2023-07-07 Lather Games SOTD
- Brush: Semogue 2015 HD (22x55mm "High Density" "Finest" Badger) #SHD
- Razor: Wolfman WR1
- Blade: Lord Classic (2)
- Lather: Barrister and Mann - Bay Rum
- Post Shave: Old Spice - Original
- Fragrance: Chatillon Lux - Horsefeather
/u/jeffm54321 and /u/cowzilla3 - today's theme (and my shave today) are dedicated to you guys. No joke. I know you two love your bay rums and old spices.
Anyway
Last summer my brother in law had some really excellently scented beard balm and he said it was "bay rum." I was a bit incredulous because I had smelled Stirling's bay rum in the past and there was absolutely no resemblance whatsoever, but I thought to myself - "Maybe Stirling's is just way spicier than the norm?" So I decided to try some bay rums when I got back from the cabin and asked jeffm54321 for suggestions because I know he's the local expert. Barrister and Mann's version was his top recommendation at the time. I ordered it along with a few other samples and when they showed up...
Nope. They smelled exactly how I expected a bay rum would smell based on my prior experience with Stirling - spicy as all get-out. So spicy that I never actually got around to trying any of them and today was my first go with bay rum since probably 2020. I'm pretty sure my brother in law's beard balm was just some bullshit poorly named pre-blended scent or something. Wish I could find out what that artisan was using so I could buy it and dump it into some soap of my own. It smelled excellent and not-bay-rummy-at-all. I'd probably call it "Emerald Leather" or something like that.
Anyway, #fof for wally:
Today my shave is wicked spicy and my wife is going to hate me. Bay rum soap, an old 1997 pre-plastic-bottle of Old Spice, and my 2019 Feats of Fragrance grand prize Horsefeather, which is based on the mixed drink that bears its name. (See the article on pages 15-20 of the Wetshavers Digest e-zine linked above for a more in-depth review.) "Scent Notes" could be as simple as: lemon, bitters, ginger beer, whiskey; or they could be as expansive as: lemon, saffron, anise, cardamom, ginger, oak, caramel, coumarin, vanilla, honey, lactones, etc. All depends what decade you're targeting with your marketing materials.
Challenge: Other Hobbies?
My hobbies could be broadly summed up as "I enjoy making stuff." Guitars, analog audio electronics, and knit/crotchet items form the bulk of my corporeal creative outputs, and "playing music" would be the largest part of my non-tangible creative outputs. Right now I have two sweaters, three electric guitars, one bass guitar, two acoustic guitars, four guitar pedals, and a new desk all in progress at various levels of completion ranging from "so far I've only drawn up the plans" to "I just need to finish painting this dang thing."
I would say the guitar-stuff-building communities are at least as weird as ours with the split between builders who methodically and scientifically experiment with their designs and make un-biased decisions based on proper double-blind tests, and the builders who believe every weird piece of hype they read on the internet (like "this brand of electronic component sounds different than this brand" even though they're physically identical and would have to break the laws of physics to create the kind of sonic differences they claim to hear). Very similar vibe as when you compare simple but effective soap formulas like Stirling or Catie's new base to something with a million trendy ingredients like, say, A&E K2e or whatever new soup Mo is stewing up.