Yesterday, I shipped out all the Earth tier Patreon boxes ($10 / month), so that was a bit of a relief. I have oddly mixed feelings about these boxes — I love composing them, and for the most part, enjoy making them, but the little race up to get everything out the door in time for shipping deadlines can be a bit stressful.
Stephanie Bailey and I have been talking about whether she can take over some pieces of this; she can make soaps, for example, so if I can actually be precise about my recipe in terms of amount of mica and scent, then she should be able to do some of the production for me. She was a little concerned that people wouldn’t like them as much if she made them — I don’t think people care, do they? If it’s my hands making the milk toffee, or someone else’s, to my recipe, do you care?
I’m now collecting what I need for the next tiers up — there are 3 subscribers for Sol System, 2 for Milky Way, and 2 for Interstellar. In between grading and e-mail (which is the bulk of my life right now), I’m popping up occasionally to pour a yarn ball candle — four completed, one in progress, two more to go.
After that, I get to work on a spiced hot chocolate recipe, which will be fun. Dutch-process cocoa powder, but what spicing? One of my recipients can’t do cayenne, so while I can leave that out of hers, it means not doing a straight cayenne and cocoa recipe (which I do love). Cayenne, cocoa, and cinnamon? Maybe try chai spicing, so adding in nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon, maybe a bit of black pepper and ground ginger? Hm. Tasty experiments in my immediate future. 
Reminder that if you want to get in on this for next year (only in U.S., sorry, food restrictions on shipping), you can now subscribe annually for a 10% discount. So for the Earth level, it’d be $110 for the year, which gets you 4 quarterly boxes — the spring box should go out in March, with the theme: Unicorns in the Garden. Link here.
