So I made scar cream, with everything I was thinking about. The cocoa butter was incredibly hard to work with, by virtue of being incredibly hard. Ok, not as hard as beeswax, but not "scoopable" out of the jar. I got little flakes off the top, and since they were so small they melted really easily if they came into contact with my hands. So there wasn't very much cocoa butter. I think it was 1/2 tsp shea butter, as much cocoa butter as I had patience for, 1/2 tsp jojoba oil, 1/2 tsp rosehip seed oil, 1/2 tsp vitamin e oil...no, there was more of it than that. There must have been a whole tsp of something, maybe the shea butter. There was also a bunch of lavender.

It's awesome. I'm keeping it in the fridge, both because rosehip seed oil is supposed to be refrigerated (not that I'm refrigerating the bottle of oil...meh) and because it's pretty soft. So it's cool on the skin, and between the high liquid content and the jojoba oil it sinks into the skin well. The rosehip seed oil also gives it this gorgeous deep orangey color, like something out of George's Marvelous Medicine. It smells like lavender, like all my skin products, because otherwise it would smell like vitamin e, which is gross.

It's too soon to tell if it's helping my scars and stretch marks, but it seems like it will. Let me know if you want some, and I can make a big batch and put it into these neat little tins I got (that get rilly hard to open when there's oil on them, I warn. I keep mine half-open).

Conditioner, like lotion, is an emulsion -- it has both oil and water, along with an agent to mix them together. So my recipe goes:
Oil Phase: 1 tsp shea butter, 1/2 tsp jojoba oil. 1/8 tsp lecithin powder (the emulsifier) added after it's gone liquid.
Water Phase: 1/2 TBS aloe vera, 1/2 TBS water. 1/2 tsp citric acid dissolved in this.
I also added 1/8 tsp vitamin e oil and 1/8 tsp hydrolyzed wheat protein to it, and ten drops of lavender essential oil (mostly for smell). I added the vit e to the oil phase, but I think all three of those are supposed to added at the end.

I heated them in two Pyrex measuring cups as double boilers. Once they'd gotten to about 150*F (candy thermometer is handy) and I'd mixed in everything I was going to, I poured the water phase into the oil, and whisked furiously. It got yellowish and thicker and goopy-looking. Not all of the water went in to the emulsion, so obviously a 2:1 water:oil ratio is not right. Next time I think I will try 3:2. It is sort of thin, as conditioners go, and obviously has water banging around the bottom of the bottle, but came out quite well for my first-ever emulsion!

I am going to try this out in the shower today, and then make a larger batch with tinkerings based on how it seems to work out. Obviously there will be less water, but if it's too greasy, I'll cut down on the shea butter, or the vitamin e if it's that particular icky residue (the only one that stayed in the measuring cup after a rinse with hot soapy water...yuk). I had worked out my vit e, lecithin, and protein amounts based on a batch size about twice this, but then I looked at my four-ounce bottle and figured out just how much that would be, of an untested recipe, and made it smaller. So those will be adjusted accordingly.

I feel so crafty!

PS: the fact that anonymous comments are turned on is a hint...I'd love to hear from you, even if it's a cryptic anonymous note. Call me greedy...but I wanna know more!

Mkay, the neatest site I've found so far on the bath gunk topic is called "not martha" and there are http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/bathbombs.html and http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/lipbalm.html. V cool.

Googling on "bath fizzies", "bath salts", and "lip balm make" or the like gets a ton of varied hits, most of which look pretty good. I've been kind of skimming them to get an idea for things, and when I get to actually making stuff, I'll pay more attention to the math. Bath fizzies seem to be something like a 1:1:2 ratio of the dry ingredients (more baking soda) and then however many drops of your oils and colours. Some involve a few teaspoons of nice oil (sweet almond or whatever) for extra slinkiness. Lip balm is more complicated, especially since you usually make it in ungodly small amounts. I may wind up making a bunch of base and storing it to remelt to add flavoring in smaller batches.

I have no idea on relative cost. Mostly I think it's fun to get to mess around with cool substances and it's hella cool points as gifts. I also like knowing exactly what's in stuff I'm putting on me, and having it be relatively natural (ie I am not a big petroleum fan). So being able to say "this stuff I'm giving you is beeswax and sweet almond oil and shea butter and essential oil of your choice" is neat. I am an herbal nerd, oh yes.

Lip Balm
I melted all my base ingredients (I used a 1 tsp shea butter to 1 tsp beeswax to 1 TBS oil recipe, and altered it to a little less oil, a little less shea butter [the teaspoon was overflowing in the first batch] and a little more beeswax the second time, which made it much firmer and more professional, the first batch was too soft and melty; it made about three, three and a half chapstick tubes worth) in an old glass pickle jar in a pot of water. To add scents, I took out with my cheapo plastic eyedropper (100 for $6 plus shipping, I can give you the link if you're interested) as much as I wanted in that particular scent (about 2-3 1-ml eyedropperfulls per chapstick tube), put it in a measuring cup, floated that in the water bath to keep it liquid (this stuff solidifies *fast*) and added scent.

I have not yet gotten the scent proportions right. For one thing, my cinnamon oil is much stronger than I'm expecting, so I have a bunch of very, very strong cinnamon chapstick that tingles your lips like crazy. I think an ideal amount, unless you're aiming for incredibly strong-scented, is just enough to hide the scent of the shea butter (nutty, kind of pleasant). I stirred the lip balm and the scent together with the eyedropper, and then squirted it into the tubes and set them aside to cool, which takes only ten minutes or so.

You're going to need to wash the cup out very thoroughly, to get the oil and scent out, and it's really frustrating, even with lots of soap and the hottest water you can stand. I reccommend using a different cup for each scent and washing them all at the end. Get disposable pipettes and chuck them, because it is just not worth it. Beeswax especially kind of doesn't want to come out of anything, so I suggest having a designated set of lip-balm containers, and not using them for anything else. It doesn't matter if there's some residue in my pickle jar, as long as I only make chapstick from the same recipe in it, and toss it out in a few months so it doesn't have a chance to get rancid. Ditto the measuring cups and spoons. I got a different set from the food ones, so I don't have to worry.

If you have any other questions, or just want to talk about your lip balm fun, drop me a line at jmspengler-at-hotmail-dot-com!
and
Made more chapstick today with Megan. I am no good with the scent oils, the cinnamon wound up incredibly strong (and I was a huge spaz and we wound up with way too much of it) and then in an attempt to correct, I added not much peppermint and those are...subtle. Yea, that's it. I think the cinnamon oil is just stronger than I'm expecting. It is like wow. The vanilla should be good though. (The peppermint of this batch actually wound up amazing, the shea butter scent barely peeks through. They're the scent strength I would buy in a professional chapstick.)

Bath Salts and Fizzies
Bath salt, there is nothing to. Mix salt and essential oil and food colouring. I made mine with baking soda (which also softens skin) and citric acid so it would fizz. I dumped them all in a bag and shook it. You need to mix the wet ingredients in well, so I did it in a measuring cup with a small amount of baking soda, and dump it into the bag to shake more.

Tim got the news that a friend of his from high school (I doubt any of you knew him, his name was John Skinner and he went to Carlmont in the Bay Area) killed himself today. He jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn't know him very well myself, but it was the shock it always is, you know? He evidently talked to a mutual friend a few hours before he was found, and I assume seemed normal...it's pretty mind-blowing. He played guitar, very well. There was discussion about him and the mutual friend moving up here and starting a band. You know how it is.

This is all I know. Please don't ask Tim about it -- support is of course welcome, but he doesn't want to talk about it in detail, rehash it, you know how it is. If something is burning inside you, ask me, but I'm unlikely to be able to tell you anything.

I'm starting college in the fall and want a little critter to live with, something that doesn't need much space. I'd rather take on an already socialized animal but if you've got babies I'd love them too.

My roommate will probably be bringing her ferret here in July, so anything that would be terrified by a curious carnivore I won't be able to take until September...just remember me!

Any of you not deathly scared of needles please, please give blood. It takes an hour or less, doesn't hurt very much, and can mean the difference between life and death for somebody. The Red Cross website is http://www.redcross.org .

Since I don't think my computer is currently hooked up to the network, meaning I can't access the internet from it (it might be, I'll check later) I've been using my mother's. However, the mouse on my mother's computer just totally stopped working. So I switched to my dad's.

When I typed "www.live", the browser autocompleted it -- with the address of this journal. Which my father told me he wasn't going to read anymore.

Hi, Dad. I love you too. I'm glad to see I can trust you.

I don't like being lied to. So this journal is going friends-only. I wish I didn't have to do this, since the option of making public entires appealed to me. But it looks like I can't. If you read my (lack of) journal habitually and want to keep doing so, comment on this post and friend me. I'll friend you back.

So today in Humanities, both teachers were gone, so we went outside as it's been quite lovely here of late and discussed in small groups. The first thing I said about the packety was a reading of the first line my eyes fell on and the statement "I disagree". Tad, George-san, and I proceeeded to debate whether raw materials have value of themselves for the entirety of the period. Tad thinks they were refuting my points but he's wrong.

Then watched "End of World" on George-san's laptop, which I covet. Mr A handed me his laptop to read the announcements (we don't have a PA system, just email) and I was fondling it big time. Perhaps I should take my father up on that offer of a laptop for college. But I don't want to give up Bob, my desktop, is the only thing. ::dilemma::

Also today I was told that basically any piece of poetry with fourteen lines merits having the word "sonnet" mentioned in your essay. Even if the rhyme scheme is not sonnet-like and it's not in iambic pentameter. Everything they taught us about sonnets is wrong. Screw you, freshman English dude of disturbing hotness, you're wrong now. The British chixx0r says so.

Also played Zelda today. I figured out what I was supposed to be doing in the Fire Temple, er, how to get to the Fire Temple. It's deeply embarassing how long it took me to figure it out. Now I have to run around freeing rock-eating cute beasties before the Evil Dragon manginates them. I keep falling in the lava, which does not suck as much as the flaming bats. I really hate the flaming bats.

Speaking of flame and Zelda, I can now cast a fireball-thing. It is fun like you would not believe to fireball zombies. Would you like those undead creatures original recipe or extra-crispy? Baa-baa-baa-baa! (Er, no, not a sheep. A D&D character with four delayed-action fireballs inspired this noise and hand gesture...you have to see it in person, really.)

It's that I can't be sure that things I don't want to change won't. And so I look at my life and I think about the things that have slipped away. And I wish I could preserve things, let everything else change except this here and that over there, those I want to keep.

Because it means that I have to change. And in these regards I don't really want to. It feels like there was something...and I don't have it anymore.

In short, I feel like I'm losing things as time goes on. I know this is just life...but I miss them, I don't want them gone.

I'm talking about...more than you probably think I'm talking about. Yes, there is certainly...what I've been blathering about a lot recently, but also...other things I feel I've lost.