Sometimes I really love the fact that brewing really get's you in touch with that inner hedgewitch; the inner hedgewitch that longs to be shuffling about in the hedgerows collecting stuff, and then going back to throw it all in a cauldron and see it turn a different colour and start bubbling away over an open fire. Sadly, the  closest thing I have to the open fire is my gas hob, but I do have a brewing pot that is nicknamed affectionately "the cauldron", and it does get to see some unusual things...

Two weekends ago, Woody and I had the  wonderful opportunity to attend a course in North London about Liquid Soapmaking, something we have never tried before, with one of our heroes of soap-making, Melinda Coss. She had published  one of the books which inspired us both to start  making soap, so it was amazing to meet her in the flesh, and get to  learn something new. We got to meet some of the members of an online community we have always been in touch with, but never met, and we got to learn a whole new brewing obsession...

It was an interesting experience, brewing with other people. Contrary to popular belief, Woody and I actually brew separately, which is probably why we get on so well. We are like chalk and cheese! Woody is very measured, and likes to know exactly how much something weighs down to the nearest gram, while I am a bit more of a cr*p explosion - I like to get into the flow and be quite free with how I do things (within the reasonable bounds). At the course we were split into two groups of about six people, so there was even more in the way of different methods to be tolerated  (or smiled at through gritted teeth by some!)



The soap making starts in a similar way to cold process, but the ingredients are a little different, and the outcome is completely different...  The end reult is a cauldron full of  lovely gloop, which you then dilute as needed, and leave overnight to dissolve down into the final product, the liquid soap. The liquid soap is much thinner than what you would buy in the shops, as they add all sorts of nasties to give it a more viscous quality, but we also learned to thicken it a bit (with cellulose - a natural ingredient)



I am now left wondering how much gloop my fridge could accommodate before Monsieur starts to complain. (He already struggles with the amount of soap I have curing in the airing cupboard!) Just *one more* pot of gloop, surely he won't notice?

"Hooray hooray the first of May - outdoors fun begins today!" (OK, so some of you will know the ruder version of this saying, but this is a family show, so we're sticking to the PG version!)

Beltane, or May Eve, is traditionally the first time in the year that the weather is warm enough to go out into the woods, so I was excited to be going on a camping trip over the May Bank Holiday weekend. Mr Woody hired a car, packed up his tipi and I stuffed a rucksack with everything I could find - including the kitchen sink (well you need something to wash up in don't you?!). So, while Bex was at home brewing up a storm, I headed out into the wilds to get some inspiration for my next brewing spree.

The event was the Wild Heart Gathering, in lovely Lewes in Sussex, and although the weather forecast was dire, we were lucky and the sun shone for most of the time we were there (in fact, I even managed to burn - surely proof of my Celtic paleness gene!). The event was the first of its kind run by Trackways, a survival school, and attempted to combine eco-spirituality with backwoods crafts and skills. It was an unorthodox move, and the main lesson to be learned is that laid-back navel-gazing hippies don't particularly mix with more down-to-earth practical woodsmen! (Oh, and four chemical loos won't do for 200 people - and please please please can we have somewhere to wash next time! Eeewwww!)

But nevermind, I still had a ball. I got to sleep in a tipi for the first time (they're roomy, have a skylight and you can have a stove inside) and most importantly for a hedgewitch I got to rootle about in the woods and forage for edible and medicinal plants. Our instructor for the herb walk was a very knowledgeable and likable man called Chris Holland, who really knew his onions (and his alehoof, and his woundwort) and led us round our camping field pointing out all the edible herbs and plants and encouraged us to kneel down and nibble them straight from the ground! (Perhaps a little too earthy for me, but lots of informative fun nonetheless.)

The other highlight for me was getting to carve my own wooden drinking cup, and realising that there is something more time-consuming than making soap. Mr Woody and I took turns (he's had a lot more practise woodcarving than me) and eventually we came up with something resembling a half-finished cup/ladle/spoony thing that if not useable as a drinking implement could certainly be used to bop intruders on the head! (I'm determined it will look lovely when it is finished and I even bought my own crook knife to finish the carving with.) Cups like these, or Kuksa, are traditional in Scandinavia, and hopefully mine will end up looking something a little bit like this one.










Last, but by no means least, we met a very talented singer called Carrie Tree. Her song about the Island of Iona was just beautiful.

It has been a while since we last posted here about our Hedgewitches' Abroad exploits *Crap witches!* and for that we can only apologise.  It is not that we haven't been doing anything interesting - far from it - just that we 've been so wrapped up in our own soaping world that we have forgotten to tell you all about it. Well spring has well and truly sprung now, and as British Summer Time starts it is time to come out of hibernation. What better way to jump-start the old system than by leaping around like a lunatic to drum music with a bunch of strangers in the heart of Dorset? Madness! We knew you would agree...

Well a hedgewitch is always up for anything, so when Mr Woody (*cough*) invited me to a Trance Dance weekend, I could only accept (he saved mentioning the nude gardening until it was too late to back out!). The venue was another independent community called Monkton Wyld. Monkton is a beautiful old building set in luscious grounds (tended by a very elderly nudist) and fed entirely from its own gardens. The course took place in a stove-heated workshop with huge picture windows overlooking fields and run by a wonderful man named Leo and his companion Dawn. 

Have I told you all how much I love working with herbs in soap? I mean really told you?

They are just magic!

So the current project is to make seven different soaps that correspond with the seven planets... the appropriate essential oils, the appropriate colours. But when I tried them last time, I made them with chemical colours, which give great colours, really vibrant ones. But for some reason the planets did not feel like the planets that way, and there was a bit of a backlash. Mars looked more like Venus, the moon developed an unsightly rash and none of them felt quite right. So I set myself a challenge... try and do it with herbs.

Oh boy they are gorgeous! The Jupiter soap is made with alkanet - an absolutely stunning alchemy of a plant, which turns oil a deep blood red colour. But when you swirl it into molton soap, it turns anywhere from deep purple to slate grey. Then there is pink clay for my Lady Venus... beautifully soft and serene. Or white clay for the moon... (with a little pinch of glitter to give it some added sparkle...) But I have to say Mars has been the highlight of my brewing week... how to get a true martian red? Instead I compromised and swirled in paprika and cayenne pepper, and the result is this amazing deep angry looking orange. It is quite amazing...

(Sorry to the less soap obsessed people out there who I am sure will have glazed over by the end of the first paragraph...)

Thus went the Easter weekend at Brazier's Park.

After a rather traumatic journey to Paddington station with our several suitcases full of soap, Bex and I wove through the crowds and found our train on platform 13. I made the same joke that I always do that we were off to Hogwarts Magical School, although this time it was sort of true. We were off to teach people how to make soap.

We set up our stuff in the study as soon as we arrived, and finished just in time for dinner. After we'd eaten we settled down to watch the lambs racing around the paddock and to chat to Brazier's Director about the yurt that he was planning to live in for the weekend.

Cliff's yurt and a hungry ewe

Saturday was work time for us, so we had to perform. Our display table looked lovely (thanks to Bex for setting it all up) and we thoroughly enjoyed talking about the history of soap, and answering Charlotte's exceedingly difficult questions!

The demonstration was a lot of fun for me because I was a lab rat in another life and so I do love to get my apron and goggles on to make mud pies. However, I'm not so used to being upstaged by sheep! There was one ewe who decided to come and pass comment very loudly on my soapmaking skills!

Just before the sheep butted in, when people were still listening to me!

Part of the Brazier's ethos is that the tutors also learn something new over the course of the weekend, so Bex and I attended a workshop run by one of the residents. John is a beekeeper and chandler, and very fascinating to talk to. He taught us to make honeycomb-patterned wax sheets called foundation, that are used by beekeepers to build the hive, and by chandlers to roll into candles. We were both totally blown away by this, as you can see from Bex's expression as she unveiled her first sheet.

Bex reveals her first sheet of wax

In the evening we gathered in the Great Hall and the guests took their turn at entertaining the tutors. People sang, read poems and played music, all by a roaring fire.

All in all it was a lovely way to spend a long weekend. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and sheep were baa-ing very loudly all of the time. The countryside is a noisy place!

My mum used to tell me, "There is no rest for the wicked". If that is the case, then we must have been very bad at the Hedgewitches' Kitchen! February has been a very busy month for us.  We have been busy organising events coming up later in the year, and also visiting friends from far and wide. Last week we were in Bristol visiting with very dear friends, and this weekend, we went and lived in a secular community for the weekend.

Our friend Charlotte moved to Braziers Park last year and asked us to come and visit for the weekend, with a view to teaching a workshop in soap-making there over the Easter weekend. It is a fascinating place, and I spent most of the weekend with my eyes on stalks! Braziers is a secular community that was founded after the two world wars as an educational trust, and is a continuing experiment in the advantages and problems of living in a group. As Woody said she has always day-dreamed about living in a community like that, we couldn't resist the opportunity to try it on for size, if only for a weekend.

The Front of Braziers Park

The main house is a listed Grade II* building set in 50 acres of land, with an organic kitchen garden, a huge camping field complete with sturdily built composting toilets, some chickens and a flock of Jacob sheep. I have never been much of a camping fan (I know it is unheard of amongst pagans!) but even I could imagine camping in a field here, in one of Charlotte's custom built yurts. Everyone who works there does so on a voluntary basis, which is quite amazing in this world that seems to revolve around how much money you earn. The house even has its very own ghost...

The highlights of the weekend for me were mealtimes. Braziers has its very own chef who manages to rustle up the most amazing meals which everyone sits together to eat. The only rule is that each person has to do their own washing up, which I think is a great idea.

Also, we finally got to learn to spin on a wheel! Braziers has two spinning wheels, and several large sacks containing the fleeces from their own Jacob Sheep (complete with lanolin and the odd bit of poo!)

Carding the fleece

Charlotte and one of her colleagues spent an evening teaching us how to card the wool and then spin it into yarn using the spinning wheels, which was quite an experience when we were sitting in front of a roaring fire, in a wood panelled sitting room. I could almost imagine we had gone back in time to a much earlier period.

Woody spinning the fleece

The other highlight had to be the fact that I managed to split my only pair of trousers on the first day... as we came back to London on Sunday I felt a little messy with my ripped trousers, covered in mud and smelling distinctly "sheepy". I like to think it is a sign of having had a very good weekend! And coming back to the day job on Monday was a very strange experience, particularly when people started to say "What did you do this weekend?"

Happy New Year to you all,

It seems like no time at all since we last posted here to tell you about our day trip to the lavender harvest. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun? The lavender we collected is now beautifully dried, and hangs decoratively in the brewing room awaiting use in our brewing.

 Some of the lavender from our summer harvest

Although it has been a very mild winter (until today when I found my garden under a blanket of snow) we hedgewitches have not been abroad as much as we might have liked. Instead we have opted to stay home by the fire and explore some other traditional crafts. 

Our latest endeavour has been learning to spin. Spinning is a fascinating craft, and perfectly suits the introspection of winter. If you haven't spun before, imagine Sleeping Beauty at her wheel, or the miller's daughter spinning straw into gold for Rumplestiltskin. It has a magic all of its own.

In Japan, there is a traditional story about the Crane Wife, a woman who spins the wind into her yarn to weave magical sails for her husband's boat, but he must never watch her spinning lest the spell be broken. You can see the appeal of the craft for people walking our path.

We have been learning on drop spindles, the earliest form of spinning tool, and in a few weeks have moved from resembling whirling Dervishes with yarn and arms flying, to something approaching poetry in motion. Well, if not quite poetry, then someone you could feel safe sitting next to on the train while they spin at least! 

So, if you see us at a craft fair this spring and you wonder why we have a little pile of wool or silk heaped at the back of the stall behind the soaps, don't be shy. Ask us about it and if we aren't too busy we'd be happy to teach you to spin too.

Woody's spindle and some pretty roving

Well, it is just past Lammas, the time of the first harvest, and in honour of our traditional roots we spent some time out in nature at a Lavender Harvest.

Woody Harvesting

It was an amazing day out. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and we only turned a little bit pink!