Lather

Today I stood on the shore of the magnificent Pacific Ocean, near the North West tip of the beautiful San Francisco Peninsula, and watched the waves rolling in.  The sun was getting low in the sky and the wind was blowing on shore.  It was cool enough for a jacket but very pleasant.  I love the ocean and I love San Francisco.  It was a very nice evening.

I was planning on posting today about how much I love soap lather so I laughed out loud when the sea rolled in and produced a wide band of yucky sea foam at my feet.  It looks a lot like lather, but for some reason, one is gross and the other is wonderful.

It’s been a few years since I stood on the shore of the ocean.  I think the last time was during a big storm while we were vacationing north of the Bay Area.  The wind had whipped the waves up into angry, frothing piles of water, crashing down, one upon another.  As wave after wave slid off the beach, back into the boiling sea, huge lathery piles of sea foam stayed behind.  The wind hurled and rolled the foam in large chunks across the sand. 

I don’t like foam.  I do like lather. 

I like the clean feeling a good layer of lather produces. 

I like shaving away a beard of lathery whiskers.

I like it when a bar of soap easily bubbles up and covers my hands in thick, white cream. 


And while I stood today, contemplating the beauty of soap lather, and the ocean, a sandy shoreline, and a sky filled with the setting sun, a big wave swept silently up the beach, and deposited a healthy portion of foamy sea water on my new shoes.

Antique Soap

This past week, I saw a traveling display of old cleaning products and tools.  Included were 100 year old hand pump vacuums, antique roller sweepers that collected dirt inside the base as you pushed them along, an 80 year old predecessor to the dust buster, and one of my favorites, a wooden dust pan with curved, decorative molding around the outside edges and back.  In our day of disposable everything and  made out of plastic, these tools were out of place not only by their designs and style, but also by their durability and high quality. 

One of the other sections that caught my attention was the soap section; antique soap with various grating and sudsing tools.  Sorry, my camera died so I was forced to take a picture in a dark room with my flashless phone. 

Later, I talked to the owner of the display for a few minutes.  He told me about his larger collection back home that included tons of other stuff, including large, round chunks of 120 year old soap.  He was pretty proud of them.  He said they were made from animal fat and lye.  He told me that twice.  He said they came out of Russia.  He also said that twice. 

He told me about a big, interactive museum he is building to display his collection in.  He talked about having stations where people could touch, smell and use different soaps.  He even talked about the possibility of people making soaps there.  He kind of lost me there since making soap is a little dangerous and time consuming for the typical museum goer. 

Then he brought me right back into the conversation when he started talking about us making soaps with his logo so he could sell them in his gift shop.  

Now that’s a fantastic idea!

Collections

Yesterday’s post reminded me of something from my grandparent’s old house.  They lived there for the first 32 years of my life.  I have a picture of my mom as a teenager, standing in front of that house.  The ‘For Sale’ sign is still stuck in the ground in the front yard. 

One of the two finest photos my grandpa ever took was taken there, possibly that same day.  In black and white, it shows the six oldest of their seven children.  My youngest aunt wasn’t even born yet.  My youngest uncle is toddling toward his photographer dad, while the other kids stand at varying distances from the camera.  The composition is astounding.

Years later, one of my cousins and I would playfully argue about the house and which of us would own it one day.  I always loved that house, but I think she would have won the fight. 

Turns out, someone else got there first.  It was sold to strangers. 

I mourned that house a long time.  I guess I still do. 

Sometimes I drive past it and take in a good long drink of the memories stored there for me.  The toys in the yard tell me a little about the family that lives there now.


My grandpa was a traveling salesman.  He spent much of his life on the road, away from his family and home.  I think a lot about him these days, away from my own family, calling on customers, sleeping in hotels far from home, and using little bars of soap. 

My grandpa collected the bars he didn’t use.  He brought them home and stored them near the bottled tomatoes and canned tuna fish.  There, in the basement, was a big, glass cookie jar, full – completely full – of bars of motel soap.

Pine Sage Blend

a room with a view

This week I’m at Snowbird Ski Resort for corporate meetings (for my day job).  About 90 other managers have traveled here from all across the country, while I enjoyed my short 30 minute drive.  Proximity to these amazing mountains is one of the things I love most about living here.  It’s nice to be close, but also strange to be overnighting at a hotel in my home county.

One pleasant surprise up here is the soap (You knew there was a soap connection somewhere in here, didn’t you?).  Normally hotels always have the same-old, glossy-paper-wrapped, dull-smelling, small, hard, white, bars - like my brother and I used to love collecting on our summer trips with Dad. 

After he forked over his hard earned money for a motel room, Dad would go to park the car while we grabbed the key and ran from the front desk to the room.  We were like conquering pirates, grabbing up the spoils of war and shoving it in our pockets.  Logo pens, pads of paper, books of matches, shower caps, and tiny bars of cheap soap were quickly discovered and immediately confiscated. 

By the time my dad made it to the room, hauling his old, light brown leather bag, we would have cleared it and plopped ourselves down contentedly on the bed closest to the TV. 

“Take your shoes off the bedspread,” he would remind us, as he headed out the door for another load.   

The best part about the soap here at Snowbird is the strong “pine and sage blend” scent.   It’s a nice, rugged smell, bringing instantly to mind, images of breaking out of the trees upon a stunning Western vista with distant, dry, desert valleys, hemmed in close by successive, fading layers of mountainous horizon. 

An appropriate, and well-conceived fragrance indeed.    

The Coconut Oil

 Here's a crazy little video for a crazy little song that has been stuck in my head forty years.  

Nancy's been reading a book on coconuts. I think it was a book group assignment or something. The coconut turns out to be natures best kept secret. Where once there was butter, now there is coconut oil.  And suddenly, we're eating coconut oil in just about everything.

We get to hear all the benefits of coconut while we eat eggs cooked in coconut oil, while we enjoy toast topped with it, and at dinner over a plate of fettuccine covered in coconut Alfredo sauce.

From what I've been told and from the little research and first hand experience I have, I would tend to agree this change in our diets. Weight loss, shiny hair, and smooth skin are some of the benefits. It is also said that people who eat and regularly use coconut oil enjoy better heath, stronger immune systems and heal faster after injuries.

Long before we knew all this stuff, we started using a healthy dose of coconut oil in every batch of Whimsy soap. We heard it made great lather and that was good enough for us. Since then, we have noticed smoother skin and less cracking associated with the dry, winter air. That alone seems reason enough for us to keep making soap with coconut oil in it.

Oh, and by the way, unless maybe you are from the islands, fettuccine with coconut Alfredo is something you probably want to avoid. Let's just say, the exchanging-butter-for-coconut thing can only be taken so far. 

Pine Sap

Several years ago, I owned part of a small rustic furniture manufacturing company.  We built a lot of pine and aspen log beds, as well as night stands and dressers with big, glued up slabs of pine for the tops.  We went through a lot of wood. 

I enjoy working with pine and love how it smells when you cut into it.  The only real problem with pine is that it has a lot of sap.  That sap gums up your tools and sometimes gets on your hands.  Once in a while, you run into a open pocket in the board that holds as much as drop or two or more of the sticky, viscous liquid or gum.  If it gets on your hands, it collects all the dirt and sawdust you touch after that and turns black.  This is super hard to clean off and is avoided at all costs.  

For Christmas last year, we scented a couple batches of soap with a fragrance that immediately brought to mind images of a snowy wood and a fresh cut sapling, tied to a toboggan being pulled home.  The fresh smell of the needles and dripping sap combining into a sensory ecstasy.  (Sorry, I warned you that I love the smell of cut pine.)

The first time I showered with this new, green-tinted, pine-scented soap, still not quite awake, I instantly panicked at the thought that I had just rubbed pine gum all over my arm.  It smells that good. 

During the holidays, all you lumberjacks can purchase this soap under the label, 'Oh, Christmas Tree.'  For the rest of the year, we like to call it, 'Fresh Cut Pine.'

Swiss Family Robinson

Once, for our anniversary, Nancy and I went to a little, local hotel that specializes in themed guest suites.  They have rooms set up like old cabins and fishing shacks, or set in Italy and Egypt.  They even have a couple rooms with a ship’s deck built right into the room, mast, sails, and a big captain’s wheel included. 

We eventually settled on our room, reminiscent of the 1960 Disney classic, Swiss Family Robinson, for three reasons:

1. When I was a youngster, I loved the movie.  
2. We were very poor and this room was the least expensive one in the building. And,
3. The bed was perched high on a platform, way up among the jungle foliage of a big, artificial tree. 

So cool.

The room was in a part of the building where the road going by was on a steep curve, just outside our window.  The constant road noise took some getting used to.  I also had a persistent, troublesome thought of a car sliding off the wintry road and flying through the huge windows of our serene jungle setting. 

But, like a raging, shark-infested surf, crashing on the beach of our small, uncharted, desert isle, the noise and the unnatural fear of a sudden and immediate death soon faded into the background. 

Most memorable for me was the bed in the tree.  I always loved that movie. 

Nancy remembers the soap.  She said it was wonderful. 

Light bulb!

We need to sell our soaps to this place! 

Imagine it –
Sea scented soaps, colored Bahama green, with ground luffa for a bit of texture.
Pine scented soaps for the cabin themes.
Olive oil based soaps for the Italian themes, with goat's milk to increase the creaminess.
And so on . . .  

If we hear back from them, you will be the first to know.