Sammy Well, this week we managed to open The Old Smithy for most of our planned days, which was a very good start.
And then I finally began tackling The List.
You know the one.
The enormous To Do List that I had been carefully adding things to while telling myself that writing them down meant I was being terribly organised.
This is, of course, the problem with lists. They don’t actually make any of the things on them disappear.
Eventually you have to do the things. So this week, that is exactly what we started doing.
Boxes were packed. Wholesale orders were finished. Bottles were changed. Testers were sorted. Things were posted. New products were plotted. There was an alarming quantity of labelling.
And, slowly but surely, things actually started getting crossed off.
There is still plenty left on The List, obviously. I do run Pippin’s Potions. I suspect the day I have an empty To Do List is the day someone should probably come and check on me. But this week felt like progress.
And outside The Old Smithy, Mother Nature seemed to be having a bit of a reset of her own.
Because finally…
A Very Welcome Bit of Rain
And then, on Thursday, it rained. Properly rained.
Not a polite little shower. We had torrential rain for most of the day, and after weeks of everything looking increasingly dry, dusty and rather fed up, it felt as though Mother Nature took one enormous sigh of relief.
Since then, the beautiful green has begun returning to the verges, fields and gardens, and I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d missed it.
There’s something rather reassuring about watching the land recover. Things can look completely exhausted and spent, and then the rain comes, the roots wake up and new growth begins appearing again.
A small reminder from Mother Nature that after hardship, there can always be renewal and growth. I think sometimes we need reminding of that too.
The Great Shopping Adventure
There was also a shopping trip. Possibly a slightly overenthusiastic shopping trip. In my defence, it was enormous fun.
It also resulted in several fabulous new things coming to live permanently at The Old Smithy, including Mr Crow, our magnificent Headless Knight and assorted other treasures that will soon be appearing in the windows and some of our new product photographs.
The Apothecary is slowly beginning its seasonal transformation and I am trying very hard not to get completely carried away.
Trying being the important word there. And, most importantly, I acquired possibly the best mug ever made.
Spiderwebs. Spiders. Bats. Moths. Tiny moons. Tea tastes approximately 37% better from it. I have conducted extensive research.
The shopping trip may have been rather more ambitious than was sensible, but I regret none of the purchases.
The Ritual Boxes Have Left the Building!
The Autumn Equinox Ritual Boxes are DONE.
Made, printed, packed and finally posted.
This one seemed to involve an extraordinary number of little individual jobs. There was tea blending, making, printing, gathering things from the garden, drying leaves and generally having bits of the Autumn Equinox spread across every available surface.
But eventually it all came together. I won’t give too much away just yet because some boxes will still be making their way to their new homes, but I’m really pleased with how this one turned out.
And I am also extremely pleased to have crossed it off the enormous To Do List.
The Great Sticker Adventure
Another wholesale order finally left the Apothecary this week, and this one involved rather a lot of candles. And stickers.
So. Many. Stickers.
There were around 400 of the little blighters involved by the time everything was finished, and I owe a huge thank you to Will and Isa, who were drafted into the Great Sticker Adventure and helped get the whole enormous order labelled and ready to go.
This is one of those bits of running a tiny business that you don’t necessarily see. A photograph of a finished candle looks lovely.
A table covered with a hundred candles waiting for several hundred individual stickers tells a slightly different story! Thankfully, I have excellent conscripted labour.
The Great Bottle Migration
If you’ve been following along recently, you’ll know that we decided it was time for our room mists to have a bit of a makeover.
The aluminium bottles have served us brilliantly, but the mists are now moving into beautiful amber glass bottles, which simply feel much more at home amongst the jars, herbs and potions of the Apothecary.
This week the great migration happened. Testers transferred. Labels transferred.
Bottles absolutely everywhere.
But they’re done, and I LOVE them.
There was, however, one question left afterwards. What on earth do we do with all those empty aluminium bottles?
And I found a rather lovely answer.
Our local Air Ambulance raises funds by recycling aluminium, so all of our old aluminium bottles will be going to support them rather than simply becoming waste.
Even better, The Old Smithy will now be a collection point for squashed aluminium drinks cans.
So, if you have aluminium drinks cans at home, give them a rinse, squash them down and bring them along to the shop. We’ll add them to our collection and they can help raise funds for the Air Ambulance too.
I rather like the idea that our old potion bottles get one final useful job, and that we can keep adding to the pile afterwards.
A Little More Wholesale Plotting
While one enormous wholesale order has left the building, we’ve also been quietly working behind the scenes on two new wholesale lines.
There has been testing, costing, samples, conversations and quite a lot of figuring things out.
Wholesale has grown rather organically for us. One shop tries something, somebody else spots it, another enquiry arrives, and suddenly I’m standing surrounded by boxes wondering when exactly thathappened.
It’s a very nice problem to have.
I’ll tell you more about the new lines when everything is properly ready.
Waiting for the Great Candle Test…
Meanwhile, I am waiting.
Impatiently.
Very impatiently.
The Great Candle Test continues.
We’ve been testing new vessels for this year’s Christmas candles, and candle testing is one of those jobs where you simply cannot hurry things along because you’re excited.
Apparently candles do not care about my timetable.
So they continue to burn, I continue to watch them, and somewhere nearby there is inevitably a notebook containing far too many observations about wicks and melt pools.
But if all goes according to plan, this year’s Christmas candles are going to be rather special.
New Scents Are Stirring…
There are also some new fragrances making their way towards the Apothecary.
One in particular may have finally given us the new Protection scent I’ve been looking for, ready for Samhain, and there are one or two other rather gorgeous possibilities currently demanding my attention.
This is the dangerous part of my job. I tell myself I am testing fragrances for work. Then another bottle mysteriously appears in my basket. Research. Obviously.
More on those very soon.
And Finally, Thank You
One of the biggest wins of the week is that I actually managed to open The Old Smithy for most of our planned days.
That might sound like a very ordinary thing, but lately it hasn’t always been possible, so I’m counting it.
Thank you so much to everyone who popped in, bought something, came for a chat, had a sniff of whatever I was currently waving under somebody’s nose, or simply stopped by to say hello.
And thank you, as always, for being so understanding when my plans and reality don’t quite match.
So August ends with Ritual Boxes travelling to their new homes, wholesale parcels heading out of the door, new amber bottles appearing on the shelves, candles stubbornly sitting through their tests, mysterious new scents waiting in the wings…
…and the beautiful green returning outside.
Perhaps that’s not a bad way to end the summer.
A little tired, a little battered around the edges, but growing again.
And with a crow and a headless gentleman now living permanently in the Apothecary.
Sammy x
