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2019 Events
Natural Skincare with Pat Collins - June 2019
On the winter solstice, a group of permies an interested individuals met at Roseville Chase Community Hall to learn how to make natural skincare products from Pat Collins.
Pat is a herbalist who's been doing natural and organic skincare for some thirty years, long ago realising the importance of what some are only just coming to realise - that a healthy connection to the earth makes for healthier people. More recently, she's published a book about identifying and using weeds, aptly entitled, 'The Wondrous World Of Weeds' (New Holland Press, 2019).
Starting by taking us through her experience, Pat handed out recipe sheets, asked about people's previous experience at making their own products, and then began talking through each recipe.
She started with the recipe for sorboline.
"Wait, what?" I hear you cry? Petroleum products? NEVER!
Relax. It's her own recipe for heavy moisturiser - no petroleum oil, instead almond, olive, or the oil of our local macadamia form the baseof the moisturising cream. And as the group who got to make it can attest, it's beautiful.
She talked about the process of making the creams, the products she uses - from the full cream milk powder (there's a reason Cleopatra bathed in milk, you know) to the natural preservatives she uses so the creams don't have to be kept in the fridge (tincture of benzoin) and why she uses these products in particular as well as where to get them.We went through 9 basic recipes: a scrub, a cleanser, a toner, an aloe and comfrey moisturising cream (good for sensitive skin), a carrot moisturising cream (excellent for dry skin), spearmint foot cream, yellow rose eye cream, hydrating lotion, and a vanilla body butter.
After lunch, we then divided into 9 groups to make the various skincare products, melting waxes and solidified oils, chopping herbs and flowers and leaves to add scent or medicinal properties, and stirring, stirring, stirring until it achieved the right consistency, then bottling it up so everyone (nearly) got a sample of everything we'd made that afternoon.
Many thanks to Pat Collins for sharing her expertise with us, and many thanks to Patricia and the Willoughby PSN local group for organising it!
June Meeting 2019
At the June PSN meeting at Lindfield Community Centre, we heard from Wilson Harris, a Natural Areas campaigner working with the Colong Foundation to oppose the further raising of the walls of Warragamba Dam. Doing so will drown another 65 kilometres of riverbank, affecting Indigenous heritage sites upstream, wildlife diversity along the river, reducing the quality of Sydney's tapwater, and threatening the Blue Mountains' World Heritage status. And all this merely to create even more unsustainable housing in what should be the 'farm bowl' of Sydney!
We watched the movie about the consequences of the dam walls being raised, and then discussed a few ideas about what we could do. If you missed the movie, you can watch it here at the Give A Dam site.