July 18, 2023 - Spooky Season

• Brush: AP Shave Co - Ivory Purple 26mm G5A SHD Premium Synth
• Razor: GEM Junior
• Blade: Personna GEM PTFE
• Lather: Southern Witchcrafts - Samhain
• Post Shave: Summer Break Soaps - Valedictorian Splash
• Fragrance: Summer Break Soaps - Valedictorian EdP

FOF

Today’s Challenge and shave:

Look if you want to here. My beard is a lot of white hair, but some darker blond bits are holding out. Still wasn’t sure how visible it would be, so I evened up the sideburns to get some darker, longer hairs to show. I over hydrated the lather and tried adding more, but the sample is running low. I got it to an ok lather, but on the drippy side. Still, the performance was pretty good. Pretty decent shave today.

Today’s theme:

Reading through the previous posts today, Southern Witchcrafts - Samhain is an obvious choice. The Druidic (I think, maybe just Celtic?) holiday of Samhain got restyled into All Hallows Eve (Halloween) with the spread of Christianity. Christians were really good at co-opting other culture’s holidays like Saturnalia. So the name alone would make it a fall theme, and definitely spooky season. Also pumpkin is in it, and that is a fall fruit.

Today’s fragrance:

It is getting harder to match up new fragrances for me. Some that may fit, I used already, or may be a better fit later this month. Looking at the scent description of pumpkin, sandalwood, bourbon, and tobacco, I knew I’d have the best chance by working up the tobacco. Smelling the soap, I get an earthy sweetness, with dark undertones. I think I am mostly getting the pumpkin and tobacco. For the last decade, pumpkin spice has really blown up. So I thought, can I incorporate some of those scents. I settled on SBS Valedictorian. It has a lot that works well with Samhain. Vanilla, Ginger, Tobacco, and Smoke are some that bring out the scents in the soap. Ginger and vanilla are usually in pumpkin pie. The tobacco is what really tied it together for me.

Southern Witchcrafts has some creative scents that play up with the Witchcrafts in the name. Samhain and Pomona are the two I’ve liked the most out of those I have tried. The others had to much of a darker earthiness that didn’t gel with me. The soap base though is excellent even when I start with 3x more water than I should have.

Today’s Haiku:

Pumpkin Spice Season,

Is back early in my house,

But not in my mug.