Category: oil
update: coconut oil experiment
EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY AND RATIONALE: see tentative pre-review (2013-04-11)
NB: what works for my hair won’t necessarily work for anyone else’s hair.
MATERIALS
1. Hair =
- fine (strand-diameter)
- thick (density, number of strands)
- slightly wavy all over (2b), curly to frizzy in places (3b) especially in the underside and at the temples: this is the hair that grows the slowest and is most prone to breakage, on many people
- dryish
- longish: longest bits are between shoulder-blades, definitely now well below shoulder-length but not yet in the bra-hitting zone
- sensitive scalp, can be eczema-prone
- untreated: never been dyed, retextured, straightened, hot-iron-tortured, etc.
- very rarely blow-dried (like maybe once a year or so, plus when at hairdresser’s even though I’m training them, slowly but surely, not to dry my hair to death every time and to respect the curl, man; may also be time to shop around on the hairdressing front)
- and basically healthy
2. Coconut oil =
- a virgin one that’s also organic and fair-trade
(because I’m a hippy-dippy granolarama sentimentalist type of fool)
RESULTS: WHAT WORKS
- Brush hair
- Scoop oil out of jar. Melt between palms of hands.
- Apply to hair, raking it through. Concentrating on underside and known frizz, then rest of hair. When all hair is oiled, I’m done.
- Twist into a medium-high bun and wrap up in cloth. Usually half a leg of an old pair of cotton/bamboo thick winter tights. Yay for recycling.
- Leave hair and oil to their own devices for an hour.* Make coffee, eat breakfast, drink coffee, read the news, start the usual daily deletion of pointless email crap, start dealing with email crap that’s not pointless (and, if very lucky, isn’t basically crap. With all possible due and undue respect to colleagues and others I work with.) Continue reading
reviews: some experimental failures
OK, a first one would of course be the Viagra Paradigm. Today is the 1st of May. A good day on which to reflect on alternatives, and maybe do more than sit around doing so at home in an armchair. If it’s a nice sunny day, why not go and do something actively and proactively about it? Might involve some singing too, and that’s very good for you.
Preamble and/or irreelevent digression over, back to folly-praising business and beauty products. Continue reading
tentative pre-review: coconut oil
Just because I know my skin reacts to 99.999% of known substances in the universe is no reason why I should not keep trying stuff out on it. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is where there may be a really interesting (and sometimes epic) conflict between rationality and common sense. This is very interesting to me right now because part of my current work—in my real life existence—kinda sorta involves these very topics. Long story. Much of it probably not very interesting to anyone else, even people in my field of work. And we’re a pretty geeky field.
But I digress.
Always a good way to start a post.
Previous use of coconut oil: Continue reading
oh lordy
“Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls!” (the venerable and sagacious Father Jack, in the great 20th-century Irish epic, “Father Ted”)
or, a continuation of our adventures in the Mysterious and Marvellous Land of Feck… Continue reading
“Bah humbug” to New Year’s resolutions
Yes, so much for the fancy-pants complication of my life by moving from ONE to TWO multi-purpose oils. It’s just way too complicated for me, my bathroom, my clumsiness first thing in the morning, and my myopia.
Back to basics, tried and trusted, that work: ONE OIL TO RULE THEM ALL and in the darkness bind them. In a good way, Continue reading
an update for 2013
Happy New Year!
This won’t be one of those feckin awful “new year, new skin, new you” bits of baloney. I don’t like baloney, or indeed many sausagey things like it: you know the sort, the texture’s a bit too smooth for comfort, there’s something suspicious about it. And you’d be right to be suspicious: compare and contrast baloney vs. Vegan Dad’s home-made sausages.
No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or, in other non-words:
never mind the bollocks, here’s the… deviant mutant spawn of the Sex Pistols generation: never have we been in greater need of revolution
Other than in situations where I can only use one oil (travel, staying with friends/family and forgotten to bring stuff with me or it’s an impromptu stay-over, etc.) I’m no longer just using the one oil for everything for which an oil could be used. The DIY multi-purpose oil has now become two such great, amazing, and no not actually at all original and unique concoctions: see here, blame this dude or her ladyship here; regarding the latter, remember—especially anyone who’s thinking of making money out of something that’s already there and claiming the credit for it as their invention, and those who are doing this already (your names and company names are two proper nouns long)—remember that hubris is a very bad thing, as exemplified by this poor lass.
Happy cheery story-time over, on to the unctuous oiliness proper:
- multi-purpose oil #1: the one that gets rinsed off, and sits on skin first in a gloopy way = currently
- sweet almond oil: any brand
- or olive oil: extra-virgin, Greek and more specifically from Crete, in a large 3 l bright green can; c/o the Parthenon, Broadway, Vancouver.
Which is a fabulous grocers/deli. Sorry, non-Vancouverites; but there’s plenty other good delis all over the world. Thank the peaceful commercial gods for millenia of global trade: one upside to desire and consumption.
Praise be to Folly in the highest!
Note: I’ve also bought oil many other places—supermarkets, grocers, delis, markets—and I’m not that fussy about it. EVOO is always cold-pressed etc., that’s in its nature and definition; so if there’s too much bunkum on the label touting how cold its pressing is I’ll get annoyed and might not buy due to marketeering allergies.
But I will pay a little more for one that’s a fair price. I know how olives are grown and the oil produced. It’s labour-intensive. If it costs less than a certain amount, there are corners being cut. The usual corners are unfair labour and mixing with cheaper oils made with cheaper labour (this seems to happen a lot in Italy, lately, with mixing of oils from other countries, but enough of the production is in Italy for the oil to count as Italian-made). A generous (but bordering on stinginess to workers) base-line for bulk larger quantities: at least $10.00 – 12.00 / litre, if shipped directly, family business, co-op, no middle-men, buying from a smaller place with regular turnover (and strong supplier connections, ex. to family and ancestral location). If not, then more.
That’s not crazy money: especially compared to actual ready-made shop-bought “proper” moisturisers…
- multi-purpose oil #2: the one that stays on skin, and sinks in fast = currently
- meadowfoam seed oil: Mountain Rose Herbs is the last lot I got; I’ve also bought it from local Vancouver suppliers
The relevant posts have duly been updated:
UPDATE (2012-01-04): back to just one oil, The Universal Multi-Purpose One And Only One (meadowfoam). Two oils was just too much arse. This is what happens when you’re a minimalist, hate clutter, despise prissy multiple products kicking around in the bathroom ready to trip you up, AND combine that with being short-sighted and lazy.
Also, a reminder of a chocolatey oily joy:
Denis Cotter, olive oil chocolate mousse: recipe (click image) at the otherwise not-my-cup-of-tea Doily Torygraph, and in Mr Cotter’s splendid cookery books, which any gastronome–vegetarian or otherwise–is heartily encouraged to investigate. Go forth and spend your gift vouchers!
update
to my MakeupAlley notepad: which is now updatable without crashing. Albeit, as is all too often the case, if you’re not using a Windows OS you can’t avail yourself of wysiwyg editors and you’re back with old-fashioned hand-scripting. Oh well. Does the job.
Revamped notepad now reflects what’s on here. Most of it shouldn’t need updating for a while. But–golly gosh–I first put together that MUA notepad five (yes, 5) years ago. My MUA-birthday was on the 24th; I admit to having lurked for 2004-07 on another account (which I deleted when I “went active”), with which all I did was read reviews and board discussion, as a passive MUAer. But five years is an eternity in internet terms. Even more chilling, for anyone scared of aging: I built my first website and made my first Wikipedia edits ten years ago, first blogging shortly after, and first online chat (gulp) twenty years ago.
Makes you think. Encroaching old age. Senescence and senility, or wisdom and venerability? Me, I’m looking forward to Second Childhood. And to all my colouring changing, which will mean being able to wear all sorts of ginger-inappropriate things with impunity:
Warning
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. Continue reading
spam of the week / month / season / year
Genuine email sent to me! Might be of interest to someone else, who knows… so consider this a public service announcement:
oils revisited
My skin has varied over the years, as has what I’ve used on it. Now, my skin’s been sensitive all my life, for various reasons and in various ways. Some of that sensitivity is inbuilt: that’s how my skin happens to be built: physically thin and with genetic eczema, for starters. The first oil I ever experimented with was jojoba, in my teens. LOL. It was fashionable, what more can I say… In my late 20s to early 30s, my skin was more hormonally-charged. I tended to have better luck and results with oils that were somewhere around about 0-1 on the standard comedogenicity and irritancy indices; had a lower molecular weight; and were lower in oleic acid, lower in alpha-linolenic acid, and higher in linoleic and gamma-linolenic.
Some oils have been constants, from cradle to currently-nearer-the-grave: mineral, sweet almond, sunflower. I’d always prefer to use a plant-derived oil where possible. Not because I’m one of those fools who think mineral oil and petrolatum (Vaseline) are poisonous and evil because they’re actually petrol/gas/crude oil (chemistry 101 ROFL), but for reasons of sustainability. Factoring in costs of production and transportation, too.
Over the last couple of years, my skin’s been changing. Continue reading
Earth Day Special: Gingerrama’s Green-ish Lists (2012)
- UPDATES: several, last updated January 2013
- SEE ALSO:
