My son, who is a smoker, bought a peach air freshener for my truck. The truck was purchased used and is older. Obviously for some years, some one smoked in the truck and it smells of stale smoke. The air freshener is not really an air freshener,  but an air mask. In other words, it does nothing to change the quality of the air, only emits a stronger scent than the lingering stale smoke. That strong scent is a mix of chemicals called fragrance, which mask the odors that preexist in the vehicle. I cannot stand the peach air freshener and tore it off the mirror and threw it out the window (in my own farmyard). 

Recently I found some lovely baked goods at a market and brought them home. They were in a plastic grocery bag, but still , somehow, I kept smelling something like the peach air freshener. I thought I had lost my mind for a bit there, but when I opened the bag to unload the goodies, the smell of the air freshener was very strong. Ah ha! Scentsy in the kitchen was the culprit. And cigarette smoke on top of that, just like the truck. Gross. 

The Scentsy  permeated the baked goods, believe it or not. One bite was like eating perfume, plus stale cigarette smoke on top of that. At first I thought this could not be. I have never eaten Scentsy before, but it makes perfect sense. The smell of Scentsy is so strong it permeates everything within its reach, but the people who use it barely can smell it. They are used to it. It gets in the clothes, on the hair, in the furniture and everything it touches and apparently baked goods too. Unbelievable. 

I have had people argue with me that it is harmless and is just all natural and nothing leaves the aroma dish when the wax puck is warmed. I bought a bed frame and mattress from some one who smoked and used Scentsy. The smoke was terrible but even after 7 months in the porch, the Scentsy lingers. It is not as bad, but I think I will have to rehome the mattress in favour of a different one. 

I urge anyone using Scentsy to stop immediately. Do not subject children and babies  to the fragrance chemical born on the wax. It is not harmless. 

And if you bake and sell your wares, please do not use Scentsy or smoke in the home. For those of us who do not smoke or are sensitive to chemical fragrances, the food is not fit to eat. And that is sad when it is lovingly prepared in your own home. 
Isn't it?

During my 61 years, I have refinished a whole lot of furniture, painted some and even built and upholstered some. I took level 1 and 2 of upholstery so I would know the basics, but hoisting furniture and stripping the upholstery off, and then stretching and stapling new fabric is darn hard physical work. I built an upholstered chest from scratch and have done several ottomans and even some armchairs. There were whole dining room suites, stripped down to the bare wood and then painstakingly restored, too. I remember the carved 1800's oak suite all too well. In order to get the 17 layers of stain and shellac out of those intricately carved corners and crevices, I used a piece of ebony cloth on the tip of a screwdriver and sanding the round sections of the legs was another challenge. I must have enjoyed the work or I certainly would not have done it twice over. 

But I am back at it again, as it has become fashionable to play with real wood furniture once again. This desk was a 1960's desk, very similar to the dresser I had as a girl that I stripped, sanded and refinished in my teens. Instead of stripping it and adding some colour to the bare wood, I decided to paint it. Paint is removable, and since this is just latex, it is easy to remove should some one down the line want to restore the maple. They always do. 

First I painted the desk after a very light sanding to help the paint adhere, then I drybrushed a lovely pale blue here and there for interest. This desk held the soap in my store all summer, the drawers opened and brimming over with the tantalizing soaps. But now, with winter approaching, the soap and essential oils and linens must come inside, so the desk sat empty. I sold the desk I had been using for a computer desk and this was going to be the new model, but not white and blue. I put it in the room just in case I changed my mind about adding to it, and decided to wax it with black wax. The black wax is hard to use, messy and inconsistent. It can be polished almost right off while still wet, but once dry, it forms a stable hard coat that is easy to strip when the time comes. I did not remove the handles to wax it to give it a more authentic 'used' appearance. For the computer desk it will be just great, since the monitor is a 27 inch flat screen imac and does not need much depth. The room is the second bedroom of the little farmhouse, which also will double as a very occasional guest room and laundry room. 

I bought foam for the seats of the table and chairs I am working on, but had to buy a sheet of foam and will have to cut it to the seat cushion size. That is all I could get in this town. I will do that when I get back. 

Tomorrow I am off for a week to White Rock to visit my mother, who is 90 and has been very unwell. I feel this may be the last visit with her. See you when I get back. 

This is the next in the table and chairs series. 

The chairs took much time to prepare. First, the webbing had to be removed. Each end of the webbing had 5-10 staples in it. The chair webbing was apparently done by two different people because one person was meticulous about the placement of exactly 6 staples per side, while the other was haphazard and did not always have the same number of staples either. But, both persons hammered the staples flat after putting the webbing on. I guess they thought they would never have to take it off and wanted it to stay put. 

I tried a knife first to slip under the staples and lift them, but it was not a good choice of tool. So, I tried a chisel screwdriver, but it was too thick and the third try, a thinner model of chisel screwdriver worked well. Still, it took some strength and elbow grease to remove those staples. Some broke off because they were actually shattered wtih the hammer, though since they were not stressed, they remained in tact until removed. The shattered staples came off with the webbing. The screwdriver was able to lift the staples but not remove them. I found an old tool that was my father's . I have no idea what that tool is really intended for. It has sharpenable pinchers and a handle that can pinch the hand if not held carefully, but the implement worked extremely well. If too much pressure was applied, the staple was cut, but just a little, just enough to grab and hold the staple and it came right out. Each chair had an average of 72 staples!

There are two chairs with the small nails from a previous seat that are quite embedded and old. I left them in and created a pattern for the upholstery that covers them. I have not been able to find seat foam, hopefully organic latex, anywhere in Alberta. It appears I will have to order some from BC, possibly where I got the organic latex rubber foam for the motorhome. They were fast, effecient and the price was reasonable, that is, if the company is still there. 

I had hoped to do a seond coat of the stain finish today, but ended up packing more of the kitchen things that I just unpacked in the kitchen to move back to the farmhouse. Oy! 

It will likely be a few days before I get a chance to upholster the seat pads, but I might be able to get the next two coats of stain finish on by then and cut the plywood seat boards out. I bought some new jig saw blades and plywood today, however; it was raining most of the day, again, so I did not attempt to cut them out. I did cut a pattern out, 12 inches wide at the back and 13 and a half at the front to follow the contour of the seat. The foam should be cut this size as well, and I rounded the corners for esthetics. It is a good thing I took the two upholstery courses! This set, the table and six chairs, will be a thing of beauty when it is done. I promise!

I am so pleased I chose not to paint this beautiful table and chairs. I am going to write the story of the table and chairs one day soon, my own imaginary version of who sat on them and where they have been. As I was working on them, I noticed little nicks here and there, bangs, bruises, bits of left over green and white paint, and breaks that had been repaired. If only chairs could talk! I am sure the real story of who sat on these chairs and used this table is very interesting. 

I finished sanding and then put on the first coat of Bioshield Walnut oil stain and finish. It has enough colour, but I think I will do one or two more coats. After the next I will assess it. I do not have to put a clear coat on, since the product is a finish as well as a colour, but to make things more durable a coat of very hard clear finish will likely add life to the group. If I do not clear coat it, the items can be recoated with the walnut colour oil stain as required. So, I will have to see how it looks when I think I am done and decide if the clear coat is the best choice then. 

There are two leaves with the table that are solid oak. It makes me wonder if some one at some time decided to put the veneer on an oak table, but that would seem redundant so who can say. I got a jig saw by chance from a sort of garage sale for a whole $5. It was sitting there and I asked the lady how much. She never used it, did not know how and said $10. I offered her the $5 and she agreed, so now I have a jig saw to cut the plywood for the seats. Yay! 

I already love this table and chairs. For the next 4 years while I am here, it will serve me well and I will honour it and  enjoy it and the history I think it has. Old things are so much more interesting than new, don't you agree?

Because I was moving into the big house, I sold the chairs from the little farmhouse. The table was an antique card table that folds up like a butterfly, and it is downstairs in the big house for now. It was never really large enough anyhow. I bought this table here last year, in pretty bad shape, mostly because it is veneer and has not been cared for. The veneer has lifted. One of the legs was broken right off at some time. It makes me wonder how that could happen, because it is solid wood under the quarter sawn oak veneer. It must have fallen off a truck or something equally trajic. The chairs came with me from White Rock, orignially with another table, long since sold. I always loved the shape of the chairs, but they too, had seen better days. Somewhere in their lives, they were painted green , but previous to that, white. They had been stripped quite well when I bought them, however; they put webbing on the seats for some reason. That is not how to upholster these chairs. There would have been a plywood cutout that had leather tucked around the bottom of the plywood, which then would have been nailed to the chairs. During their lifetime, they had been hobnailed, likely with leather and also tacked with somethiing else. Now they are criss cross webbed with a zillion staples in the wood. That will take some time to remove. 

At first, I planned to paint the table for sure, because it was so rough, but I think I will try to restain it. The bottom would have to be stripped before accepting stain, though, because it appears after its mishap and broken leg, someone also varnished just the bottom. So I will stain and varnish what will accept the stain and assess the appearance. If it is really terrible, I will paint it, but t seems such a shame. The chairs will be fine stained and varnished. I have a ton of Bioshield wood finishes to choose from and will use a highly durable one, such as the floor finish. This may be the last life for these pieces, though if I take care of them, perhaps they will last another 100 years. I suspect the chairs are from the 1930s, possibly the 40's, but the table is newer made to look old. Now, with all its injuries and repairs, it does look old again. 

The set of 5 chairs, one Captain's chair with arms and the table with two leaves will be my new kitchen set and it will fit beautifully in my little farmhouse. Just a few more days of work, one to remove the staples, and two to stain, then three to varnish or clear coat with the organic Bioshield product and I will have a new kitchen table and chairs, and one that I love to boot. It is going to be so pretty.

Last time I tried to make cheese, I simply used vinegar. The acid from the vinegar separates the solids in the milk from the liquid, so much so, that the whey is not able to be used for anything else and since it is not cultured, it is not priobiotic. 

The cheese I started making yesterday was cultured overnight by innoculating some propbiotic live cultured yogurt into just warm milk. The the mixture was put in the oven to keep the temperature up and it sat for 24 hours. When it was ready, the curd had separated from the whey, which was a cultured milk poduct now and was drinkable, or could be made  into whey cheese, either ricotta or geintost (yay toast), a Norwegian caramelized whey cheese. That is what I am trying to make now. The cultured milk cheese is being aged now, before brine is added to it to make feta from cow's milk. The whey cheese, geintost, is the remaining whey boiled for hours until the solids left in the whey are all that remain. The caramelized curd is then packed into a greased mold and left undisturbed for twenty four hours. The resulting cheese is divine, maybe my favourite, a mix of creamy caramel, salted and not sweet, but amazing and delicious. I first had that cheese when I was on a practicum in Lumby in the interior in the early 70's and again, when I went to driving school near Lumby, to learn how to drive a horse cart. It must have been from the same cheesery because it was so scrumptious that I ate the entire allotment on the plate, bad me. 

In the next few days I will make some more cheeses, with mozarella as my next try. Cheesemaking is not quite as much fun as soap making, but it comes close. Would you like to try some?

Canola was once called rapeseed, however; the name was changed because of the connotations associated with the word rape. About that same time, genetically modified canola seed was developed and now has become the only canola planted, except in remote areas. Canola is related to the mustard family and the seeds are very tiny and often spread by the wind. Farmers who do not want genetically engineered canola on their land will have it regardless if they are within a few miles of a GMO canola field. Numerous law suits have been slapped against farmers who were not intending to grow Monsanto's genetically engineered canola, yet it was found in fair prevalence on their land because of the migratory invasive seed. 

Canola is not all bad though. For many years, farmers grew rapeseed for the oil and used it in its cold pressed state for fuel. Hmmm, is there a connection between the genetic modification of canola, the oil industry, Monsanto and fuel? Hmmm. When it was grown for fuel, rapeseed was bitter and not fit for human consumption due to a high content of erucic acid, which is somewhat poisonous. In the 1970's, Canadians developed a strain that had much less of the erucic acid and the crop was then given the name Canola and trademarked. It is now the number one oilseed cash crop grown in Canada and the USA. The new milder canola oil was then refined with high heat and solvents to produce a bland, tasteless oil at relatively inexpensive costs and currently, it is found in almost all foods packed or produced with oil. Canola does have many other beneficial uses in its raw state, from cosmetics to biodiesel, however; these are not well explored and somewhat squashed by large corporations. 

In Britain, canola oil has achieved a star status under its original name of rapeseed. Chefs there seek the oil for creating savoury dishes because rapeseed oil imparts a cabbagy, musky flavour to foods when the oil is only cold pressed and lightly filtered. Who knew? Apparently it is an acquired taste, though.

Using canola oil in soap creates an excellent bar with highly emollient properties and skin conditioning benefits. When formulated with oils that produce a harder soap, such as coconut or animals fat (lard or tallow), the canola oil soap can be formed into bars and used as household soap. The smell of canola cannot be masked, though, and is not really offensive if one enjoys a woodsy, natural scent. Washing with canola oil soap is a joy with a mild creamy lather being produced easily and the skin left with canola's gentle conditioning properties. It really should be used more and its uses explored. Oh, and canola oil is green, similar to hemp oil, not clear as we see when it is highly refined. This soap is made from organic canola oil grown in China, where GMO's have not take hold yet. A better source would be Romania or somewhere in the European Union, since the heavy metal pollutants in China are present even in organic products. 

The humble rapeseed has transformed the soap to a spa delight. Who wouldathunkit?