"Anything worth doing is worth obsessing over." That's a 'Peter-ism', as we call them, or one of the eminently quotable one-liners attributed to my dad's kid brother, Peter, who isn't a kid anymore but retains the enthusiasm of one. I first heard it said with a laugh, but the line dug deep into me. More recently, Lilah Friedland said, "adulthood should be perfecting what you loved at summer camp." Another quotable one-liner. These two adages sum up the way we've been leaning into our practice at Quittner. If it matters, give it the honor of obsession. And to determine the "it," look to what you loved as a child.
No where is that more evident over the past few months than in our new soap and care offerings, each made using local ingredients processed in-house to create obsessively local soaps and balms. As a result, making one end product requires making two or more intermediary products. It's a massive expenditure of time and labor and is, objectively, not good business. But we don't exist for the objective — we exist for us, and obsession, and passion. We care deeply about material, and each step is an opportunity to get to know it better. Working with your hands demands that.
For the 2023 gifting season, we've created a gift set that brings together all the work we've been doing and offers a bit of our time, our work, and our garden for you or someone you love. The (very) limited edition gift set includes one of each of our Kitchen Garden soaps (basil, rosemary, and sage), and a balm in unscented or lavender.
This set is limited edition by necessity. Each soap takes 4-6 weeks to cure at a reasonable temperature, so now that the cold has arrived there's no restocking possibility. Once they are gone, they are gone until at least the weather warms again. Weather forces us to admit to limits, succumbing to a cyclical way of life that has directed our earth for all of existence. Rather than fighting it, we allow ourselves to be grateful for the ebb and flow.