A bunch of new soaps

I have been busy making soap for the coming fall and winter season. Two are related to the local area and are called Nancy Greene Lake soap and Kootenay Columbia soap and have the scents and colours of the lake and river and the wood smoke of the wood fires. Two have been requested by a friend and are Coffee and Coffee Mocha. These are made from freshly ground coffee and have the grounds included as exfoliaters and have a hint of orange and other delicious scents. Do not eat!

One is a pure olive oil soap for the people who do not want coconut oil and two are goat milk with olive oil only. The goat milk is the liquid I use which means I have a maximum of the goat milk properties in the soap. I also have two soaps made by using aloe vera as my liquid and I find that makes a lovely, mild and well lathering soap. One has apple juice in it and then there are a couple of lavender as well. These have all been wrapped and are ready to be delivered to the shop where I sell them. I have them ready in my studio as well.

Coffee soap

Coffee Soap for coffee lovers and to clean onion, fish smell from your hands.

 

Mocha Coffee Soap

Another Coffee soap to scrub your hands.

 

Poppy Seed Soap

Poppy seeds are a mild scrubby soap and also look nice

 

An array of handmade soap

An overview of the soaps made recently. See the different colours and textures.

 

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Working on the website

Tricia didn’t like the banner that we had up, so I have updated to a modified version of the old banner.  Unfortunately for me I’m seeing three different versions of the banner, and I’m not sure why that is.  I wonder if any of our users are seeing anything but the old banner with the logo put over top of it.

I also did some stuff with the Google Webmaster Tools.  The main reason is so that I can be informed of issues with the site if they come up.  Google recently sent out an email to people who are signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, who have sites with older versions of WordPress running the site.  This seems like a good thing to find out this sort of information.

The site now ranks number two for the search for Tricia Rasku.  This was not as we wanted it (it was ranking third or fourth) but now it’s much better.  The entire first page is pages that are related to Tricia Rasku of TR By Hand.  This is part of the effort to get good organic SEO happening, and also we’re working on getting good paid SEO happening too.  We are not convinced that paid SEO is really the way to go, our experience with that with Datse Multimedia Productions is that it will drive traffic to your site, but unless you use good keywords that relate to the site by themselves they won’t drive quality traffic to the site (the keyword that drove all the traffic to the site was “Canada”).

Added a site map to the site, and submitted it to the top four search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask).  This may not be necessary, but it’s a good step in getting search engines to see the whole site, and not just a little piece of it.

Any questions as to how I chose to do all these things are certainly welcome.  I may choose to respond to them here, or in more depth on the Datse Multimedia Productions website.  For now I’m happy to share the general information which I have shared here.

Thank you for being patient with us while we have been working on little things on the website a bit at a time.  This website will be really quite interesting when we get everything we were planning on up and running on here.  It’s unfortunately been a bit slow so far.  Hopefully soon it will be starting to take more shape.

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Check out the website

We have been working on this website and now have some new information and, yes, some photos. I hope to get more soon as well.

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Recent activity

We have been working on the website, washing fleece, doing a bit of spinning. Here are some of the dyed scarves I have done recently.

Hand dyed silk scarves

An assortment of recent dyed projects

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Working on the project

I carded some more wool today to work on the workout mat. When I went to felt it, found I needed a longer bamboo mat so worked on that and then it was time to get dinner. I now plan to felt the batting and then put it into the cover. It is all an experiment.

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Working on the website

I have spent some time today working on the website for trbyhand.com. It will need some refining and lots of photos as well.

I was planning a project this morning which was to be a workout mat, sewn with a lovely Guatemalan fabric and stuffed with some warm wool fleece. Bookwork and phone calls took most of the time so this was postponed until tomorrow. Tomorrow, Thursday is my regular spinning day and I expect a couple of people in the afternoon, with three unable to come. It is a relaxing day which I look forward to each month. It is on the second Thursday of each month and is open to anyone available to come. We spin, talk, give each other tips on all sorts of things and share.

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Rainy day post

I am working with Jigme Datse Multimedia on my blog and this is my first post for some time. I have been very busy making soap in various flavours such as coffee, licorice, tea tree, jasmine, and seaweed. Soap making is a frequent occupation in the studio.

Last week I dyed and painted 29 silk scarves and loved the outcome. I did not yet take any photos as:

1. Too bright outside to shoot. 2. Too rainy outside to shoot. 3. No time as I was out of home/studio working.  Photos will be pending except 13 of them have gone to 2 shops already, but not yet sold.

Today, because of a torrential downpour I planned some working with wool, but paper work has intervened.

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Finished the blankets

blanket handwoven from handspun yarns

Blanket on upper Deck

I finished the three blankets and have finished them. Lately I have been busy with my soap products for the upcoming Christmas sale time. I have new soaps ready and will be making even more. They are full of nice oils and some special additives as well.
Yesterday, I mixed up over ten dye stock solutions as I was down to few options. Last week, I had a class for scarf painting with a couple of pre-teens which went really well.

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Weaving blankets

I just put a nice grey warp on my 58″ loom for a series of blankets. It will have handspun weft combined with commercial yarn. I had some issues with the shed, but by readjusting my tie up, all is now well. I am happy for now.

Grey warp blanket

Grey warp and shuttle

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An introduction to my blog

I have just started a blog and have not put anything on it yet.  I will get some photos on it soon. I have been busy with a new countermarche for one of my looms and have it working really well. I have washed a white Shetland fleece which I am in the process of combing. It is so soft and clean now. Last week was a soap making week with 6 batches of soap.

On August 14 and 15 is a Columbia Basin Culture Tour which I will be participating in. This means that my studio will be open on Saturday, August 14 and Sunday, August 15 from 10:00AM until 5:00PM. Or later if there are people still at the studio. As a fibre artist, I will have my looms set up, can demonstrate spinning, felting and weaving. I also dye but do not plan any projects those days but can answer questions any visitors may have. I will have items for sale, of course.

I also teach classes and will have classes for which students can register through Rossland Recreation. I will also teach classes in a private or specially arranged situation. I teach classes in soap making, felt making, spinning, dyeing and weaving. Some of my classes will be targeted to children and some for adults.

This summer I am participating in the Summer Market (Rossland Mountain Market) and have items there for sale. They range from soap, weaving, felting to a few plants and books. I also sometimes have cookies. And I make super herbal and fruit vinegar.

I hope to keep everyone posted on my activities.

Red tree

Layout of felt landscape

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