#TIME FOR SOME MAD SCIENCE AW YISS

[triflesandparsnips]

Having spent some hours contemplating the world, considering my choices, and also sleeping, I have some tentative thoughts.

1. Did I stir the soap and hydrosol before I covered the pan? I'm not sure I did. Have I done so previously? At least once, I think. Why would not doing so have caused the blob to form? No fucking clue, but it sure would be fascinating to see if I can make it do it again.

2. Would temperature/humidity affect a soap and hydrosol mix? The new workshop space has, for the last several days, been very hot and very humid. The first time I made neroly washballs, I was in the old workshop; the second time in the new, but earlier in the year when the temperatures weren't so dire and *checks notes* there wasn't a hurricane coming up the coast. Did... did the mix get cooked, somehow? Did I accidentally start a rebatch? And (depending on how this version turns out, tbh) could I replicate the effect with my oven, a pan of water, and another well-timed meteorological event? Igor fetch the weather machine--

3. What happens if I add salt to this? To be honest, I had largely intended this version to be the test where instead of salt (v.1) or orrisroot and then also salt when orrisroot didn't work (v.2), I threw in an ingredient that isn't listed but is, I think, an unintended additive based on how labdanum used to be prepared: almond meal.

Tangent time!

Labdanum, the Sticky Boi

Labdanum, as you may recall, is a brown sticky resin made originally by collecting the goo accumulated on goats and sheep that had been grazing on various Cistus family plantlife.

It smells amazing and it's referenced most often, in 1600s-1700s apothecary and household manuals, as something you add in powdered form to various recipes, incenses, and medicaments.

Since I am sometimes a reasonable person of the modern age -- or I was, anyway, during this part of my funky alchemist journey of self-discovery -- I first searched for powdered labdanum available for purchase.

There was none. The essential oil, sure, lots of places. The absolutes, yes, from very serious perfumery sources and for significantly more money. I could even get the resin itself, unmodified, through small independent sellers.

But powdered? Zilch.

Fine, thought I. Fine. Maybe we've moved beyond its use as a powder. Maybe other things are cheaper, more sustainable, more easily worked now. These things happen. Let us never forget the tragedy of Heinrik and the powdering pearls experiment gah

But I wanted to at least try to use the ingredient as it was listed in the original recipe. So I went looking around modern sources for directions on how to powder it myself.

Which is how I found out that, according to modern sources, you can't.

At the time, I recall deciding that this must have meant that there was, once again, some kind of shorthand or missing step or assumed understanding in my manuals that I, as a person 300 years in the future, just didn't have the context for. In lieu of historical accuracy, I sighed sadly and settled for buying the essential oil (which, to be fair, is still brown and sticky, so there was that small comfort).

Some months passed, and then: I discovered my best apothecary bae, Moyse Charas, and his book The Royal Pharmacopœea.

I love this book. It's got recipes; it's got definitions; and it's got, thank all the gods and pretty little fishes, DIY instructions--

Including, to my awed delight, an entire chapter on how to grind anything to a powder.

And so when it comes to labdanum...

Nevertheless upon some occasions, and for some Substances, there must be recourse to Addition. As for Example; If you were to pound the Roots of Birth-wort, Gentian, or any such-like herbs that are of a clammy Substance, though they seem to be well dry'd, they will stick to the Morter and the Pestle, unless you mix them with Almonds[....] They help also to reduce into powder Ambergreese, all Bitumens, and all rosiny Juices dry'd, as Scammony, Benjamin, Balsom, and the like.

Almonds.

Which brings us back to

The Wash-balls of Neroly (Again)

I've been following Simon Barbe's recipe and instructions, though reduced to testing (rather than "let's supply the whole neighborhood") amounts:

dried soap

orange-blossom water

labdanum

neroli

But doing so has led, the previous two times I've made these, to a particular "devil's marshmallow"-like concoction that has led to late night panic posts and, eventually, adding salt to the fuckers to actually make the mixes solidify. This, I have long felt, is not what Barbe intended, as he's surprisingly good at providing instructions, and I'm sure he would've mentioned if salt needed to be added at any point.

So version 3.0 of this recipe was supposed to be the test where I added -- as would have been present in the original powdered labdanum -- almond meal.

...but now, I am confronted with this new variable. This new, enjellified variable of uncertain origin.

Which after, again, much thought and some sleep, means there is but one last question.

4. What would happen if I split this batch in two and added salt to one and almond meal to the other?

Still in the workshop because I'm doing ALL THE THINGS apparently, so time for

The Wash-Balls of Neroly

Version 3.0

Step 1: Fill wee pan with dried Nablus soap

Step 2: Glug glug the orange-blossom water yum

Step 3: Fill to top hooray!

Step 4: Put on a little hat and soak up, pretty bb

(but do not associate with the lavender washballs beside you, they are up to no good)

I shall come back and stir you daily, little soap goo, until you are ready for THE NEW VARIATION that maybe won't make me fucking salt you all to hell. Again.

Sleep tight, little fucko. *kiss kiss*