#stede bonnet's theoretical self care extravagances

[triflesandparsnips]

Live from the workshop, trying another batch of soap of neroly, and GUESS WHAT FOLKS

WE GOT

GOO

[triflesandparsnips]

IT MADE IT THROUGH HOLY GUACAMOLE

Recommendation: stick the pearl pomatum in the refrigerator and it'll calm the fuck down scent-wise. Future iterations, though, may use orange-blossom water (or... maybe rosemary water if I can get it, I SHALL HAVE TO DO MORE HUMORAL VIBE RESEARCH).

Aaaaaaa, though, I'm so glad it survived, ENJOY.

For anybody else who wants in on this-- behold:

here I sit peacefully doing my little crafts, having finally reached an understanding with my sewing machine as the doorbell rings

who could it be at this time of day?

(the postman asking me if I will take my neighbour's teleshopping packages. or bringing me my buttinette order, if I'm lucky)

it IS the postman but he doesn't hand me anything. Instead, in an unexpected turn of events, he asks me for money.

oh? OH!

International package! for me!! Let's see what's inside 😁

a box! And in that box

oh my god

it's the Actual 18th Centruy Cosmetics from our resident self-proclaimed funky little alchemist @triflesandparsnips!!

They're so pretty :')

I open this and it suddenly smells like a whole rose garden in here. And it's shimmery! A little bit.

I kind of wish I had opened this first. It has a very nice, subtle scent (that I can't appreciate properly because ROSES) and it feels very nice and moisturizing on the lips

noted

*immediately puts on mouth*

Thank you trifles!! What a wonderful surprise I can't thank you enough 💜💜💜💜

[triflesandparsnips]

And finally, I have started a new experiment for a new Stede Bonnet extravagance that is too fucking extra for goddamn words.

BEHOLD MY MYSTERIOUS PROGRESS PHOTOS

Figure 1. A strange, poorly measured powder (because I had neither teaspoons nor fucking drams at my disposal)

Figure 2. Oh no.

Figure 3. Oh no.

(It isn't powdered orrisroot and yet I am sure it is somehow to blame.)

Tomorrow I must return to it and see what time, and my own Terrible Choices, has wrought.

[triflesandparsnips]

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*

[triflesandparsnips]

The thing about trying to Frankenstein a fictional lavender soap out of bits and pieces of a bunch of historical recipes--

--recipes that were already missing several crucial steps (or iNGREDIENTS)--

--because the authors just assumed you already knew them, so why repeat themselves, everyone already knows ALL THAT--

The thing about this whole apothecary gig is... is that I actually am getting comfortable working with these ingredients and these processes and these scents and these tactile sensations under the curved press of my pestle, just like all the books say, the living skills of practice and experimentation and experience cut down to a simple shorthand, just "ex Arte," just "according to Art"...

which means I could FUCKING SENSE from the

SECOND

GODDAMN

P H O T O G R A P H

THAT THIS MOTHERFUCKER ISN'T GOING TO DRY PROPERLY

[triflesandparsnips]

!! YAY I'M SO GLAD THEY MADE IT THROUGH.

tbh every day that international customs doesn't destroy my weird packages entirely is another great day

also:

The lip balm is honestly such a good entry point to Shenanigans, I absolutely recommend it.

One of these days I'm actually going to put together some zines or chapbooks of my processes (with... maybe fully accurate modern instructions) so others can follow in my alchemical footsteps, and it's going to be an amazing disaster.

And for anyone else out there who wants to experience questionable packaging and Stede Bonnet's soft, sweet, and often-cookie-scented vibe, you too can play Russian roulette with homemade goods through my shop here:

...where there is currently historical cold cream and lip balm labeled for normies who don't know about the Gentleman Pirate, and where I soon hope to have:

variant labels for OFMD fans (where, for instance, the cold cream is absolutely going to be relabeled as, ahem, The Seaman's Friend), and

MY MISTAKES (by which I mean the ugly soaps, the weird soaps, the unfortunate soaps, and whatever other mid-process things end up coming out of my workshop, at a steep discount for your horrified enjoyment)

WOO

aaaa my @triflesandparsnips lip balm and cold cream came in the post!!! with excellent timing, as i was just digging in the bowels of my last chapstick to finish it off

everything smells so SWEET oh my god??? 😍😍 I'M SO EXCITED TO TRY THEM OUT sdlgjaldhfkjgadfh

also fun fact, the australian border force clearly thought something was terribly suspicious about the package, because they opened it for inspection, lol. nothing was removed, but they left a note and everything. huh.

[triflesandparsnips]

....I think I

may have spoken too soon

about the latest soap experiment

[triflesandparsnips]

First there was my mostly historically accurate Stede Bonnet lip balm--

then there was the continuing adventure of the mostly historically accurate scented soaps wash balls--

and apparently I didn't learn my lesson, because get ready for...

The Pearl Pomatum

(which is to say, the face cream)

(...I make myself laugh, and that's what's important here.)

[triflesandparsnips]

Meanwhile, shoutout to my apprentice Young Thomas, who may finally have taken an Injury trying to chomp up the almond

but digging himself from the grave I perhaps too hastily laid him came... A HERO

FREDERIK IS BACK

[triflesandparsnips]

Meanwhile, a pictorial journey for

The Lavender Wash Balls

Version 4.0

Figure 1. Partial goo-boy, extremely sus

Tragically I did not take a photo of it stirred up, but it would perhaps not be inaccurate to say it looked, a bit, like ropey intestines.

...if that's something you care to picture, anyway. Um.

ANYWAY.

On the same day as my recent soap of neroly betrayal, I decided to stir the guts goo again.

Figure 2, 3, and 4. The only reasonable conclusion to be made is that gremlins are generating micro-climates around my experiments

...welp.

In any case, I went ahead and put together a new, hopefully Less Evil scent mix for it:

1 gram (instead of 1 ounce) of cloves,

1 tablespoon of orris root (my nemesis),

1 tablespoon of benjamin (aka benzoin), and

a scant handful of dried lavender.

Figure 5. Get scented, fool.

The resulting mix was... well, very reminiscent, in consistency, with the very first ugly batch that eventually dried into the shit-soap variant, which is not ideal. The base goo was also slightly too dry to throughly mix with the spices, such that there is also an unintentional marbling that could get... weird.

Figure 6. Several suspicious lavender balls and one neroly ball just trying its best

...I will check on them again soon. Maybe rerolling them, like I did the Pretty batch of neroly soaps, will lead to something reasonable.

...Maybe.

[triflesandparsnips]

Ahahahaha whaaaaat @gardenharuspex? Me? Researching and recreating household and medicinal recipes within the very narrow timeframe of the Western Scientific Revolution with a hard cutoff of 1718 purely because that's apparently my very niche way of engaging with my current gay pirate fandom?

...it's been a little under 1 and a half years since I made Stede Bonnet's lip balm, cmon now, I am the definition of reasonable.

[triflesandparsnips]

Oh shit oh shit oh shit--

I THINK I'VE FIGURED OUT ANOTHER SOAP MYSTERY

[triflesandparsnips]

I have spent a non-zero amount of time drafting an update about Stede's historically plausible 1700s skin cream and tragically I'm still not done.

is there a short video surprise yes there is

[triflesandparsnips]

Would you mind me asking What kind of soap recipy uses a morter and pestle? It looks super nice and fluffy and fun tho. My wife and I mostly make regular cold process soap.

HELLO FRIEND

Not to get overly excited about this, but you have ACCIDENTALLY STUMBLED upon my NOT-SO-SECRET LAIR of HYPERFIXATION GLORY.

...which is to say, for about a year now I've been fucking around with turn-of-the-18th-century (pre-1718 being my arbitrary Our Flag Means Death cutoff) household and pharmacological manuals for the purpose of experimental archaeology.

With regard to soap in particular, the very very short version is that Nice, Scented, Solid Soaps, during this very particular time period, were basically dried/grated Middle Eastern (hot process) olive oil soap that was then reconstituted in Western kitchens/stillrooms/apothecaries. Mortars and pestles were the basic go-to for it, though bain-marie's were also on occasion utilized.

(For the longer, more fun version, see my link list below or click here.)

While the majority of my shit can now be found under my #funky little alchemist with funky little interests and #trifles the amateur history enthusiast strikes again tags, we all know that tumblr is nonsense, so here's a brief link list:

It started with "a pomatum for the lips" -- i.e., lip balm, from the 1711 English translation of Nicolas Lémery's Arcana Curiosa

I then went on to the significantly more complicated and in-depth matter of SOAP --

     -- My long post regarding a great deal of research and first attempts (encompassing: "Update 1: Let's Talk about SOAP", "Update 2: Cursed Once Again with a TERRIBLE DISCOVERY", and "Update 3: Sometimes Science Gets Ugly")      --My still-ongoing follow-up post (encompassing: "Update 4: Return of the Soap King")      --Several mini-updates that take place between those two posts

     --Aaaaand this post answering someone who asked about infused oil versus essential oil in these soap recipes, which eventually turned into a whole thing about HUMORALISM

And I've just started poking at the matter of "another fine pomatum for the face" -- i.e., a pearl-powder face cream, which is still early days with "Update 1: A Brief History of PUTTING PEARLS IN THINGS (IN EUROPE) (AND MY KITCHEN)"

...With regard to soap in particular, I am super aware that I'm playing around from the opposite end of most modern soapmakers -- there may be very obvious ways to accomplish the stuff I'm trying, or there may be very known reasons for why the stuff I'm doing is or isn't coming out right. But since my entire vibe is """What If: Shenanigans,""" I'm trying to suss my way through all this via just the manuals and receipts I can find, and seeing what happens based on that.

If you want to play along, soap-wise, I do link to several recipes as I go, but here's what I've referenced so far:

"Balles of fope for barbers of diuerfe fortes and favours" (Balls of soap for barbers of diverse sorts and savors), The secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piemont (1595)

"A delicate wafhing ball." (A delicate washing ball), Delightes for Ladies (1609)

"Of Soaps that Beautifie", Cosmeticks or, the beautifying part of physick (1660)

"CHAP. XVIII. Of perfuming Soaps", Polygraphice (1685)

"A delicate washing-ball", The Accomplish'd ladies delight (1686)

"To make excellent Washballs", Pharmacopaeia Bateana (1694)

"Of Wash-balls", The French Perfumer (1696)

✨ ENJOY ✨

[triflesandparsnips]

Not an ask, but I made your orange blossom lip balm! While I was at it, I made the face pomatum too. The lip balm seems great, although I couldn't get it to colour at all and it smells more like coconut than anything else. Oh well. The pomatum is, uhm... trickier. It's way more waxy so harder to apply, I can't imagine using it on my face. But I did my elbows and it seemed fine for that. Anyway, thank you for the happy little piratey lunacy!

YESSSSS

So the lip balm:

With regard to color, the only experiment I really tried with that was adding colored mica, and I only did it the once. I've never tried alkanet (because Potential Liver Problems), and while I've considered trying tumeric or similar I've largely shrugged and backburnered that aspect for now. However, you can see a bit in this photo the color differences between the first batch (with the mica) and subsequent:

Figure 1. The first three versions of the lip balm. Bottom left (v.1.1) has the mica, and is slightly more orange-ish than the other two.

With regard to the coconut smell, I've found that I have to be very generous with the orange-blossom water at several stages of cooking in order to keep it present as a scent. While my initial recipe calls for only two "spoonfuls" (which I decided meant a soup spoon of some kind), as of version 3.0, I now specifically use 2+ tablespoons (2 in the original mix, enough extra for the arrowroot, and then... idk, a bit more to Vibe as needed, so it really comes out to more like 3 Tbs). I have notes for 3.1 to up the count to 4-5 Tbs, though we'll see what that does to the consistency.

I also pretty much always make two variants these days: one with coconut oil, and one with sweet almond oil (as described in the original French recipe!). So that might be a fun avenue to try in future.

ON TO THE FACE POMATUM:

I am deeply interested in what your consistency ended up being -- version 1.0 (which I have completed THIS VERY EVENING, and for which I must write up proper notes, because GOSH) is what I'd call a Ye Olde Cold Cream rather than a more modern facial lotion (which tend to be moisturizing without being heavy, as opposed to this, which is easy to use, deeeeefinitely moisturizing, but, uh, will definitely get that moisturizing goodness on anything it touches, goddamn).

Anyway, mine came out buttery af, and seems to still be so, but somewhere between removing it from the water and adding the borax, the fucker got itty bitty granules in it-- just enough to be annoying. Bah. Further research is required.

Figure 2. A smooth(ish) operator pomatum; aka, a sneak peek into later apothecary revelations.

ANYWAY. Thank you @ivoryfeathers for joining in the gay pirate mad scientist experimental fun!

[triflesandparsnips]

Guys omg look at my precious weirdos:

Fast facts:

They've been drying for approximately... maybe 49 hours (they've got another 12 or so days to go, or longer if I can be patient enough)

No sinking or losing shape that I can tell, and no significant loss of size (...next time I'm gonna weigh them first, hoho)

They've darkened slightly into the brown range, but it is, crucially, completely even all the way around

They still have that neat speckled granite look to them... and with this color brown, and how round and nice they are, I sort of can imagine these having gilded stamps on them-- it'd probably pop against the brown, tbh

They are not smooth to the touch-- kinda pumice-y, really. Not sure how that's going to play when I try them later.

The smell isn't as sharply spicy as it was, which is a bit sad for me, but it is significantly more mellow, as one might expect a gentle soap to be. A fascinating combo with the light abrasiveness.

They feel pretty solid, but then, I'm being pretty careful with them...

...I wonder what would happen if I tried to press a pseudo stamp into one of them

...

I'M GONNA DO IT

SOAP MINI-UPDATE:

I'm going to go check on the version 2.0 lavender wash balls.

Will they have undergone a metamorphosis?

Or will they have succumbed to t̶͔̤̪͔̊̐̓͜ẖ̷̒̉̓̎̽̊e̸̪͈͎̓̒̚ ̸̬̖̹̥͜͝b̴̨̡͈͂͛͑̽̓͊ŗ̸̬̹̯̳̠́̏̚ò̸̡̼̼̟͎̑͌͑̑͘w̶̘͕̱͇̒͋͝n̶̹̟͊̉̓̄̓̕ ̴̧̮̘̼̖̳͐̃̚͝ḧ̸͇̩̹̣͖́o̶̖̳̭͔̐́̉ŗ̵̲̉͋̾̄͂͌r̵̨̛̳͚͓̮̐̇̆̉̚ô̴̯̟̹͇̾͒͝͝r̸͓̩̳̉̑͒̒̉̒ ?

I am filled with a terrible foreboding.