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Monday, August 4, 2008

New bird on the block No. 23 and a visit to the farmers market

{Wonderful hand-made soap from Susan Parks at Rich Valley Farm in Stafford Springs, CT. It has a fresh, spicy scent and rich, creamy feel thanks to all the goat milk from Scooter and Olive (pictured below) and their friends.}

On Sunday, Marie-Louise from Cottage Industries and I went to the Coventry Farmers Market, a festive and busy weekly organic extravaganza on the bucolic grounds of the historic Nathan Hale Homestead (as in "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"). We tried not to gorge ourselves on the best kettle corn in the world (it even says "Caution! Highly addictive substance!" on the package), bought veggies, fresh blue-ribbon pickles, big bunches of dahlias and homemade fudge. We also visited with Heather of Beauty That Moves and Paula of The Beading Tree; Marie-Louise will be blogging about them and their gorgeous handmade wares sometime this week. I did buy one of Heather's stylish dog collars for my neighbor's golden doodle Boddington, and admired all her pretty bags and pouches made from modern and vintage fabrics -- you can see some in her Etsy shop.

I love handmade soap and spent a good deal of time sniffing and savoring the delicious products at Susan Parks' booth. All her soaps are made with a goats milk or the hard-to-find egg yolk base, and use plenty of shea butter, soy and beeswax for silky rich lather.

{I'm a sucker for pretty packaging too, and all Susan's soaps are wrapped in white parchment with charming labels featuring unique and whimsical woodcuts.}



{Olive and Scooter were not at the farmers market but back at Rich Valley Farms enjoying the sunny day.}

{Top photo by me, all others from Susan's website}

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I also love home-made soap and am a sucker for cute packaging! Olive and Scooter are adorable, I love their ears.

Unknown said...

Oh Olive! Oh Scooter! I think I need to start drawing goats...
I love handmade soap too. I seems like a total indulgence, but sooooo worth it. It fits into my philosophy of 'art in daily life' completely.

please sir said...

Sounds like a great time and a lovely product - handmade soap is the best!

Teal Chic said...

Hope you are having a great day! Glad you had a nice day!!!

You've been tagged btw :)

http://tealchic.blogspot.com/2008/08/six-things.html

The House That A-M Built said...

What a lovely weekend you had..... and I can smell that gorgeous soap from here! A-M xx

Anonymous said...

How lovely! I think I'm going to try soap-making for the holidays. Maybe I should just buy some of the wonderfully-wrapped Susan Parks' soaps and call it a day?!

Marie Louise said...

Oh! It's Olive & Scooter! Was thinking it was you and me before I put my glasses on ;-)

Raina Cox said...

Does that not sound like the best time?

Susan Parks said...

I am trying hard to picture you, Robin, buying soap from us at the Coventry Market last weekend! This morning I noticed a visitor to my site had come from here so I popped over for a look. Thank you for your marvelous blog entry. I want to link to this entry!

simply seleta said...

What a fun day! And love that soap, especially the packaging. Huh, I wonder what the benefit is from using goat's milk. I know it's better to digest than cow's milk [1 hour versus 8 hours]. We've switched to goat cheeses and milks in our nest. Maybe we'll lather up with goat's milk too!

Thanks for tips!

Gill - That British Woman said...

Those goats are so cute.....we too have an Olive in our household........its dd kitten, called Olive.

porter hovey said...

These are just great! Love the packaging! Cute!

Anonymous said...

My friends Kevin and Rebecca gave me a bar of Susan's soap as a gift and I have been hooked ever since. It really is wonderful stuff.