KPFA Show

Here's a picture of my booth from the KPFA Crafts Show. There was a lovely panoramic view of the Bay behind me with Oakland and San Francisco connected by the bridge. It was an awesome show- some many other great artists and craftsmen were there, and the location was rather nice. I didn't like the sweltering heat and blinding light on Sunday, but I still enjoyed it overall. For those who are thinking about going next year, the location is pretty nice and has plenty of free parking. There were often dogs walking around outside (which I could easily see from my booth). Plus an animal shelter had puppies and kittens that were up for adoption by the entrance. It was very nice taking a kitten break.

Selling at the KPFA Crafts Show.

An IP primer for those who don't know what IP means

First, IP is short for intellectual property. This covers patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade dress. The work of your brain, or more often, the work of someone else's brain.

Last night while looking at something on Etsy, someone used "TM" following two terms. I had my suspicions that the USPTO was unaware of these of trademarks, and a quick search revealed they were not. You cannot tack TM on to something and comfort yourself that now no one else can use that word, term, etc. First, TM means you've applied for a trademark, but you don't have it yet. The USPTO can be slow, and if there are any issues, you can be using that TM for a long time. Once you have that trademark though, you can use a little R, for registered. Yay!

If you really want a trademark, and you're the first to use it for the product or service you're providing, go and apply for it sooner rather than later. It's not cheap, but it's cheaper than dealing with any mess that might come about later from delaying it. If you can't afford an attorney, you can apply for one on your own or find a service that helps you file for trademarks.

If you want a patent, you should get a lawyer. If it's something you worked on while at your job, that patent is going to your employer. There are utility patents and design patents, and possibly a few other types I never looked into. I've done a lot of research on patents, but I don't know much on getting one, except that ridiculous patents do make it through the system, and the patent office does make mistakes. To all first year attorneys, that includes acknowledging receipt of documents they never received. Shocking, I know. Fan yourselves and sniff your smelling salts and get over it.

I could go on forever about patents and the patent office (mostly on what I find frustrating about them), but I won't. If you think you have something that deserves a patent, find a patent attorney that can you help you with it. By the way, there are two types of patent attorneys- a patent prosecutor will help you get that patent, and a patent litigator will help you if you're suing or being sued over a patent. I know the patent prosecutor term doesn't seem to make sense, but that's what you need to look for when you want to get a patent.

Copyrights. I don't have much to say about getting them, since it's something I haven't researched. But I must say the same Etsy seller abusing the "TM" also featured copyrighted images on her products, and I'm guessing they weren't licensed. There are out of copyright works and also open content. Even if you don't get in trouble, it's still wrong to steal the work of others.

In the Works and Preservatives (again)

It's been rather difficult thinking about products for fall and winter, when it feels summery or spring-like here in the Bay Area. I have a few items I will post soon for the fall, plus some wintery items. These were my favorite seasons when I lived in New England, with the changing leaves and then the snow. I don't miss the summers there though- hot and humid.

I will be introducing a few body sprays that use hydrosols in the next few weeks, and since these have water, I will be using preservatives. At first I wanted to to avoid preservatives, mostly because I wanted to say all of my products are preservative free. But that's silly. One is derived from radishes- Leucidal (Leuconostoc/Radish Root Ferment Filtrate), and the other is potassium sorbate, a food grade preservative. I'm also using alcohol in some products, because I really don't want anything growing in them. 

I do microbial testing on the products, and so far everything looks good- nice and clear, with zero growths. Preservatives are better than any of the nasty things that can grow on those slides.

Photos

I realize I'm a bit strange at this point, with everyone whipping out their cell phones to take pictures of this, that, and the other thing. But after going to a wedding across the country and visiting my friends, I only had one new picture on my phone.

One of the worst business books ever.

I saw the books in the bargain section of the used bookstore, turned to my friends to make a joke, but then realized none of them would get it. So I snapped it and sent it on to a friend that would get it.

My friends had taken plenty of pictures, and at the wedding there was a photographer, so I figured I would just enjoy things and let them deal with the photos.

10 years ago I went to London and Paris. I took quite a few pictures in London, and started taking them in Paris. I realized something seemed off about my camera in Paris, and it turns out the film never loaded properly, and I had no pictures. I was upset at first, but decided not to make a big deal out of it. My camera was still acting up, and I didn't feel like buying a disposable camera- disposable is just such a nasty word, when you think of it. I enjoyed the rest of my time in Paris camera-free.

I realize a film camera seems like an antique to some people at this point, but I hadn't gone digital yet.

After that trip I stopped taking so many pictures. For me I enjoy my time better when I'm looking around me, absorbing the sites, the sounds, the smells. I know there are people out there that just really love taking pictures, and that's fine. But ask yourself if you're spending too much time worrying about the perfect picture instead of living in the moment. Plus, chances are if you're with a group of people, one of them will be a shutterbug and snap away.

So far I do the product photography for Ivre de Fleurs, and I must admit I hate it. I'll be outsourcing some of it soon, since try as I might, I'm just not a great photographer. Plus the natural light I get is pretty dismal.

Gluten Free Vegan Vanilla Cake

Not much of a food photographer. Or a cake decorator.

I grew up around cake. My mother had her own business making cakes- birthday, wedding, and pretty much every other occasion you can think of. She stopped selling them when we moved from one state to another, but of course we still had cakes. She even made my brother's wedding cake. I saved her the trouble of making mine- she had to fly across the country for my wedding, so I didn't want to ask her to make a cake on top of that. Plus the caterers at my brother's wedding thought it would be fun to put a heavy box on top of the box containing the largest layer of cake, so she had to fix the cake while the reception was starting. And then she had to serve the cake later- my mother is such a good person.

When I moved to California, I would make cakes for for birthdays- coworkers, friends, husband. These were always vegan, and I got pretty good at making them, though I never made really pretty cakes. More like smears of frosting, and the occasional little piped on designs. I made gluten free vegan cupcakes for one friend's birthdays after she cut gluten out of her diet. So when she asked if I would make a GF/vegan cake for her wedding, it didn't seem like much of an issue.

Except that she moved a few years ago and I hadn't baked anything gluten free since. And GF/vegan cakes are harder to make than cupcakes. I also didn't know when I started that sweet rice flour isn't a suitable replacement for white or brown rice flour. It's basically like adding starch instead of flour, and the first recipe I attempted already quite a bit of starch. I used Ener-G egg replacer, which is basically more starch. When I "poured" the "batter" went into the pan, it was really glopping down dough, and trying to get it to spread to the far reaches of the pan. When it came out of the oven it looked like a giant biscuit. It deflated, leaving a jelly-ish cake that was inedible. Thankfully you can compost all food in San Francisco, so that's where it went.

Not realizing my issue was most likely an overly starchy cake, I moved on to round two. Unfortunately, round two coincided with the beginning of a heat wave in the bay area. Baking and hot weather do not go well together, and least when you don't have air conditioning.

I used a different recipe for round two, since I wasn't really fond of the first recipe- the blogger wasn't clear on teaspoons vs. tablespoons, and so I figured it wasn't worth figuring those out for a second time. I used a GF/vegan cupcake recipe, modified a bit to use the flours I had on hand (which might have been fine, if my rice flour was white or brown instead of sweet), turning it into a 9-inch round, and adding xanthan gum. Throwing xanthan gum into your recipes just because you haven't probably isn't the best idea. I know it's supposed to help with GF baking, and I knew this recipe produced crumbly cupcakes, so I figured I'd just see what would happen. What happened was Fail Cake #2- it deflated soon after it came out of the oven, leaving behind another gummy messy. Into the compost bin it went.

I decided it was time for some research. First thing I figured out was that I should save my left over sweet rice flour to make mochi, and go out and buy some brown rice flour. I found a recipe for vanilla cake from a blog that seemed good at explaining all sorts of things pertaining to gluten free baking, which made me feel more comfortable using it. Giving Fail Cake #1 another try with brown rice flour might have resulted in a decent cake as well, but I was still afraid it might result in Fail Cake #3.

And I finally have a gluten free vegan cake that is worth eating. I've listed the ingredients I used below. See the original blog for directions how to bake (steps 10-17). I'll probably try it with the pomegranate and strawberries at some point, but I didn't make the frosting and filling from this recipe- I just used leftover vegan buttercream from last week for the first cake.

Like people, it's what's on the inside that counts for a cake.

Based on Gluten-Free Strawberry Pomegranate Cake by Gluten Free Gigi.

2 1/2 cups Gluten Free Flour Blend (I mixed up a bunch of this before starting the recipe)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup Earth Balance, softened (one stick)
1/2 cup soy yogurt, plain or vanilla
1 1/2 tablespoons flax meal
1 1/2 tablespoons chia seed (use white if you don't want little dark spots, though I didn't mind them)
9 tablespoons water
3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk (use other milk substitute if you like)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Notes:
Start by mixing the flax, chia seed, and water in a small bowl so they can become all goopy. The chia seeds add a little texture, but they don't change the flavor.
I didn't actually measure the yogurt- just plopped the six ounces of yogurt from the container into the bowl and that worked well enough.
The layers were a bit thin, but at least they weren't gummy! One was quite a bit thinner than the other, because my depth perception is kind of sucky. I used 9-inch pans.
The edges of the cake came out tougher than the rest of it- this might be due to my pans or my oven. My oven loves to bake things quickly.
Check out the rest of the blog- there's a lot of interesting information on various ingredients used in baking.
I pretend this is healthy, since it has chia, flax, and brown rice flour. Plus, it's cholesterol free!

Book Reviews

I can't wait to review the book I'm reading now. Oh, I love it so much.

But for now, I'll write a bit about two other books I recently finished reading.

Ellena, Jean-Claude, Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent, New York, NY: Arcade Publishing, 2011. ISBN: 9781611453300

Burr, Chandler, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2007. ISBN: 9780805080377 HD9999.P932B87 2008

I included the LoC call number on the second citation because it was in the book, and I used to add those to a list of books we had collected at my old job. It can help you learn what a book is about by looking at those, and while it might seem obvious for many books, that isn't always the case.

I would definitely recommend The Perfect Scent to anyone interested in fragrances and the perfume industry. It covers many of the aspects of fragrance creation, from the scent itself to the bottles and marketing. Naturals vs. synthetics comes up, and most fragrance companies don't want you to realize their scents aren't all natural. All natural fragrance is really a niche, though some of the larger companies do use large amount of naturals in their perfumes.

I also thought it funny that fashion designers want the public to believe they make the scents themselves. It never occurred to me that they would have, though I didn't know much about who did create them until a few years ago. The Perfect Scent delves even deeper into this, revealing how much goes into one single scent.

I don't really recommend Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent unless you're obsessed with Jean-Claude Ellena. It's not that it's a bad book per se, but it covers a lot of the same ground as the The Perfect Scent. One of the two fragrances featured by Burr was created by Ellena, and he does a better job of capturing Ellena's thoughts and creative process better than Ellena does. Of course Burr is primarily a writer and Ellena primarily a perfumer, so it's probably proper that Burr would write the better book. Ellena does have another book that I haven't read yet, so perhaps that one will prove better.

Cocoa Absolute

Cocoa absolute has a great scent- rich and chocolatey. You can use a little to modify a fragrance, making it a little dirty and a little sweet, without going full out gourmand. With The Lab #7 Cocoa, I didn't add just a little, I added a lot.

I spent a long time figuring out this fragrance. Starting with the base notes, I added patchouli and vetiver for their earthiness. And then let it sit. Added some labdanum to complete the base notes- I love labdanum and its ambery odor. I added some ylang ylang for the middle, and went uh oh- the chocolate brought out the banana notes in ylang ylang. I did not want to create a chocolate covered banana fragrance, though I'm sure there's a market for that.

I let it sit again. Then, to adjust the chocolate-banana middle, I added some clary sage and pimento berry (aka- allspice). I finished it up with spice up at the top, with a good blast of fresh ginger, and dash of woodsy petitgrain.

One problem with chocolate absolute- it does not work well in oils. I let this fragrance sit around for awhile so the chocolate scent could permeate it, and then filtered it before bottling. A lot of the thick brown absolute still made it's way into many of the bottles, and it would be best to shake them to disperse it before applying. I pulled aside the one with the most cocoa absolute hanging around, and it didn't stain or color my pale skin, so that shouldn't worry you. I wouldn't rub the fragrance into your clothes though, since it might stain those. Plus you shouldn't be covering your clothes in oil.

The Lab #7 Cocoa is available from Ivre de Fleurs and Etsy for $10 for a 4ml roller ball.