oils are other good oils for skin care, but really there's no limit.