Olive & Fig

Can a Beauty Product Save the World?

There is an interesting article in Redbook Magazine (Nov issue).
The title is "Can a Beauty Product Save the World"? It talks about Fair
Trade ingredients, and how a few companies (ours included) are getting their ingredients from South and Central America, and how they are helping the villages and
communities improve their quality of life, new schools, water
purifying systems, modern farming techniques, etc.

Even though the article was short....I found it interesting
because I do not really hear about Fair trade unless I bring it up to my customers!

I loved this part...'For a growing number of
other cosmetic companies, "green" beauty goes beyond recycled
packaging and natural ingredients. It's about social responsibility
using their products, money, and influence to institute global
change, one product and one community at a time'. Bravo Redbook for spreading the word!

Mainely Mint

We've been testing some new soaps for the upcoming holiday season and it looks like our newest, Mainely Mint bar will stay in our regular line.

Restocking & New Products

Our Farmer's Friend barrier cream was such a hit at Farmer's market this year, that I've decided to keep it in my line. Though it started out as a winter product, I'm asked for it often throughout the year!

Autumn Fairs & Festivals

Whew! It's been a very busy summer season.. Farmers market, another a big success again this year! Thanks to all our regular customers and new ones alike for a great summer market!

We're gearing up for our Fall festivals coming up soon. If you want to partake in some really, fun and wonderful festivals with quality artisans displaying their wares here along the Maine coastline, consider stopping by these three great shows! We hope to see you there.

ChiliFest 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
When: Saturday, September 13, 2008
Where: Harbor Park, Wells
Cost: Free admission
Category: Fairs/Festivals
Description: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
National chili competition, live music, quality arts & crafts, food court.
*************************************************************

4th Annual Halloween & Harvest Fair Sat 10-4, & Sun 10-3
When: Saturday, September 20, 2008 & Sunday September 21, 2008
Where: Old Elm Tree Farm, Alfred, Maine, Kennebunk Road Alfred
Admission Fee: $ 1.00
Category: Fairs/Festivals
Description: Sat 10-4, Sun 10-3
Fantastic family fair featuring fall inspired arts & quality crafts and a marvelous selection of apples, mums, pumpkins, fudge, baked goods, cider and other harvest delights. Hayrides, live music, and a picturesque country setting add to the charm of this event. Rain or Shine "Raising Maine"
************************************************************

This is a marvelous reserve that celebrates national Estuary Day annually at this event. Bring the entire family for a great day!

Punkinfiddle- A National Estuary Days Celebration

Punkinfiddle 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
When: Saturday, September 27, 2008
Where: Wells Reserve at Laudholm Farm, Wells
Cost: $10 per car
Category: Fairs/Festivals
Description: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Harvest festival with many fine quality crafts, performing fiddlers, live Border Collie sheep herding demonstrations, various fibre demonstrations, live entertainment,apples,pumpkins & food court.

Stuck in the Mud

Two of our 'muddy' bars... Stuck in the Mud with Dead Sea mud and French red clay that will gently exfoliate and draw impurities from your skin.. loaded with shea butter and jojoba.

Our Rosemary Sea Mud bar became so popular last summer, we've decided to keep it on board..with organic goats milk, Atlantic kelp, Dead Sea clay, sea salt, & shea butter.

Sea Glass Soap

Colorful pieces of blues and green soaps imbedded in our naturally creamy shea butter and olive handmade soap, with a gorgeous clean
fragrance.

The Garden Collection

Tuscan Garden soap.. tomato & basil

I really love tomato basil soup! And for the longest time, I've wanted to try formulating a soap using tomatoes. I finally gave it a whirl a few weeks ago and very pleased with the results! It will make a nice addition to my Farmer's Market soap line-up this year. The orange bar in this grouping is the result.

Olive Squalane

Olive Squalane is often referred to as "nature's facelift" due to its ability to help reduce wrinkles. By helping skin rehydrate and regenerate as well as retain moisture once rehydrated... olive squalane is a great additive for products meant to help with excoriated and problem skin such as eczema & psoriasis.

Squalane penetrates the skin almost instantly, leaving no greasy residue,making it a great 'carrier oil' for helping other ingredients sink deep into the layers of your skin. Very close to our own human sebum, olive squalane is known to help keep the skin supple and moisturized while helping the skin form a protective barrier against bacterium. It is readily soluble in other oils commonly used in our formulations and adds an elegant feel to lotion & cream formula's.

I really enjoy the addition of olive squalane to my facial serums & that it is vegan friendly.

Rosemere Cottage

This week, I have been trying to update the website **sigh, an unending project, LOL and get soaps cleaned & wrapped.. Rosemere Cottage is a big seller for me during the warm summer months.. it's fragranced with a soft blend of rosewood, lavender and a titch of amber and colored with Australian pink clay.

Spring Soap Logs

I'm trying to get soaps readied for this season's opening Farmers Market.. here's a few of what I've been working on... gardeners, natural cucumber, tomato soup, ocean sprite, harbour mud logs, kaleidoscope, blue moon, caldenula, mystic rose, rosemere cottage & comfrey sage soap logs.

Forbidden Fruit - Amber & Fig Soap

My first time formulating a soap using amber resin... gosh, it's just such a lovely essence.. though really darkens the soap to an almost amber brown shade.. but glorious fragrance! Not knowing what was about to happen, I added rose clay to this bar as well.. & as you can see, it's now no where to be found! LOL But, what lovely lather this bar has!

Green Thumbs

We're gearing up for this seasons Farmers Market..(isn't it great to be thinking Spring!) one of my most requested soaps is our gardener's Green Thumb Scrub Bar.

Oil of Tranqulity--Vetiver

One of my favorite blending & fixative oils is.. Vetiver

India has an abundance of fragrant flora, and one if the most beloved is the wild grass called Vetiver, where people have been distilling vetiver roots for their fragrant oil for thousands of years.

Root bales drying



Vetiver roots being transported by oxcart






Vetiver is strongly antimicrobial and also used on cold compresses to reduce fevers and pain from inflamed joints and arthritic swelling.

Aromatically, the vetiver root gives us a very potent fragrance oil that is used in perfumery as a fixative, or base note and then serves to hold other lighter fragrances together in a harmonious whole. Vetiver is one of the strongest fixatives, with tremendously long scent life.

The fragrance of vetiver oil is green and grassy, earthy sweet and smoky, with traces of mint & some consider a musky essence as well. Vetiver’s fragrance can vary from plant to plant, even in the same region. It can often be appreciated better when diluted to about 5-10% in a nice oil such as jojoba.

One of my favorite blends is: vetiver, patchiouli & frankinscence.. but it also blends well with jasmine, grapefruit, lavender, sandalwood, rose & ylang-ylang.

Taking some.. time off

Spicy Colors

I'm really suppose to be concentrating on year end inventories.. but that's sooo boring right now! ;) As I look around my stock on hand, I came upon a box of supplies that I'd forgotten I even had! Jasmine & Orange blossom wax, Bourbin vanilla beans, a pound of dark Amber resin.. ohhh this smells so nice... and makes such a lovely bar of soap... and assorted spices... Yes, I fess up, in addition to herbs & natural clays I do indeed use many spices to enrich , add color and add gentle exfoliation to my bars. I usually just love the results. Many times I use a combination of both herbs &/or clays along with the spices... colorful peppercorns, saffron, nutmeg, clove, paprika, curry, tumeric, ginger....



Now, after finding my surprise box, all I want to do is make soaps! :o)

Season's Greetings

With the last of the years shows behind us now we can finally begin to enjoy this holiday season.
We want to wish everyone a joyous and Merry Christmas & a very healthy New Year.

We will be closed December 14 through January 6th to celebrate the season and complete our year end inventory.

Happy holidays,

Cricket Corner Soapworks

Goldthread herbal

A friend recently sent me a clump of Goldthread to transplant, along with some dried roots for infusing. This fascinating elder herbal has a remarkable history and quickly disappearing from our New England forests. After researching it's benefits I formulated a lip saver balm.


A little bit of folklore, history & goldthread usage....

Goldthread is aptly named -- this dainty little evergreen plant of the buttercup family has bright gold threadlike roots. Its lustrous leaves rise from a rhizome base, each stem divided into three leaflets with scalloped, toothed margins. The thin roots form a creeping network of rhizomes from which the aerial parts of goldthread arise. These rhizomes generally spread in the rich organic matter of the forest floor rather than the mineral soil beneath. Goldthread helps loosen up this otherwise impervious mat of needle debris in the cool shade of evergreen woods. Boggier settings find the rhizomes quite at home in beds of sphagnum, often favoring the drier knolls surrounded by sodden ground.




Native Americans had a ready supply of fresh goldthread available throughout the year for either chewing & oftentimes used as a dental 'floss' or making a tea. The vibrant gold roots, available even in winter under a blanket of snow, would have been as near as any old-growth forest. Good remedies naturally got shared with the colonists, leading to goldthread being so popular at one time that more of it was sold in Boston than almost any other indigenous drug. Such esteemed use fell to the wayside, most likely as our forebears' impact on the land altered the availability of this wee plant.

Goldthread has traditionally been used for mouth sores and thrush, which explains its other common names -- canker root or mouth root. It is sometimes used in combination with or substituted for goldenseal, another at-risk plant. Both have berberine, a bitter alkaloid with strong antibacterial qualities. Goldenseal has been considered rare for over 75 years due to unceasing demand, and some herbalists concerned about its survival have suggested using goldthread in its place. This will never be a reasonable alternative on a broad scale as the fine roots of goldthread can't begin to meet our current (though sometimes erroneous) zeal for goldenseal. Transferring such high demand to goldthread would soon bring about its extinction, so the better answer lies in using cultivated organic goldenseal with sustainable discretion.

The simplest way to use goldthread is to chew the fresh root. This is effective for canker sores, cold sores and mouth ulcerations. Goldthread is more commonly used in tea or in tincture form. Both preparations can be made with fresh or dried plant material. One tablespoon of fresh finely chopped root (or one teaspoon of dried root) per cup of boiling water simmered for 20 minutes makes an effective decoction. This tea can then be gargled for mouth sores or applied frequently for thrush. It can also be taken internally as a bitter tonic, 1 tablespoon 3-6 times a day for an average adult, for chronic stomach inflammation or digestive problems.

Goldthread is a plant of the boreal and transition forests that grows where humans tread lightly, if at all, and can be carefully transplanted into suitable locations that offer shade and plenty of abundant organic matter. You need to move these delicate rhizomes and their trailing root systems with earth intact to have any chance of success.
Replenishing native species is an offering of restoration that transcends commercial intent. Nor does the extreme fineness of goldthread roots exactly encourage a medicinal livelihood.

This is a plant to worry about and protect, not to exploit. Goldthread offers us a chance to redefine what 'value' really means and to take the gift of healing to heart instead of to the bank.

Blue Immortale'

Our newest in the lineup of facial care products is aptly named, ' Blue Immortale'....

Bulgarian Rose, Blue Chamomile & Helichrysum combined in a truly luxurious facial cream to nourish & protect maturing skin. Organic oils including Rosehip, Borage, Shea butter, Jojoba among others, work to enhance the skin's collagen helping to improve skin tone, help remove those fine lines from sun damage & premature aging spots. We've enhanced this lovely cream with Heliocarrot, Calendula, White tea extract, Marine algae & our Botanica 12 complex formula. Essential oils of Bulgarian Rose, Blue Chamomile and Helichrysum Immortale' work to counter the effects of aging and enhance all skin types.