Ode to a Masculine Handkerchief

(Yay!  Sleep deprivation, lotsa caffeine, and way too many parentheses!)

Sorry, guys.  This is probably gonna be a long one.

So my fiance and I woke up at fourish this morning.  (Actually, I'd been awake since one, so I was all bouncy and happy when his alarm went off.)  I decided over my morning coffee (which I keep forgetting to drink, and instead carry around with me absentmindedly from place to place like a ceramic teddy bear full of hot liquid) to make hair goop.

So let me tell you about hair goop.  I've been doing the "no shampoo" thing for a couple months now.  (Which is not to say that my hair is perpetually dirty.  It just means I use chemical compounds other than shampoo to wash it.  Something I will never stop repeating.)  Anyway, I've been very happy since giving up shampoo.  I'm not as prone to dandruff as I used to be.  Since dandruff is generally pretty gross, I figure this is a good thing.

But, I miss my hair conditioner.  I mean, my life hasn't been the same since I threw away the last of my precious hair conditioner.  Seriously, folks.  I loved that hair conditioner.  I needed that hair conditioner.  Every morning.

Why, you may ask?  (If you're reading this... I think Mom and I are the only ones reading this thing.  Aren't we Mom?  Mom?  Okay, I might have over-estimated my readership, there.)  Reason I love my hair conditioner number one.  It makes my hair smell pretty.  I haven't really ever worn perfume or body spray.  I generally pick out a nice pleasant-smelling conditioner and the smell just sort of envelopes me and trails in my wake all day like a loyal puppy.  Well, that puppy is gone now.  And I miss it.

Reason I love my hair conditioner number two.  I have super-curly hair.  It has a mind of its own.  If I don't coat it in something nice and slippery after getting it wet, it turns into one giant, brittle tangle.  Fancy hair conditioners are too waxy or thick to do this, but that ultra-cheap Suave conditioner you see in the grocery store is actually the perfect texture and consistency.  I used to dump a ton of that in my hair after the shower, smear it in and leave it in.  It allowed my hair to dry into nice, clean frizz-free little ringlets, and there was no giant, brittle tangle issue.

Now that is gone.  Oh, how I have missed it.  The first thing I did was begin experimenting with oil.  I would wash my hair (with my own stuff) then pour some oil into it.  Problem one-- the oil all stuck to my hair in one place like a giant grease spot.  So, then I would pour a large bowl full of hot water and let the oil float on top of the water and dip my hair into this, swishing it around until it was all nice and coated with oil.  Problem two-- not enough oil.  So I added more oil to the bowl.  That didn't do it, either.  More oil.  My goodness, how much oil will this take?  This is getting kind of expensive.

At last, I get it working right.  This seemed like a solution until I realized that the oil never completely dries.  My hair looked greasy (which is was) and filthy (which is wasn't necessary, but who cares at that point?).  Worse than this, anything will stick to that much oil, so dirt, dust, foul odors, everything.  I'd start a day with clean hair, but I'd end it with hair so filthy I couldn't stand myself.

So I shampooed it all out, and did not allow any oil to touch my hair again for quite some time.

Which left me with the giant, brittle tangle issue.  I decided to try and let the natural sebum in my hair take care of that.  Instead of getting my hair thoroughly wet every day like I used to, I would keep it dry and spray it with vinegar that way.  Moderate success.  My hair went completely straight (which was fun at first, but I started missing my "normal" hair after a while).  It didn't tangle, but it didn't have the life or the bounce it used to.

The day before yesterday, I remarked rather sadly to my fiance that I miss my hair the way it was when I still used hair conditioner.  He said he did, too.  I sighed and figured what was lost was lost.  (I'm a bit stubborn about the no shampoo thing.  I'm determined to make it work, even if my hair type and body chemistry conspire against me.)

Anyway, yesterday, I was wandering the internet, contemplating returning to my hair much-beloved hair conditioner and trying to work up the determination to stay away from it.  So I decided to look up just what chemical compound made that stuff so slippery (I assumed it was glycerin, and I was wondering about getting my hands on some vegetable glycerin to see if I could reproduce the effect on my hair).

Anyway, my google search showed up a recipe for homemade conditioner, which I clicked on fully expecting the usual "just use vinegar and all your tangles will magically disappear" which only works for people who don't have radically curly hair like mine.  Instead, I found this recipe which got my very excited.

I realized that all my searches for "conditioner" were turning up fruitless because I never used my conditioner as conditioner.  I used it as a kind of hair gel.  So I did another search for homemade hair gel, and hit the mother load.

There's hair gel made with gelatin, hair gel made with guar and xanthum gum, hair gel made with flax seeds.  Apparently, there are a lot of natural hair product-using people in this world who need hair gel the way I do.

Which is what led me, at five a.m. to my mother-in-law's kitchen armed with a copy of Naptural85's flax seed hair gel recipe.  I didn't have half the ingredients.  Well, I had water, which is technically half the ingredients.  I didn't have the whole flax seeds which are kind of key for the recipe.  I still don't have any essential oils at all, sadly.  I did have a lot of determination.  If this failed, it failed.  Life would go on.  If it succeeded, though...

Oh, my hair,  how I've missed you!

So I took milled flax seeds, thought to myself that there were so many things that could go so wrong with using it, and added it to the water.  I low-balled the flax seeds because I wanted something only faintly gel-like, the closest consistency to my old hair conditioner I could get.

Then I boiled it, thinking the whole time I was stirring, "This isn't going to work.  This totally isn't going to work.  If this doesn't work, I'll turn it into soup stock."  And I would have, too.  But it worked.

After what seemed like a small chunk of forever, I noticed the spoon getting just a little slippery.  I got all excited and added more flax seed flour.  Then, stirring with one hand, and rummaging in the spice cabinet with the other, I pulled out some ground cloves and added it to the brew.  Like I said, I am still without essential oils, so whatever's in the spice cabinet ends up getting thrown into my creations.  Like my fiance's rosemary, dried mint leaves, cloves, vanilla extract, orange extract.  If it looks like it might smell kinda pretty, into the recipe it goes.

I brewed it a little longer, to let the cloves steep, and thought "This might work!  This might actually work!  I really didn't think this would work!"

And then came the moment of truth (and the reason I titled this post as I did).  I didn't have any pantyhose, so I poured the brew into a common man's handkerchief draped over an oversize coffee mug.  I've very recently realized just how awesome handkerchiefs are.  I mean, yeah, you can blow your nose on them, but they're good for so many other things.  For example, this particular handkerchief had recently been used as my labneh cheese-cloth and, in my opinion, worked better than the commercial cheese cloth I'd purchased for my first batch.  I figured if anything would work for me, my best bet was the humble (but oh-so-useful) man's handkerchief.

Surprisingly, despite all the difficulties so many people seemed to have with this recipe, it worked like a charm.  It strained out all the gritty bits of clove and flax seed perfectly.  I'm pretty sure the finer grains got through, so for all I know, I'll have little grits of flax seed in my dried hair, but the current mixture looks pretty uniform in consistency.  It's viscus, but not so much as some of the recipes I've seen.  It's browner, too, because of the cloves and flax seed flour (as opposed to whole flax seeds).  I added orange extract to it once I'd filtered it, and now it smells like some sort of tasty holiday beverage.

I don't think I'd mind one bit smelling like a tasty holiday beverage...

So, anyway, I popped it in the fridge to cool, and it now looks (the coffee mug helps this illusion) like some sort of goofied cappuccino.

Wish me luck putting it in my hair.  I'll probably post a followup consisting mostly of either "it worked, it really worked!" or "OMG, it took me half an hour to get the gunk out of my hair."

I'll post pictures, too. :)

Sprouts! (And, of course, nice-smelling hair.)

So the thyme and the Italian and Genovese basil sprouted yesterday morning.  I was shocked, because I'd expected a much longer waiting period after planting them in the little egg carton I had them all nestled into.  By the end of the day one of the oregano plants was peeping its tiny head into the world as well.  I'm very excited.

Yesterday was definitely a day of... something.  DIY-ness?  Crunchy-ness?  Sadly, I haven't really researched what people call what I'm doing so much as I've just been doing it.

For example.  I've been doing the no-shampoo thing for perhaps a month so far.  But I missed the way my hair used to smell when I poured half a gallon of conditioner into it every morning (and never rinsed it out).  So yesterday morning, I researched the ingredients of my one of my two homemade air fresheners a little before spraying the stuff directly into my hair.  Now, my hair smells awesome.  (And it's a pretty color, too.  See?)

So then, since I was feeling inspired (and my skin had been dry for days) I tried using coconut oil in place of lotion.  I honestly think it works better.  No, that's not just my "it's good for you, so it must be better" side talking.  I mean that I always hated lotion.  It left this sticky residue stuff on my skin that left me feeling like I needed a bath.  But the coconut oil just seemed to absorb into my skin, leaving it smooth and soft and healthy-feeling.

Yay.  And then, because my mother-in-law had a bag of kale that was going to go bad, I made mixed berry/orange/ginger/kale smoothies.  And those were pretty good.

So yesterday was a good day.  I did healthy things.  I tried new things.  And my plants started sprouting!  All totaled, it was a very good day.

That evening, a final thought crossed my mind before bed: in our purge of excess belongings, I've been careful to keep a hold on a single bag of stripper gear.  A just-in-case bag.  One pair of dance shoes, a few outfits, some makeup.  I realized now's probably the time to go through that bag and let of the final vestiges of my stripperdom.  I think that stage of my life just might be done for good.

My new job will be to publish my (damn) novels and garden organic food so as to save us money by cutting our grocery bill as much as possible.  Knock on wood, but I don't believe I'll be returning to the strip club.

I Get Craftsy When I'm Nervous

So we moved.  And moving is stressful.  No matter how organized or well-planned or easy (and this one was easy) it's still stressful.  I've even got the stress acne to prove it.

It's been wonderful at the new place, but as part of getting settled in, I've noticed myself producing a flurry of new recipes for everything under the sun.  I tried making yogurt.  That didn't work.  I've got two different times of homemade air-spray room fresheners stewing.  I made a kitty-litter air freshener out of lime flesh and salt.  I made beet hummus ( try it, it's heavenly.)  I made parmesan flax seed crackers to go with it.  And that was just yesterday.  I also made zucchini slices with pizza sauce and toppings spread over them.  Ate the last of that this morning.  I made salsa.  I'm growing scallions in my mother-in-law's window.  I made... something else.  I don't remember what.

We got seeds in the mail, so I'm probably going to go through those and figure out how much space each plant will need in our garden and how many of each plant to grow.  I think I want an indoor tomato plant, too, because I want to eat fresh tomatoes all winter, too.  Hopefully the scallions grow.

Maybe I should start knitting?  I saw a beautiful diy fire pit that I could totally make for perhaps $30.  Of course, before I do any of that, I really, seriously want to build my composting toilet.  Seriously, I want this thing.  Bad.

Right now, though, as I've run out of funds for the time being.  So... that's that for now.

P.S. Finally got some pictures up.  The first one is me draining my vanilla clove air freshener through a coffee filter.  I later ended up spraying this stuff into my hair to make it smell pretty.  It's awesome. :)

This second picture is both my air fresheners sitting in jars.  The one on the right is a citrus vodka mix that's still steeping.  (It started out smelling like vodka and ended up smelling like oranges.)  The one on the left is the vanilla clove.  I don't think the picture does it justice.  It came out as this beautiful amber liquid that shone very prettily in the morning light.