The Williamson Industries Laboratory

The serious work behind Dustpan Alley's glamorous products.

Here at the Dustpan Alley offices, we've been busy developing sophisticated scent blends for using as "smelling salts". Not the old ammoniated variety known well by all ladies of fainting dispositions, but a new heady kind of smelling salts that you can carry with you in your purse and sniff at whenever you feel like it. Whenever you need a legal pick-me-up, you can just whip these babies out of your pocket or your purse and be incredibly interesting by inhaling deeply of the salts, inducing immediate calm or a sensual mood*...

At our labs we insist on the most up to date scientific methods of conducting research. We label everything and meticulously record our results in official notebooks and spreadsheets. We believe that it's irresponsible to write our notes on scraps of paper stuck to the fridge...sooner or later the dog is bound to eat it.

We take pride in the fact that we hire only senior citizens and child labor and can't get in trouble for paying them fourteen cents an hour, because, in fact, we pay them nothing and get the same results! We absolutely guarantee that we never use unnecessary violence with our staff and even when we do, they know we only do it because we love them.

Here is our main non-paid, unskilled day laborer. He's a very promising nose and although he claims to hate nearly every scent we have, he manages to combine them like a pro. Most surprisingly successful scent blend: grapefruit and lavender.

Our senior citizen is taking a well deserved two minute lunch break to chat with the hard working child.

You would not believe how much fun we had making little vials of scent blends to try out on ourselves. Seriously, notes have been taken, vials have been labeled, and Max got drawn into the Laforest/Williamson witchy project until there were no more little jars to play with. We really are a bunch of apothecaries around here. I think this is our secret calling. My mom is talking about making me an athlete's foot powder for a Christmas gift, I'm begging negotiating for it to be a salve. Perhaps some people might think that is a strange and unexciting gift to receive, and I will admit that if I found a tube of commercially made anti-fungal cream in my stocking, I would be a little disappointed. But a home made one put together by my herbalist mom? Oh, totally different story!

It is wonderfully stormy outside. The wind is pushing the trees around and the rain accompanying it is slashing slantwise through the bluster.

Oh, back to herbs and other earthy pursuits...we wanted to make bath bombs last night but didn't have all the ingredients. I've never made them before, and as I've already admitted, my bathtub SUCKS, yet I have to say I'm beyond excited to do this project because I have already imagined how I am going to package them. I plan to make them to put on my Etsy shop and in my Holiday Market booth downtown. Unless they turn out poorly. Here's what excites me though: coming to realize that it isn't my life's ambition to sell merchandise to people but to help them learn to make things themselves and to make things for myself I am free to explore so many projects and work on making them more accessible to you and I.

For example: my mom has a great book of herbal medicine that has all the fundamental information necessary and yet lacks explicit directions on how to actually make the damn recipes. The recipe for foot powder lists ingredients and among them is black walnut hulls, but it fails to tell you what to do with them. Last time I checked, walnut hulls are super hard and when crushed can be sharp as glass. The author fails to indicate if you are supposed to crush them all the way to a powder (which is what we're assuming) so as to avoid making your feet bleed (though obviously, if you make your feet bleed then you will be a lot less worried about them itching) and if so-what kind of tool is required to crush this diamond hard substance into powder? Will a spice grinder suffice, or do you need an industrial grinder?

This is important information. One thing I love about modern tutorials is that they often include very good photographs to illustrate steps, and the instructions are much clearer and explicit, never assuming that you have a secret set of additional instructions that explain all the vague details in the first set of instructions. I want to write clear instructions for projects so that people can get satisfying results at whatever they're doing. I am ideal for this work because I'm the person in the class with a thousand detailed questions that everyone else wants to ask but is afraid to because the teacher will think they're stupid.

Well, my kid has been pestering me since about 5:30am when he woke up way more alert and hyper than any kid should who also woke up at 12:30am and didn't even get to sleep until 9:30pm. He's dying to get me off the computer. He's dying to have his friend over. He is going to be a fly in my ear for the next ten years. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get used to it. One thing's for sure though, I will only survive the rest of this day if I immediately go take a shower.

*Be aware that essential oils may induce certain moods but they are not miracle workers and if you have the sex drive of a withered newt, like myself, no amount of sensual scent is going to make you want to tear your clothes off for a little tumble with your sweetie.