I'm heartbroken over the election results and can't shake a feeling of impending doom. The shave was fine.
The penultimate Stankening of TabOKtoberfest 2024 was a nice one. The Médaille d'Or with the pitted surface is a smooth loud shaver that is a joy to use. I like its utilitarian design. There's nothing opulent about it. No fancy gold, no flashy special point design, just a big square point hollow ground that shaves well.
I love this Sparschweinchen, but today it made me really impatient about the Moarteen. Patience is difficult. 😅
The way I see it you have two options:
There is no rule that the community and Reddit have to be a package deal
A blissful early morning Stankening. The Frio edge is showing first signs of wear after 24 uses. Still comfortable, but the smooth bliss phase is at an end.
@PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social brought out the Ash yesterday and sparked a little crisis/opportunity moment in me. On the one hand "oh, fuck, summer is over, we're past the equinox, let's check the vitamin D reserves", on the other: Autumn Ash 🎉 !
Today, I'm mouthwateringly sweet, spicy, and smoky. I love the SW base, and I'm looking forward to more of it now that it's SW season again.
Back to work morning shave. My feelings may be mixed today, but the shave was on point. I'm starting to see what people mean when they say that SOCs take long to break in. This brush isn't changing much from shave to shave anymore, and none of the tips have split yet (which I understand to be a major step in the break in process for these).
Today is already the last day of the beach portion of our summer break. It went too quickly, but it was also great. Djunior loves the water and made great progress learning to swim. Great shave with Soft Heart Oceana today.
The frag description intrigued me so I YOLOed a set of Koké which arrived yesterday. Look at this:
Top notes
- bergamot
- burnet
- rhubarb
Middle Notes
- ginger
- animalic notes
- white pear
Base Notes
- wine leaves
- vanilla from Tahiti
- guaiac wood
Rhubarb with pear and ginger is what caught my eye. The vanilla note worried me a bit (maybe a cloying sweet scent), but the animalic notes seemed unlikely in a sweet fruity frag. I asked around a bit, but it seems this is too new and nobody on the sub, our lemmy, or any @wetshaving follower on the fediverse has tried it yet.
I sniffed the splash fist, and right off the bat I was intrigued. So it is sweet and heavy at first, but not cloying at all. The animalic notes keep it grounded. On the skin, the scent quickly becomes lighter, and fresher. I immediately thought of using this for AA and ran it by my wife with devastating effect: "Oh please don't use this for August, choose something nice, not this rotten chewing gum". So that happened.
Experience tells me that not all hope is lost in such situations. Valley of Ashes for instance - "a dirty gas station" off the bottle - gets me "oh you smell nice" if surreptitiously used and inconspicuously flaunted in her presence. Weinstrasse is either "cat piss" or "a whorehouse" when I wear two spritzes or more, but a single spritz is "fresh" or "delicious".
So this morning's was an important test shave. First off, I've lost track of the soap bases that AYLM has, and this seems to be a new-to me variant of their hard soap base, of which I've only previously tried the original first offering in Verbena Toscana. The ingredient lists are identical for the first 11 ingredients and diverge there. This new soap has menthol and cannabis oil here followed by more diverging ingredients. It seems like a small tweak, but it feels like this base creates a creamier lather, or I just got super lucky on my first try. Point is, this lather was dense, wet, and slick. Not anything extraordinary, but solid, leaving nothing to be wished for. The menthol level is low, so low that it took me a while to even notice it.
Really just a wonderful shave with the chonky and smooth Frio wedge. The menthol level in the splash is also low enough not to bother me. Noice.
My wife didn't complain, even better, it "smells ok on my skin". Boom.
Not enough to choose it for AA, but definitely enough to keep this around. I count that as a win.
Tagging @sahenders@sub.wetshaving.social and u/Marquis90 who were curious about my first impression.
Reflection keeps confusing me. Warm and fresh, tart and with a piercing note I can't place (maybe the makrut leaf? I have no idea what that smells like). I struggle with finding good words for it. "Piercing" seems negative, but it's piercing in a good way. The scent reminded me of something and today I finally figured out what it was: T&S Madagascar.
I fetched the splash and smelled them next to each other and got all excited that I found that same piercing note (less pleasant in Madagascar, which isn't a favourite of mine)! Then I checked the scent notes for both and they have exactly zero overlap 🤬 (Now I hear u/mammothben's mantra in the back of my head: "Scent notes aren't real, they are sweet marketing lies", but really I suspect my sus nose to be playing tricks.).
To continue the roller coaster of emotions that was this shave, when I applied the splash, there was zero feedback! I had met the u/iamsms splash-feels-like-water-challenge in a three-pass shave with this kinda new-to-me razor on loan from u/wallygator without even really trying that hard! Huzzah! What an accomplishment! Then I remembered that T&S splashes are alcohol-free witch hazel toners just in time for the frag tingle to set in and remind me why I practically never use my Madagascar set.
Oh well. Interesting shave for sure, and it got me to reflect a bit more about lovely Reflection.
Sun 10 Nov 2024
❤Sea❤Spice❤Lime❤
I used this two AAs in a row until my wife asked me to cool it with "the lemony one". Such a treat to use.
This is my first time using the tiny Mühle (they call 21mm "medium" for some reason) with the pretty handle and it's a real adjustment coming from bigger, denser knots. This thing has basically no back bone and feels empty. On the other hand, even on this first use, it lathered surprisingly well and had zero badger funk. I'm curious whether I will appreciate this style of brush after a few days of using it, or whether this was just a pricey mistake. Currently leaning mistake, but open to be convinced, since objectively, it didn't make a bad lather at all.